The Indian experience clearly suggests that the mixed-economy model and planned development strategy in the first phase during the 1950s and 1960s, improved growth rate dramatically relative to previous decades, and also provided the essential building blocks and laid the strong foundations of an indigenous industrial base, vibrant entrepreneurial class, knowledge economy, with considerable improvement in vertical, social and economic mobility.
However, the inward looking import substitution strategy pursued during the initial decades of the planning period resulted in declining productivity and high cost economy. Realizing this, significant changes in policy were initiated in the early 1980s, taking account of oil shocks in the 1970s and early 1980s.