POWER AND PLANMNG 33
Also, when one is concerned with the phenomenon of understanding, whatever the method maybe, one realises that facts may not necessarily lead to truth. Objective selection of facts6 do inevitably exclude many others. A review of Foucault, brings out clearly the implication of the inclusion - exclusion process on power, knowledge and truth. These may explain why a rethinking of economists' s claim of reason may also be necessary.
The writings of post-modernist philosophers like Lyotard, Baudrillard also sensitize us to the restrictions that may be imposed on the liberty of the self, by the institutional matrices of society. Perhaps such issues as patriarchy, gender, family-failures as also market failures could be tackled more effectively if one were to reorient one' s moorings a little towards the contemporary discourses in critical theory. It is with this view in mind, that the ideas of Foucault and Gramsci are appropriated in this exercise, in order to be able to understand the inter-relationship between the concept of power and the institution of planning. Admittedly, Gramsci may not fit comfortably with post-structuralist ideas, but in the Marxist tradition his way of conceptualisation and analysis of the state in advanced capitalist countries, his concepts of hegemony and passive revolution, coercion and consent may have relevance to the planning predicament of a transitional society like India.
The current problem of plan-market relationship presents a situation which appears to reveal certain inadequacies in our understanding -what appeared as truth seems to be falsified by the present experience. We are at a loss to decide whether something is wrong with our experience or whether the problem was a false problem in the first place. But there seems to have emerged a general consensus that planning experience world over need to be grasped through an inter-disciplinary approach. The object of our review is to see whether there may be differences or 'otherways' of looking at things.
I
So as to be able to establish the arguments for attempting a power -theoretic perspective to planning problem, we take up the case of Indian Planning experience and the formerly Soviet Planning experience as two case studies.
Regarding the former, while perspectives do differ, the general consensus is that "Indian Planning partly succeeded and partly failed" 7