The 1950 resolution setting up the Planning Commission outlined its functions as the following:
- Make an evaluation of the capital, material and the human resources of the nation, including technical personnel, and study the possibilities of enhancing these resources for building up the nation;
- Draft a Plan for the most balanced and effective usage of the country’s resources;
- Define the stages in which the Plan should be implemented and put forward the allocation of resources for the completion of every stage;
- Specify the factors that hamper economic development, and ascertain the conditions which, in view of the prevailing social and political situation, should be set up for the triumphant implementation of the Plan
- Determine the kind of machinery required for obtaining the successful execution of each stage of the Plan in all its aspects;
- Regularly appraise the progress achieved in the implementation of all stages of the Plan and propose the rectifications or recommendations of policy and measures that such appraisal may deem necessary;
- Make such interim or ancillary recommendations either for enabling the discharge of the duties assigned to it or on a consideration of the existing economic conditions, current policies, measures and development programme or on a study of such specific problems which the Central or State Governments can refer to it.
