The father of economic planning in India is Sir M. Visvesvaraya.

He is given this title because he was the first to strongly advocate a systematic, state-led, and long-term plan for India’s development through his book “Planned Economy for India” published in 1934. In this work, he proposed a 10-year plan to rapidly industrialize India, shift surplus labour from agriculture to industry, and significantly raise national income, which later inspired India’s formal planning framework and Five-Year Plans after independence.