Publication: India - Accelerating Growth and Development in the Lagging Regions of India
Date
2008-02
ISSN
Published
2008-02
Author(s)
World Bank
Abstract
Although the Indian economy has been
growing at a stellar rate of about 6 percent per annum since
the mid-1980s, this achievement has been clouded by growing
inequality and divergence in development outcomes among
India's different regions. This study, thus, identifies
a regional development strategy built around policies that
are good for both the development of the Low Income States
(LIS) and for India's overall development. That is,
these policies are more in the nature of win-win rather than
trade-offs between regional and national development. They
focus on and address key issues: adverse neighbourhood
effects; the comparative advantages of the LIS in
agriculture and small town, agro-based, labor intensive
industries; support for relatively inexpensive 'local
or rural' infrastructure; critical human and social
development that addresses exclusion, and; targeted
investments of public expenditures alongside a build-up of
capacity. These choices focus on core necessities rather
than trade-offs between national and regional development.
Further, they aim to achieve greater equity in welfare for
the population of different regions rather than equality of
economic activity in all regions. The rest of this summary
discusses these findings in more detail. The next section,
section B, presents the stylized facts about the lagging
states; and finally, section C summarizes the findings on
the constraints they face in raising growth and development.
Citation
“World Bank. 2008. India - Accelerating Growth and Development in the Lagging Regions of India. © Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7951 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”