Abstract
The case of Gujarat is often highlighted in the literature for the glaring mismatch between growth and human development (HD) outcomes. This paper makes a critical assessment of the growth and development scenario and their linkages with human development outcomes with particular focus on the important HD factors across the districts. The objectives of the paper are to: (i) analyse the broad trends in the major economic sectors, viz. agriculture, industries and employment and delineate the differences in the growth scenario across districts and (ii) examine the ‘inclusive growth outcomes’ across districts in the state based on the district-level HD indices and delineate the differences in the major HD factors. The broad trends in the growth of the major economic sectors reveal some disquieting aspects of growth of the state, characterised by stark differences in literacy and educational attainments across gender and districts, the decline in farming population coincided with marginalisation of farm holdings amidst growth of commercial agriculture, declining rural work participation, especially women work participation, and concentration of industrial growth confining to few districts. The analysis of district-level HDIs brings out disparate trends of the status of HDI, reflecting stark differences in the status of development of the critical components, viz. standard of living, availability of health infrastructure and educational attainments. Based on the analysis, we argue that Gujarat needs to strengthen and reorient its development priorities by accelerating public spending more on critical areas of public health infrastructure, provision of better healthcare services, nutritional security, education and skill development, women empowerment, etc., which are critical aspects of human development and inclusive growth.
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Source: Estimated from Census 2011 data
Source: Estimated from Census 2001 and 2011 data
Source: Table 4
Source: Table 4
Source: Table 4
Source: Table 4
Source: Table 4
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Notes
An earlier study by Kanbur and Venables (2005) examined the effect of growth on regional disparity and observed that regional disparity in income and social indicators had increased in most developing and transition economies, including India.
Founded on Sen’s capability approach, the concept of inclusive growth is understood as: ‘the process of enlarging people’s choices by expanding their capabilities and opportunities in ways that are sustainable – from the economic, social and environmental standpoints’ (UNDP 2017: 14).
Evidences show that since 1980s, the countries with high economic growth rates like the USA, UK, Germany and Japan had also reported high HDI values in the range of 0.889 to 1. On the other hand, countries that witnessed low growth rates like Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan reported lower HDI values below 0.555. This signifies that HD has a direct bearing EG (Rahman et al. 2020: 2–3).
Gujarat’s high growth scenario is considered far superior to other major prosperous states, and this growth is often attributed to the state’s impressive growth in agriculture (Shah et al. 2009) and industrial sectors, in comparison with Maharashtra, where growth was mostly triggered by manufacturing and services sectors (Morris 2014; Kalaiyarasan 2014; Viswanathan and Pathak 2014).
Broadly, Gujarat’s regions are identified as mainland Gujarat and peninsular Gujarat. Agro-climatically, there are four zones in Gujarat, comprising four sub-regions, viz. (a) North Gujarat, (b) Central Gujarat, (c) South Gujarat and (d) Saurashtra and Kachchh. This classification also aligns with the classification based on ecological (topographical) and cultural characteristics (Gujarat Ecology Commission, Government of Gujarat).
The Kanya Kelavani is a flagship programme of the Government of Gujarat launched in 2011, directed towards achieving ‘Education for All’, for encouraging formal education with special focus on girls. It is targeted to enrol 5,25,000 girls under the initiative, so as to reduce the school dropout rates in the state from 40% to zero level (https://govinfo.me/kanya-kelavni-nidhi-gujarat/).
Gender parity index (GPI) in school enrolment is the ratio of girls to boys’ enrolments.
Several studies observed that Bt cotton was highly beneficial in terms of reduction in farming costs, including agro-chemicals, farm labour, as well as increase in economic returns and well-being of farmers in Gujarat (see Lalitha et al. 2009; Lalitha and Viswanathan 2015; Gandhi and Namboodiri 2009).
An earlier study by Hirway (1995) observed that while a few well-endowed districts have been benefited by hi-tech industrialisation in Gujarat, several backward areas lagged behind. About 50 talukas spread across the tribal belt starting from Banaskantha in the north to the Dangs in the south, were declared as the ‘most backward’ since several decades, and several of them remained backward on socio-economic and human development indicators. Many of the talukas have remained backward in socio-economic infrastructure, health and education, economic growth and incidence of poverty, as policies for their integration have been less effective (GoG 2005; Hirway et al. 2014).
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Acknowledgements
This paper uses the dataset drawn from a Research Project on ‘District Level Human Development Indicators’, supported by the ICSSR, New Delhi, and we duly acknowledge the same. We express our gratitude to the anonymous referees of the journal for their critical comments on the earlier version. We are solely responsible for the views expressed, conclusions drawn and recommendations made in the article, which are not to be implicated with the organisations that we are associated with. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Viswanathan, P.K., Bahinipati, C.S. Growth and human development in the regional economy of Gujarat, India: an analysis of missed linkages. J. Soc. Econ. Dev. 23 (Suppl 1), 25–47 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-020-00144-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-020-00144-8