Review Konteks Kebijakan Konvergensi di India
2.7. Review Konteks Kebijakan Konvergensi di India
The issues of convergence (or divergence) is important from policy perspective as a process of cumulative advantage suggests the need to bolster lagging regions for reasons of regional integration as well as equity. After independence, when the new era of planning was introduced in India, then from the very beginning of the first plan, the planners imposed emphasis unanimously on the special objective of balanced regional development along with the objectives of high growth rate, reduction of poverty, expansion of employment etc. Regional imbalances have got importance in each plan though the degree of emphasis has been varied over different plans. Though the first two five year plans of the Government of India made reference to problems of regional development in a balanced way, in was in the Third Five Year Plan (1961-66) that a separate chapter was developed to Balanced Regional Development (chapter 9) suggesting that ‘ For assessing levels of development in different regions, indicators of production, investment, unemployment, electricity consumption, irrigated area, value of output by commodity producing sectors, level of consumption expenditure, road mileage, primary and secondary education and occupational distribution of population are useful’ (Planning Commission, 1962, para 23). As time precedes, the Government of India has been assigned a multitude of objectives - to promote rapid economic growth and industrialization, redistribution of income and wealth, import substitution, generation of resources through returns to investment, creation of employment opportunities and development of small scale and ancillary industries with equal emphasis on balanced regional development. In fact, numerous measures have also been implemented in different 5-year Plans to achieve balanced regional development of the country. From Third Plan to Eighth Plan, allocation of more central assistance to different states, were thought to be the only measure to combat the problem of regional disparity. From the last few plans, the central assistance to states has increased substantially over the last three decades.
From Ninth Plan, efforts and measures in narrowing down the regional disparities has been considered specially. One important experience in the Ninth Plan is that funds are not the only bottleneck in the development process. It is mainly because of the ineffectiveness of the trickle down effect while the working of the local economy which perpetrate the problem of access of services and just payment for the works done by the poor. Under Tenth Plan that is considered as Reform Plan, rather a resource plan, all states are eligible for getting funds but the ultimate distribution of the funds will be assessed by the states’ performances in terms of verifiable indicators and the well-defined time frames. This consideration is seemed as a challenge in this plan. Tenth Plan has made a design of focused development by identifying the backward pockets wit the aim of having equitable and balanced growth. The reforms undertaken are of a nature that is expected to have a multiplier effect on the economics of the concerned regions.
Now, to understand the nature of inter-state disparity in terms of convergence concept, from the next section, this study will particularly focus on the behaviour of the fifteen major states of India over the last two decades. (Anindita Nandy, Regional Disparities in India : An Empirical Analysis of Convergence Hypothesis, Jawaharlal University New Delhi, India email: [email protected]