The Second Five-Year Plan (1956–1961) was based on the Mahalanobis Model, named after the statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis who designed it.

The model emphasised rapid industrialisation through heavy capital-goods industries (steel, machine tools, chemicals) to build the productive base of the economy, rather than relying on agriculture or exports alone.

The First Five-Year Plan had prioritised agriculture and infrastructure. The Second Plan shifted the focus to the public sector and heavy industry as the engine of long-run growth — a strategy sometimes called the 'socialist pattern of society.'

The neo-classical minimal-state model and market-led export model represent Western liberal approaches never adopted by Nehruvian planning, and the agrarian cooperative model describes the First Plan's orientation, not the Second.

Hence, the economic model that formed the basis of the Second Five-Year Plan was the Mahalanobis heavy-industry model.