Among the various axes of inequality in India,
regional disparities have acquired greater salience in recent times,
with demands being made for special status for certain states on this
basis. What has been completely overlooked in the process is that
regional backwardness in India is a moving frontier
with the most
intense forms of poverty and deprivation getting increasingly
concentrated within enclaves of backwardness, especially those inhabited
by adivasi communities. This paper reports on a recent exercise within
the Planning Commission that tries to capture this dynamic of regional
backwardness in India.
Sanchita Bakshi (sanchita.bakshi @gmail.com) is
Young Professional, Planning Commission, Government of India; Arunish
Chawla (arunish.
chawla@gmail.com) is Joint Secretary (Expenditure), Ministry of Finance, Government of India; Mihir Shah (
mihir.shah@nic.in) is Secretary, Samaj Pragati Sahayog.
Annexures A (“List of districts in descending
order of backwardness based on the index”) and B (“List of sub-districts
in descending order of backwardness based on the index”) are posted on
the EPW website along with this article.
The authors gratefully acknowledge inputs received from Montek Singh
Ahluwalia, B K Chaturvedi, Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu, Kishore Chandra Deo,
Radhicka Kapoor, Jairam Ramesh, Abhijit Sen and P S Vijayshankar. The
authors also acknowledge the inputs of the members of the Advisory
Council of the Ministry of Rural Development’s India Rural Development
Report 2014, which will carry a modified version of this paper
