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Regional disparities in social, environmental, and economic indicators among the Indian States

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Abstract

There is a plethora of evidence examining state-wise disparities in India and across nations, using different indicators and dimensions. However, insufficient efforts have been made to address the level of development and disparities in socioeconomic and environmental aspects, which refers to the basic amenities needed for the development of an individual's living conditions in any society or nation. To do so, using the UNDP method to standardize the data, inter-state disparities in terms of social, environmental, and economic aspects, which comprise a broader aspect of human well-being, including access to education, health care, clean water and sanitation, energy use, environment, and standard of living has been studied. Subsequently, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce the dimensions and assign weights to the component domains of four indices: social, environmental, economic, and composite development index (CDI) with 15 indicators. Furthermore, fractile classification was used to categorize the phases of development of the different states into four categories: high, high-middle, middle-low, and low. The social, environmental, economic, and CDI were used to map the spatial pattern of disparities in the context of society, environment, and economy using ArcGIS for the 29 states of India. The findings show that, in India, different states have the widest discrepancies among the four indices. According to the results, the states of central and eastern India are underdeveloped, which corresponds to a wide variance in the overall position. Kerala, Mizoram, Goa, Sikkim, and Delhi performed under the top five categories in the CDI. Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Arunachal Pradesh were the bottom five performers in CDI, accounting for 32.53% of the area and housing 39.96% of the total population who suffer greatly from poor access to social, environmental, and economic resources. These findings imply that in order to improve socioeconomic conditions and foster long-term growth in underdeveloped states, authorities should concentrate on ensuring that current policies are adequately implemented. This study is crucial because it is challenging to develop evidence-based policies without identifying regional heterogeneity.

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Data availability

Government open access sources, National Health Profile, 2019, NFHS-5, Economic Survey, 2020–21, India Meteorological Department, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Rainfall Statistics of India, 2019, etc.

Code availability

SPSS version 22 is used for analysis and we have permitted the use this software.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, L.N. Mithila University, Darbhanga, Bihar, 846004, India

    Reena Kumari

  2. Department of Economics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, 221005, India

    Rakesh Raman

  3. Department of Geography, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, 221005, India

    Ramesh Kumar Patel

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  1. Reena Kumari
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Contributions

R.K.—data analysis, data collection, tabulation, and analysis work. R.R.—Proof-reading, analysis work, result interpretation. R.K.P.—mapping of states in different indices.

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Correspondence to Reena Kumari.

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Kumari, R., Raman, R. & Patel, R.K. Regional disparities in social, environmental, and economic indicators among the Indian States. GeoJournal 88, 4351–4371 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-023-10868-9

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