Employment and Manpower in the Draft Plan 1977/8 to 1982/3

Abstract

The Draft Five-Year Plan 1978–83 is basically an employment-oriented plan. While employment had been mentioned as one of the objectives in the earlier plans, it is only in the Sixth Plan that the basic strategy has itself been designed to achieve ‘the removal of unemployment and significant underemployment’. It aims also at ‘an appreciable rise in the standard of living of the poorest sections of the population’, but this is ‘ranked [second] in order of importance’, and ‘a significant reduction in the present disparities of incomes and wealth’ comes as a poor fifth. However, it observes: ‘Unemployment, poverty and inequality are related phenomena, so that any success in solving one of these problems would imply some success in solving the others’.