Growth and disparity of Indian states in the post-reform Era

India is a vast country with wide range of heterogeneous entities in several aspects such as population, weather, political scenarios and natural resources etc. Given its political diversity, issues related to regional growth and disparity has been in the center stagesince its Independence for. Despite significant focus, the regional economic disparity persists. Indian economy achieved noteworthy progress in terms of several accounts in the post-reform period. Notably, per capita income growth of the country had increased from 2.8 per cent in 1980–92 to 5.1 per cent 1993–2012. Butgrowth of per capita income across the states continues to be uneven. The present study is an attempt to know whether the reformhad role in increasing/decreasing regional growth and disparity and to find out the main cause of disparity. The study period covers from 1980–2012 and includes data for all States and Union Territories in India. It is found that the dispersion is reduced during post-reform period as compared to that of pre-reform period. To assess the dynamics of inter-state disparity, rank analysis is employed bothfor the pre- and post-reform periods. It was found that the disparity has deteriorated in the post-reform period amongst general category states with faster growth of rich states. However, the disparity across special category states relatively improved. To assess inter-temporal mobility of states, the study applied Kendal's mobility of concordance. The results exhibit that during post-reform period special category states were significantly mobileand reduced income disparity amongst them as compared to general category states.