The regional disparity in development refers to spatial variation in level of
development. It can also be stated as co-existence of economically developed regions along with economically depressed regions. Infrastructural variation in India is present extremely in Social and Physical Infrastructure. Public expenditure has made for social infrastructure in the way of education, medical, family welfare, water supply, construction of houses, urban development and natural calamities. Public expenditure has made for physical infrastructure in the way of transport & Communication, roads & bridges, Irrigation & flood control, construction of houses, energy, power, science & technology. Some states are economically advanced and some are backward. Regional variation may be natural due to dependence on natural factors or it may be manmade due to high priority given to one sector and neglecting the other sectors in terms of investment and development. Regional disparities may exist at different spatial levels like at the international level (across countries), at the national level (across states) and at the state level (across districts). This paper mainly focuses on interstate variation in infrastructural development among the 17 Major states of India. This paper is divided into three Sections. The first section relates to Introduction, Review of literature, Objectives, Data base and Methodology. The Second section relates to measurement of disparities through various indicators selected for assessing the level of development of infrastructural sector using Spearman’s rank correlation method, Sudershan Iyengar Method and Beta distribution. The third section relates to analysis of results classifying the states into four categories such as very backward, backward, developing and developed states and providing some suggestions for the reduction of interstate variation. |
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