Liberalization, Growth and Regional Disparities in India

Upon the backdrop of impressive progress made by the Indian economy during the last two decades after the large-scale economic reforms in the early 1990s, this book evaluates the performance of the economy on some income and non-income dimensions of development at the national, state and sectoral levels. It examines regional economic growth and inequality in income originating from agriculture, industry and services. In view of the importance of the agricultural sector, despite its declining share in gross domestic product, it evaluates the performance of agricultural production and the impact of agricultural reforms on spatial integration of food grain markets. It studies rural poverty, analyzing the trend in employment, the trickle-down process and the inclusiveness of growth in rural India. It also evaluates the impact of microfinance, as an instrument of financial inclusion, on the socio-economic conditions of rural households. Lastly, it examines the relative performance of fifteen major states of India in terms of education, health and human development. An important feature of the book is that it approaches these issues, applying rigorously advanced econometric methods, and focusing primarily on their regional disparities during the post-reform period vis-a-vis the pre-reform period. It offers important results to guide policies for future development.

Madhusudan Ghosh is a Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics & Politics, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal (India). He was a Ford Foundation Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (USA), and a Visiting Professor at Soka University, Tokyo (Japan). He was awarded a Post-doctoral Fellowship in Economics by the Ford Foundation, New Delhi, and the Dr. D.K. Desai Memorial Prize (four times) by the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, Mumbai. Prof. Ghosh is an active researcher and has been teaching for the last 32 years. Previously, he taught at North Bengal University (West Bengal) and R.K.M.R. College, Narendrapur (West Bengal). He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals. His areas of interest in teaching and research include Agricultural Economics, Development Economics, Macroeconomics, Time Series Econometrics, and Indian Economic Development.