1960–1961
Growth arrived the way rain sometimes does.
Heavy in some places.Absent in others.
And impossible to explain to those still waiting.
The figures looked respectable at first glance.
Output rose.Power generation increased.Industrial capacity expanded.
On paper, India was moving.
But paper is flat.
Reality is not.
In certain regions, factories became magnets.
Jobs appeared. Towns swelled. New markets formed around gates that had not existed a year earlier. Roads were repaired where trucks demanded them. Schools followed wages. Clinics followed schools.
Progress, when concentrated, accelerates itself.
Elsewhere, the Plan arrived as rumor.
Announcements without ground-breaking. Targets without equipment. Promises routed through offices that had learned how to forward responsibility upward.
These regions did not stagnate.
They waited.
Waiting feels worse than stagnation.
Agriculture stabilized unevenly.
Areas with irrigation projects prospered visibly. Yields rose. Cash circulated. Confidence returned.
Rain-fed regions remained exposed.
The Plan had promised resilience.
It delivered selectivity.
That distinction was not lost on those watching the weather instead of balance sheets.
I read reports describing the divergence.
They used careful language.
"Differential outcomes.""Regional variation.""Localized acceleration."
All true.
None politically neutral.
In Parliament, the tone shifted again.
Members from advancing regions praised policy. Those from lagging areas demanded explanation.
No one accused the Plan outright.
They accused geography.
Geography, however, does not vote.
People do.
The Planning Commission attempted adjustment.
Funds were redirected. Supplementary projects proposed. Committees formed to study "lag."
Study buys time.
But it does not erase contrast.
I noticed something else.
The successful regions had begun to speak differently.
With confidence.
With expectation.
They wanted more autonomy. Faster approvals. Priority treatment.
Growth had given them voice.
And voice demands recognition.
The poorer regions responded with resentment.
Not ideological.
Personal.
Why them and not us?Why here and not there?What did we do wrong?
These questions do not accept technical answers.
They accept political ones.
I had warned once that ambition creates winners and losers.
Now the map was drawing them clearly.
That clarity was dangerous.
The press began publishing comparisons.
Charts. Photographs. Contrasts.
A factory town beside a village still dependent on monsoon.
Visual disparity communicates faster than speeches.
I felt the burden of something I could not reverse.
The Plan had chosen symbols.
Symbols had chosen locations.
Locations had chosen destinies.
Correction would require intervention on a scale that contradicted everything we had tried to preserve.
Late one evening, I reread an old note:
"Uniform progress is impossible."
I had believed that.
What I had underestimated was how quickly uneven progress becomes moral accusation.
The first signs of political mobilization appeared.
Local leaders promised to "bring development" as if it were a commodity held hostage elsewhere.
Regional pride sharpened.
Regional grievance followed.
This was not separatism.
Not yet.
It was comparison.
The Second Plan was not failing.
It was succeeding unevenly.
And uneven success is more destabilizing than uniform disappointment.
I thought again of restraint.
How it had delayed ambition.
How ambition had now outrun patience.
We had crossed a line without noticing.
From can we grow?To why are they growing faster?
That question does not permit calm answers.
I wrote in my notebook that year:
"Growth creates expectations.""Expectation creates politics."
Politics, once created, does not consult planners.
By the end of 1961, the cracks had widened.
Not enough to collapse anything.
Enough to be visible.
Enough to demand response.
And responses, I knew, would not all be technical.
The country had learned to believe.
Now it was learning to compare.
The next lesson would be harder.