Regional Disparity in Human Development and Govt. Sponsored Inclusive Development Programmes in India: An Interstate Analysis

The last two decades of development research was busy in making a link between ends and means of development. The focus was shifted to provide more priority to the ends of development rather than means. The neoclassical indicators of economic progress like Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product failed to reflect the well-being and freedom actually enjoyed by population. The concept of human development defines people's well being as the end of development and economic growth as a means. Enlarging human capabilities became one of the primary objectives of most of the developing country since early 1990s. Several government programmes were launched in India for enhancing the level of human development across states specially during the decade of 2000. These programmes are mainly meant for eradicating poverty, for raising the level of employment and for making the deprived and marginalized section of the population to participate in the production process. This paper attempts to evaluate the trend and pattern of inequality in human development across states of India by formulating a human development index using Euclidean distance. The absolute β and σ convergence test of human development index indicates a sign of convergence of human development across states of India. In addition to this, the study sheds some light on the association between the process of Government sponsored inclusive development programmes and the level of human development in the context of different states of India. Empirical evidences suggest that an all-inclusive government programmes would facilitate the process of human development by addressing the basic distortions in the level of human development in the Indian economy.