An Empirical Study of Infrastructure and Economic Development in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir

Abstract

This study compares the 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir in terms of infrastructure and economic development and finds the districts are trailing behind in terms of infrastructure and economic development. The study also attempts to find a descriptive association between infrastructure and economic development across the districts of Jammu and Kashmir vis-a-vis indices. The study uses the secondary source of information collected from the district-level statistical handbook and Digest of Statistics, Directorate of Economics & Statistics, J&K, 2020–2021. For estimating the infrastructure and economic development across the districts of Jammu and Kashmir, the composite infrastructure development index and composite economic development index have been made by employing the Principal Component Analysis method. The study employs the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett’s Tests of Statistics in order to test the appropriateness of factor analysis for the data. The findings of the study reveal that there exist wide disparities in terms of both the infrastructure and economic development across the districts of Jammu and Kashmir and the large gap in the availability of basic infrastructure facilities across the districts describes the inter-district disparity in the economic development.