Planning as a tool for Regional Imbalance in India

Regional Planning as a Tool for Correcting Regional Imbalance

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• Regional planning refers to formulating different plans for different regions, depending on various factors including resource endowments, stage of socio-economic development, geographical location, and the aspirations of local people. It is a deliberate, policy-driven exercise that treats each region as a distinct planning unit with its own combination of problems, potentials, and priorities.
• Regional planning is distinct from national sectoral planning in a fundamental way: while sectoral planning asks “how much food, industry, or infrastructure should be produced nationally?”, regional planning asks “where should it be produced, and for whom?” It has an explicit spatial dimension — it is planning with a map, not just with an economic model.
• In the context of India’s vast and persistent regional imbalances — the income gap between Goa and Bihar, the industrial concentration in Maharashtra-Gujarat while Bihar and Jharkhand remain backward, the connectivity deficit in the North-East — regional planning becomes the primary instrument for spatially redistributive justice. It is not merely a technical exercise but a tool of social policy with geographic expression.

Factors Determining Regional Planning

Regional planning is not a uniform, one-size-fits-all exercise. Different regions require different planning frameworks based on the following four determining factors:

1. Resource Endowments and Potential of Resource Exploitation

• Each region has a distinct resource base — mineral wealth (Chota Nagpur), water resources (Indo-Gangetic Plain), forest cover (North-East), marine resources (coastal states), solar energy potential (Rajasthan), hydro-power potential (Himalayan states).
• Regional planning must assess these endowments, identify the potential of their exploitation, and align planning investments with that potential.
• For example, Rajasthan’s regional planning has increasingly centred on solar energy rather than water-intensive agriculture — a shift driven by resource endowment analysis.

2. Stage and Level of Socio-Economic Development

• A region that is entirely agrarian and subsistence-based requires fundamentally different planning instruments than one that is transitioning to industrialization, or one that is already industrially mature but facing urban congestion. India’s planning for the BIMARU states (Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, UP) — largely agrarian with high poverty — differs from planning for the congested Mumbai Metropolitan Region or the rapidly urbanizing Bengaluru.
• The stage of development determines whether infrastructure creation, industrial promotion, or urban management should be the primary planning thrust.

3. Nature of Geographical Location / Geographical Setting

• A region’s physical geography — whether it is a coastal zone, hill region, desert, floodplain, tribal forest area, or island territory — fundamentally shapes what kind of development is ecologically feasible, economically viable, and socially appropriate.
• Regional planning for Lakshadweep (tiny coral atolls, climate-vulnerable) differs from planning for the Thar Desert (arid, desert-prone, sparse population) or the Himalayas (fragile, inaccessible, disaster-prone).
• The geographical setting is the spatial container within which all other planning decisions must operate.

4. Aspirations of the Local People

• Development planning divorced from local aspirations generates resistance and ultimately fails. India’s experience — from anti-dam movements (Narmada Bachao Andolan), to tribal rights movements (Forest Rights Act), to demands for regional statehood (Telangana, Jharkhand) — demonstrates that regional planning must incorporate the aspirations of local communities.
• The 73rd Constitutional Amendment (Panchayati Raj) and the Forest Rights Act (2006) represent institutional recognition of this principle: planning must hear and respond to local voices, not just national planners.

Objectives of Regional Planning as a Tool for Imbalance Correction

Regional planning, as a tool for addressing regional imbalances, tends to achieve the following three interconnected objectives:

Regional Imbalance → Subnational Tendencies: The Critical Link

The most politically consequential objective of regional planning is the prevention of the subnational tendencies that emerge from uncorrected regional imbalances. These are not abstract risks — India’s history is replete with examples of how economic deprivation in a region transforms into political or violent mobilisation:

Different Approaches of Regional Planning

Regional Planning can be studied under two broad frameworks that cut across all specific approaches:

1. Primary Framework: Spatial vs. Temporal

• Based on what drives the planning — is it the geographic characteristics of a specific area (spatial) or a time-bound target for a region (temporal)? These are complementary, not alternatives.

2. Secondary Framework: Regional vs. Area Development

• Based on the scope of the planning unit — is it a broader region defined by functional hierarchies (regional planning approach) or a specific problem area/group (area development approach)?

Spatial Approach and Temporal Approach

A. Spatial Approach

• In a spatial approach, the area-specific planning is put into action for the achievement of particular goals, keeping in account the local socio-economic and geographical factors of the region. The planning process is tailored to the characteristics of the specific region — not a uniform national template applied everywhere.
  • Example: Planning to reduce poverty in hilly areas by the promotion of tourism — leveraging the scenic, cultural, and biodiversity assets specific to mountain regions, rather than trying to impose plains-style agricultural or industrial development on terrain that is unsuitable for it.
• Local socio-economic factors: What is the existing livelihoods base? What is the skill profile? What are the cultural practices? Planning must build on these, not replace them
• Geographical factors: What is the terrain, climate, soil, water availability, connectivity? These set the physical parameters of what is feasible
• Central Place Theory (CPT), Growth Poles, and Growth Centres are examples of the implementation of the spatial approach — they provide the theoretical framework for spatial allocation of development activities
• Contemporary Indian applications: Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) — 112 specific districts receiving tailored convergence of 42+ central schemes; NE special packages targeting the specific connectivity and developmental deficits of North-East India

B. Temporal Approach

• In the temporal approach, time is the major factor which is taken into consideration in the planning process of a particular region. Planning is organized around time-bound targets for specific regional outcomes.
  • Example: Planning for doubling the farmer’s income by 2022 in a particular region — a time-bound target that organizes all regional planning instruments (credit, irrigation, markets, technology) toward achieving that specific outcome within the specified timeframe.
• Five Year Plans are the primary instrument of temporal planning in India — 1st to 12th FYP each set time-bound targets for regional sectors
• Mission-mode programmes with specific completion timelines: PMGSY (rural roads), Jal Jeevan Mission (piped water to all households), Saubhagya (household electrification), Swachh Bharat (open defecation free)
• Aspirational Districts delta-ranking: Monthly monitoring of changes in 49 indicators — creates temporal urgency and accountability within spatial planning
• Climate targets as temporal planning: India’s NDC targets (45% emission intensity reduction by 2030; 50% non-fossil power by 2030) combine spatial (which regions transition first) and temporal (by when) dimensions

Regional Planning Approach — Using Hierarchy and Complementarity

• In the Regional Planning Approach, the planning process is limited to a particular area, keeping the various planning entities of the region into account.
  • Example: planning for the development of the Chota Nagpur region through industrial development — treating the entire mineral-rich plateau as an integrated planning unit, allocating steel, power, and mining industries at appropriate hierarchical levels.
• This approach is applied with the help of the principle of hierarchy of settlements, given by Christaller, and the Growth Poles and Growth Centres concepts of Perroux and Boudeville.

The Functional Hierarchy Principle

• The core insight of the Regional Planning Approach is that a functional relationship exists among settlements. In rural areas, for example:
  • One village acts as the central village and provides services (market, school, health sub-centre, panchayat office) to surrounding villages
  • That central village depends upon a higher-order settlement — typically a town — for higher-order services (hospital, college, wholesale market, tehsil office)
  • The town depends on a city for even higher-order services (university, specialized hospital, regional headquarters)
  • This creates a nested hierarchy of settlements organized by functional interdependence

The Planner’s Role in the Regional Planning Approach

• Regional planners, following the Regional Planning Approach, perform two key functions:
  • Identify hierarchical relationships: Map the functional dependency structure of settlements in the region — which villages depend on which market towns? Which towns draw on which city? Where are the gaps in the hierarchy (missing market towns, absence of district-level services)?
  • Decide activity allocation at each level: Determine which activity should be located at which level of the hierarchy — so that complementary functions can exist among them, ensuring integrated development of the entire region. For example: primary schools at village level, secondary schools at block level, colleges at district level, universities at regional level.

Transport and Communication as Enablers: Following these principles, planners deliberately tend to locate Growth Poles and Growth Centres at a certain level of the hierarchy and simultaneously facilitate the development of transport and communication lines so that the growth pole can generate the required impact on the hinterland. Without transport connectivity, a growth pole at the district headquarters level cannot diffuse its economic impulses to villages 50 km away. The connectivity is what transforms a point of development into a regional growth process.

Christaller’s Central Place Theory and Regional Planning

• Christaller’s Central Place Theory (1933) identified a hierarchical system of market centres, each serving a specific hinterland.
• The theory organizes settlements by their range (maximum distance consumers travel for a service) and threshold (minimum population needed for a service to be economically viable).
• Planning applies this theory by deliberately placing services at the appropriate hierarchical level to ensure all settlements are served within accessible range.

Complementary Regions and Christaller

• Christaller proposed a hierarchy of complementary regions — the hinterland of each central place that it exclusively serves. Each complementary region is nested within the complementary region of the next higher-order centre.
• The principle of complementarity means that settlements of different orders are not competitors but functionally interdependent — they complement each other by providing different levels of service.

Area Development Approach

• The Area Development Approach is the second major approach in regional planning. Unlike the Regional Planning Approach (which focuses on the functional hierarchy of settlements across a broad region), the Area Development Approach focuses on specific areas with particular problems or specific social groups with particular disadvantages.
• It has two sub-types:

Sub-type A: Planning Based on Area-Specific Problems

• This includes planning with respect to various area-specific problems such as floods, droughts, desertification, hill terrain fragility, etc. The area is selected because it faces a particular geographic problem that requires targeted intervention — a problem that cannot be solved through general national sectoral planning.

Sub-type B: Planning Based on Specific Groups of an Area

• This includes various programmes targeting specific social groups within an area — recognizing that geographic area-based planning may not reach marginalized groups who are socially or economically excluded even within the targeted region.
• Tribal Area Development Programme
  • Tribal Sub-Plan (1974-75): Ring-fenced funds proportional to Scheduled Tribe population share. Administered through ITDPs/ITDAs. PESA Act (1996) for Schedule V areas. Modified Area Development Approach (MADA) for tribal pockets with 50%+ ST concentration. Forest Rights Act (2006) as rights complement.
• Small Farmers Development Agency (SFDA)
  • SFDA (1971): Targeted at small and marginal farmers (holdings < 2 ha) who were excluded from Green Revolution benefits. Credit, technology, marketing support specifically for this class. Later evolved into IRDP → SGSY → NRLM, extending the group-specific approach to rural poor more broadly.
• MFAL — Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers
  • Companion to SFDA — targeted agricultural labourers and marginal farmers with even smaller holdings. Credit and training for allied activities (animal husbandry, fishery, sericulture) to diversify livelihoods beyond crop cultivation.
• DWCRA — Women Group Planning
  • Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas: Group-specific planning targeting rural women through self-help groups (SHG model). Predecessor to the SHG-bank linkage programme that now covers 7 crore+ women through NRLM/Aajeevika.

Growth Poles in Practice — India’s Steel Towns

• The 2nd Five Year Plan (1956-61) implemented the Regional Planning Approach at its most ambitious scale — locating three integrated steel plants in backward regions as growth poles intended to generate multiplier effects in their hinterlands. This is India’s most important case study of regional planning as a tool for imbalance correction — and of its limitations.

Hartshorne’s Areal Differentiation — The Geographic Foundation of Regional Planning

• The concept of regional planning very well supports the idea of spatial differentiation but complementary units as discussed by Richard Hartshorne in his concept of areal differentiation. Hartshorne considered the earth as a mosaic of landscapes, wherein every landscape is a part of the unique combination of its constituent elements, which differentiates it from the adjoining landscape.
• The notion of regional planning talks about: (1) making utilization of this differentiated landscape according to its potential; and (2) taking care of the complementary relationship which exists between adjoining landscapes.

The Mosaic of Landscapes — Applied to India

• Hartshorne’s metaphor of the earth as a “mosaic of landscapes” resonates powerfully with India’s extraordinary geographic diversity:
  • Himalayan Landscape
    • Unique combination: high altitude, glaciers, fragile ecology, tourist appeal, hydro-power potential, medicinal plants. Differentiated from the plains below. Planning must exploit the tourism and hydro-power potential while protecting the fragile ecology.
  • Indo-Gangetic Plain
    • Deep alluvial soil, flat terrain, river water, dense population — globally unmatched agricultural potential. Planning exploits this for food production (Green Revolution) — complement the Himalayas’ water storage function.
  • Chota Nagpur Plateau
    • Ancient crystalline rocks = iron ore, coal, manganese, bauxite. Dense forest — tribal culture. A landscape differentiated by its mineral wealth. Planning uses this for industrial growth poles — with the complementary responsibility not to destroy the forest culture.
  • Thar Desert
    • Highest solar radiation in India, sparse population, arid conditions. A landscape whose potential is not agriculture (as it was long exploited for) but solar energy. The world’s largest solar parks (Bhadla, Rajasthan) represent planning aligned with this landscape’s true potential.
  • Coastal Zones
    • Marine access, port potential, fisheries, coastal biodiversity. Complementary to the inland agricultural hinterland — exporting its surplus, receiving manufactured goods. Planning for SEZs, ports, and fisheries development must respect the CRZ ecological boundary.
  • North-East India
    • Extraordinary biodiversity, oil and natural gas, tea and rubber, cultural diversity, hydro-power rivers. A frontier landscape — complement to the national economy as resource provider. Planning must ensure this complementary relationship benefits the region, not just the centre.

Areal Differentiation + Complementarity = Regional Planning Logic

“Hartshorne considered the earth as a mosaic of landscape wherein every landscape is a part of the unique combination of its constituent elements, which differentiates it from the adjoining landscape. The notion of regional planning talks about making utilization of this differentiation landscape according to their potential. At the same time, it also talks about taking care of the complementary relationship which exists between adjoining landscapes.”

India’s Regional Planning Programmes