Assistant Professor,
Through various Five Year Plans, the State Government of Uttar Pradesh has taken up number of development programme in planned manner with underlying objective of enhancing the quality of life of people by providing the basic necessities of life as well as improvement in their socio-economic well being. Despite such programmes, Uttar Pradesh still faces regional disparities and inequality in development. The State Government has made huge investments in backward region so as to reduce the regional disparities but the achievements are disproportionately low. In the Eleventh Plan period Government have adopted Inclusive Growth agenda and gave special emphasis to the schemes meant for reducing regional disparities and backwardness especially through the mechanism of decentralized planning. The same policy continued in the Twelfth Plan.
Precisely the main objectives of the present study are-To test the applicability of Kuznets inverted U hypothesis in case of agricultural development in Uttar Pradesh, to assess the extent of inter-district disparities in agricultural development of Uttar Pradesh and to examine how inter-district disparities have behaved after liberalization. The Western region enjoys comparatively better status in the field of agriculture than other three regions viz; Central, Eastern and Bundelkhand. Bundelkhand region presents the grim scenario with almost six districts out of seven falling in the category of Backward category. Central and Eastern regions are almost mediocre status. Western region has better agricultural status because it has much better and developed infrastructure. In all the analysis of composite index of agricultural development reveals clear cut inter-district and inter-regional disparities in agricultural development in the State.
