Inter-regional disparities in India: Threats & challenges

The growth model adopted by our planners, soon after attaining political independence, has no doubt, helped the nation to achieve path breaking success in many critical and core areas and has helped her emerge as a nation to be reckoned with. However, in some other equally important areas, it has not been as successful and, consequently, has met glaring omissions, disappointment and failures. All this has also resulted in lop-sided development which has manifested it self in the form of heightening of regional disparities and other socio-economic angularities. These imbalances have not only persisted over various plans but have also grown and become more sharp than before, thereby threatening the very process of growth. Therefore, now, not only the attainment of higher economic growth has become very crucial but also reduction in incidence of regional disparities has become equally important aspect for the planners.

These angularities have cut across caste, creed, region and gender profiles. It is estimated that over eighty percent of the poor in the country now belong to the socially disadvantaged groups like the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward castes. Similarly, the indices of human development, such as the levels of literacy, gender disparities, provisions of basic needs like drinking water, health care etc., show, in general, poor performance in the less developed states and among the socially disadvantaged groups. All these incidences have pushed the nation into a situation which may unleash insurmountable amount of disastrous consequences, if allowed to persist, and may ultimately derail the economy.

Now, it has now been increasingly realized that besides promoting growth, containment of regional disparities has also become quite essential from the point of view of maintaining national integration, political stability and unity of the country apart from promoting decentralized planning. An attempt has been made to study the pattern of regional disparities in some of the developed and developing states and examine how the process of globalization, liberalization and privatization has accentuated over the period of time and provides appropriate strategies to address it.