Examining the interlinkages between regional infrastructure disparities, economic growth, and poverty: A case of Indian states

Abstract

This paper investigates the interlinkages between regional infrastructure disparities, economic growth, and poverty in the 21 major Indian States. An overall comprehensive index of infrastructure, the Composite Infrastructure Index (CII), is calculated for each Indian state using the Principal Component Analysis technique. In order to analyse the regional disparities between states in terms of infrastructure, they are ranked based on the calculated CII. We extend our analysis by evaluating the inter-relationship between the Composite Infrastructure Index, Per Capita Net State Domestic Product (PCNSDP), and poverty. The empirical analysis also proves that composite infrastructural growth and economic growth go hand in hand.

Maternal autonomy and birth registration in India: Who gets counted?

“…This might be reflecting the poor state of health and other infrastructure leading to poor service delivery in low income states in India. Chotia and Rao (2015) [ 54 ] note that ‘….low income (BIMARU) states……still lack basic health infrastructure in many of their villages and towns leading to low positions in health index rankings’. The gross enrolment ratio at the state level is also significant and is associated with a higher birth registration.…”

Assessing geographical inequity in availability of hospital services under the state-funded universal health insurance scheme in Chhattisgarh state, India, using a composite vulnerability index

“…The indicators were, thus, selected based on their face validity in the Indian context, accepted practice in the literature, the availability of data for all 27 districts and reliability of the data source. The indicators and the rationale for their selection are presented in Table 1 [7,8,42,56,62–68]. …”

“…GoI [42]Proportion of rural populationRural statusRural populations are more vulnerable than urban [8]Registrar General of India. GoI [42]Year of formation of the districtAvailability of infrastructureThe older districts would have better health and other relevant infrastructure and administrative capacity than newer districts established in the last few years [67,68]. For instance, in the newer districts, the district hospitals are still under the process of being establishedDirectorate of Economics & Statistics.…”

Nonlinearity between Infrastructure Inequality and Growth

“…Disparity in infrastructure using convergence models was examined by Bandyopadhyay (2006). Inter-state disparities in infrastructure development were analysed by Bagchi and Kurian (2005), Chotia and Rao (2015), Ghosh andDe (1998, 2004), Kaur and Ghuman (2009), Patra and Acharya (2011) and Rao (1977). Intra-state studies within India have been conducted to examine infrastructural disparity (Adhyapok & Ahmed, 2012;Kumar, Singh, & Anil, 2015;Majumder, 2004;Raychaudhuri & Haldar, 2009).…”

“…Hagood (1943) pioneered the application of PCA to construct a composite index, which was later on improved by Pal (1968). Studies have adopted the principal components method to compute the infrastructure index (Agarwalla, 2011;Chotia & Rao, 2015;Dash & Sahoo, 2009, 2010Ghosh & De, 1998, 2004Kumar, 2002;Mukherjee, Gayan, & Roy, 1981;Sarkar, 1994). Hulten (1996) and Calderón and Servén (2004) construct a measure of composite infrastructure stock to test the infrastructure-growth relationship.…”