Does Infrastructure Determine Socio-Economic Development in India? An Evaluation through Composite Index and Regression Approach

This study aims to analyse the signiance of social and economic infrastructure in the socio-economic development of India. It also aims to find the states and regions lagging in terms of infrastructure and socio-economic development.

Composite index of social and economic infrastructure and socio-economic development has been constructed from various indicators for twenty-eight states of India to analyse in detail the level of infrastructure and socio-economic development of the country. Moreover, the study also uses regression analysis to estimate the relationship of socio-economic development with social and economic infrastructure.

We find that the availability of infrastructure is evidently inadequate, thus adversely affecting the country’s growing developmental needs. We observed a strong relationship of socio-economic development with the availability of social and economic infrastructure, especially economic infrastructure, across the states and regions. The strategy of pacing socio-economic development via investment in infrastructure, both social and economic infrastructure, is recommended.

This study estimates composite index of social and economic infrastructure and socio-economic development for twenty-eight states of India. Using these data, regression analysis is done to estimate the relationship of socio-economic development with social and economic infrastructure. We observed a strong relationship of socio-economic development with the availability of social and economic infrastructure, notably economic infrastructure.