A time span of 20 years has been designated for describing the long term objectives of economic planning. 

These are as follows:

i. Growth : The increase in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services. Example- Machines, Tools, Banking, transport, etc. All the Indian Five Year Plans have given primary importance to higher growth of real national income. In economic vocabulary, growth implies continuous growth in GDP, which is obtained from various sectors of the economy. These sectors include primary sector, secondary sector and tertiary sector. As the economy, develops, the contribution of primary sector keeps decreasing while the contribution of secondary and tertiary sectors keep increasing.

ii. Full employment : Another objective of the plans is better utilization of man power resource and increasing employment opportunities. Measures have been taken to provide employment to millions of people during plans. This is a social objective of five year plan, which implies that both rich and poor sections should have equal participation in development, because unemployment leads to emergence of various evils in the society, like theft, loot, terrorism etc.

iii. Equality : If the benefits of economic growth are enjoyed by a handful of people, then this growth is meaningless. In such a situation, the rich class will become richer and poor will become poorer, which, in turn, would create situations of conflict. Thus, economic equality has been made an important objective of planning. Only then, growth, self dependence, modernization will fructify and be realized as a target.

iv. Self Reliance : Self reliance implies that dependence on foreign goods should be as minimum as possible. For accelerating the process of industrialization, we had to import capital goods in the form of heavy machinery and technical know-how. For improving infrastructure facilities, like roads, railways, power, etc. We had to depend on foreign aid to raise the rate of our investment. As excessive dependence on foreign goods may lead to economic colonialism, the planners rightly mentioned the objective of self-reliance from the Third Plan on wards. In the fourth plan, much emphasis was given to self-reliance, specially in the production of food grains. In the fifth plan, our objective was to earn sufficient foreign exchange through export promotion and import substitution.

v. Modernization : Modernization aims at improving the standard of living of the people by adopting a better scientific technique of production, by replacing the traditional backward ideas, by logical reasoning and bringing about changes in the rural structure and institutions.

These changes aim at increasing the share of industrial output in the national income, upgrading the quality of products and diversifying the Indian industries. Further, it also includes expansion of banking and non-banking financial institutions to agriculture and industry. Modernization, research and development were emphasized important aims in the sixth five-year plan.