Three Decades of Human Development across Indian States: Inclusive Growth or Perpetual Disparity?

The importance of strengthening the human development (HD) achievements in a country to augment its growth potential is well known in development literature. Several initiatives to enhance the HD level have been introduced in India in recent past. However, the HD achievements still vary significantly across Indian States. The current paper attempts to observe the HD achievements for 28 Indian States over the last three decades and analyze their influence on growth patterns. The methodology adopted in the National Human Development Report 2001 has been applied for constructing the Human Development Index (HDI) in the current analysis, and the indices for rural and urban areas within each State are calculated separately. The results indicate importance of State-specific HD path and also the presence of high rural–urban disparity.