(a) How did the primary goals listed in the five-year plans aim to deal with the given crisis?

Question

Read the passage given below and answer the questions that are followed. 

In the early 1980s, textile mills all over the country began to close down. In some places, such as Mumbai, the mills closed rapidly. In Ahmedabad, the process of closure was long drawn out and spread over 10 years. Over this period, approximately over 80,000 permanent workers and over 50,000 nonpermanent workers lost their jobs and were driven to the informal sector. The city experienced an economic recession and public disturbances, especially communal riots. A whole class of workers was thrown back from the middle class into the informal sector, into poverty. There was widespread alcoholism and suicides, and children were withdrawn from school and sent to work.

(a) How did the primary goals listed in the five-year plans aim to deal with the given crisis?

(b) 'Recession and unemployment go hand in hand.' 

Explain the above statement in context to the given passage.

Answer 1

(a) Modernization: encouraging new techniques, methodologies, social outlook and policies. 

Example: modernisation of informal sector enterprises and provision of social security, measures to informal sector workers. 

Self-reliance: avoiding import of goods that could be produced in India itself, optimum utilization of nation's own resources, encouraging indigenous industries. 

Equity: encouraging policies revolving around providing food, a decent house, education and health care so that the inequality in the distribution of wealth could be reduced. 

Growth: aiming to increase the country’s capacity to produce the output of goods and services within the country by either stimulating a larger stock of productive capital, or a larger size of supporting services etc.

(b) Recession is the slowdown or a temporary economic decline in an economy wherein production activities are at the lowest. 

Employment is directly proportional to growth. 

In the 1980s, when India recorded one of its lowest growth. As a result of this recession, India encountered a decline in economic activities which lead to decreasing output. Hence employment opportunities decreased leading to unemployment.