Convergence of Human Development across Indian States

Abstract

Abstract: This paper examines the issue of convergence of human development among major Indian States as there is high degree of inequality in human development across Indian States. We intend(attempt) to answer an important question that whether low HDI states will be able to catch up the high HDI states, using convergence analysis. State wise decennial data for HDI(1981-91 to1991-01) are used. From the perspective of evaluating welfare implications and redistributive policies of the policy makers and to achieve social equality, a question that naturally pops up is: Will the poor HDI states will be able to catch up the high HDI states? It is of importance to know whether distribution of income and output across states are increasingly becoming equal over time resulting in equality in Human development or the low human development index (HDI) states will remain lower for many generations and those states are having high HDI will be higher for ever. We propose to answer this question by using the convergence analysis which is well known in macro economic analysis. Economists employed convergence analysis to find answer of similar question of growth convergence between nations or regions within a country. Though economists were interested for these issues many decades, during 1980’s only the convergence question attracted the attention of economists and econometrician. However for HDI, convergence analysis one has to consider the states as the relevant units of analysis. Our results of convergence analysis cast doubt on the hypothesis that low HDI states are actually growing at a faster rate than high HDI states leading to convergence in terms of HDI.