Max F. Millikan

OF the many experiments in the purposeful promotion of economic development which the world has witnessed since the end of World War II, incomparably the most important among underdeveloped countries is India's. The population involved in this experiment constitutes a third of the people of the non-communist underdeveloped world-more human beings than are to be found in all the underdeveloped countries of Africa and Latin America put together. The development planning effort undertaken by the Indians is one of the oldest and probably the most sophisticated to be found in any of these countries. Finally, it has been conducted in the context of a genuinely democratic political system, with repeated free elections, substantial freedom of expression by opposition groups and two orderly changes of top leadership. Three five-year plans have been completed since Independence, and India is in its fourth quinquennium of serious development effort.