Regional disparity in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar: a disaggregated level analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates disparity in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the two most backward states of India, despite being endowed with relatively rich natural resources. The poor performance of these two states is not merely due to weak institutions and political instability coupled with social conflict rooted in sectarian politics based on caste, class and ethnic division, but also, at the same time, poor socio-economic backwardness which includes poor human development indicators, low income, poor infrastructure and overall output. For making comparisons in the two states at district level, the study has computed indices using Principal Component Analysis for the four sectors, for instance, agriculture, services, health and education for the years 2001 and 2011. To identify the clusters of backward regions of the states, Cluster Analysis has been used as these two states are similar in respect of historical antecedents, climate and other variables and, hence, districts lying in these two can be merged and compared. The empirical findings depict that districts spread in the two states that are identical in many respects, and thus, in terms of disparity, they look like miniature of the country that has a high inter-state disparity.