Regional economic growth in the post reforms period

The Indian economy has undergone a transition from a rather controlled economy to a more liberalised economy since 1980s. A major objective of planned economic development strategy in India has been to accelerate the economic growth and to achieve a balanced regional spread. Similar to the disparities at the global level, variations in development also arises within a country. In India the uneven distribution of natural resources has itself created large severely underdeveloped regions in the country. The key economic issue is whether these poor regions tend to grow faster than the rich ones; are there automatic forces that lead to convergence over time in the per capita growth income and product? India's political and geographic structure makes it one of the most interesting cases to test the convergence divergence problem in growth theory. This paper attempts to document the performance of the major states in India in the post reform period and compare it with the performance in the previous decade. It analyses the trends in growth rates using the per capita Net Domestic Product for each state. The growth performance of the states can be judged from the available data on Per Capita Net Domestic Product and Per Capita Net State Domestic Product at current prices.