1956
The Second Plan did not begin with a document.
It began with impatience.
By 1956, restraint had lost its novelty.
What once felt wise now felt slow. What once felt careful now felt cautious to the point of embarrassment. The country had survived famine, war, fragmentation, and doubt. Survival no longer inspired loyalty.
Ambition did.
The pressure did not come from one place.
It came from everywhere.
Young economists returned from abroad with new confidence and sharper tongues. Engineers spoke of capacity wasted. Ministers asked why India still borrowed the language of caution when others spoke in the grammar of progress.
Even critics who had once warned against planning now demanded speed.
The argument had turned.
The First Plan had anchored India.
The Second was expected to define it.
That expectation frightened me more than opposition ever had.
Anchors hold ships in storms.
Definitions expose them.
The word steel returned with force.
Not as suggestion.
As inevitability.
Steel meant machines. Machines meant industry. Industry meant power—economic, political, psychological.
It was no longer a question of whether India needed steel.
It was a question of whether India could afford not to declare that it did.
The economists spoke with certainty this time.
They had models. They had international comparisons. They had proof—carefully selected—that states which industrialized quickly commanded respect.
They did not speak of collapse.
They spoke of confidence.
Confidence, I knew, was a dangerous substitute for capacity.
The Second Plan discussions felt different from the first.
There was less listening.
More assertion.
Less fear of collapse.
More fear of irrelevance.
That shift mattered.
A nation that fears collapse chooses restraint.
A nation that fears irrelevance chooses ambition.
I watched the debates with unease.
Steel plants were mapped as if destiny followed rail lines. Dams were sketched as monuments, not systems. Targets grew larger, timelines shorter.
The language had changed.
So had the room.
I did not oppose the Second Plan.
Opposition would have been dishonest.
The country was ready for more.
The institutions had matured.
The people expected movement.
The First Plan had created patience.
The Second would consume it.
But I resisted spectacle.
Quietly.
I insisted that industry be paired with training. That heavy investment be matched with institutional reform. That targets include failure margins.
Ambition does not forgive ignorance.
The Planning Commission felt stronger now.
Not because it had gained authority—
but because the nation was asking it to lead.
That was the most dangerous moment in an institution's life.
When it is trusted to decide.
States pressed harder.
They wanted factories.
They wanted projects that voters could see.
Infrastructure became political currency.
I understood this instinct.
Democracy does not reward invisible success forever.
Late one evening, alone again with drafts that felt heavier than before, I confronted the truth I had delayed.
The Second Plan would not be boring.
It would not be invisible.
It would create winners—and losers.
It would reshape India's economy and its arguments.
It would attach ideology to outcome.
And once ideology enters planning—
failure becomes political.
I thought of the First Plan.
How little it promised.
How quietly it delivered.
That luxury was gone.
I signed the framework knowing this was a crossing.
From survival to assertion.
From caution to confidence.
From managing fragility to testing strength.
This was not recklessness.
But it was risk.
Before closing the file, I wrote a final note to myself—one I never shared:
"The first plan asked what India needs.""The second will ask what India believes."
Belief is harder to revise than policy.
And far harder to abandon.
The Second Plan began.
And with it, India stepped into a future that would no longer forgive hesitation.