How Inclusive Are Indian States: Evidence from Inclusive Development Index

Abstract

The current study aims to find an ‘Inclusive Development Index’ (IDI) for the selected Indian states for the year 2017–2018 and has tried to incorporate indicators encompassing different aspects of the economy and life of the people. The index has tried to be more comprehensive and contemporary and attempts to keep the interest alive in the all-important policy objective of an inclusive growth in India as well as in many other countries around the world. The study has followed the guidelines given by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD, 2008 , Handbook on constructing composite indicators: Methodology and user guide) to construct a composite index and has included two pillars of growth with a total of 14 dimensions (sub-pillars) represented by 62 indicators. Principal component analysis (PCA) has been applied at the indicators level and simple averaging at the dimension and pillar levels to obtain the composite IDI for 20 Indian states. The states are ranked based on their inclusiveness score on IDI and divided into the ‘front-runners’, the ‘achievers’ and the ‘aspirants’. IDI may help the states to identify their spheres of ‘low’ performance and learn from their ‘front-runner’ peers.

Inclusiveness and the Progress of Indian States: Evidence from Inclusive Development Index Between 2011 and 2018

“…Based on the distinction between the process of growth and the outcome of growth, the study has tried to identify more dimensions and the underlying indicators representing these two pillars. The study has followed, similar to Aggarwal (2021), broadly, all the guidelines outlined by OECD ( 2008) for constructing a composite index. The scores and rank on the underlying pillars of IDI would help the states to adopt suitable policies to improve the overall inclusiveness of the state.…”

“…In the first pillar, the focus is on wider participation in the process of development, and in the second pillar, it concerns with sharing the fruits of development-removal of poverty; reducing income inequalities; and access to education, health, household amenities, etc. (Aggarwal, 2021).…”

Inequality and Inclusive Development: Evidence from Selected Indian States

“…The growth in GDP both at the state level and at national level plays an important role in the inclusiveness through the process of development and the outcome of development (Aggarwal, 2021b). The major policy concern with most fast growth outcomes, however, is that the bottom half of the population possibly does not share equally in the process.…”

“…Few studies have attempted to study inclusiveness in India and its states from different perspectives and there are still a very few studies that provide a comprehensive index of inclusiveness. 9 The study on IDI by Aggarwal (2021aAggarwal ( , 2021b 2.…”

“…Though the data on growth of state gross domestic product are available as a continuous series, the estimates on poverty and inequality are available only at selected time periods and are not available after 2011-2012 due to non-release of the consumer expenditure survey report for 2017-2018. Since the inclusive development index (IDI) for the states has been computed for -2012-2018(Aggarwal, 2021b, the index can be used for the level comparisons in 2011-2012 and 2017-2018 and also for an analysis of the trend in growth and inclusiveness.…”