The main targets of the Second Five-Year Plan were industries especially heavy industrial areas. Unlike the first plan, which was mainly aimed at the agriculture sector, the main focus of this scheme was to make industrial products a domestic cause and at the same time increase the public sector and it was aimed at improving the standard of living.
The Second Five-Year Plan was based on the Mahalanobis Plan. The Mahalanobis scheme was an economic development model plan, discovered in 1953 by Indian scholar Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. The effort of this plan was to have the proper distribution of resources among the areas of production and also to increase economic growth. To achieve this goal, it made use of the state-of-the-art method research techniques and optimum use of the situation, using new methods of statistical model which were created by the Indian Statistical Institute.
The Second Five-Year Plan can be considered a closed economy in which the main goal of the scheme is to pay more attention to the import of capital resources. Hydroelectric power program and 5 steel factories were established under it in Durgapur, Bhilai and Rourkela.
The Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1958 under the chairmanship of Homi Bhabha. The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was recognized as a research institute. Talent search and scholarship program were started in 1957 to promote young talent in the field of molecular energy. The target rate for the second plan was 4.5 per cent while the actual growth rate was 4.0.