The spatial dimension of economic disparity in India is well documented, including in my joint research with Praveen Chakravarty, published in these pages and elsewhere. In developing our research results on intra-(as opposed to purely inter-)state income inequality, we had to reckon with the paucity of reliable district-level data on economic activity. Put in simpler and starker terms: Most of India is virtually dark at night, with a few bright spots representing the major cities. The last element that must be stressed is that there is an important spatial dimension to the dualistic economic structure that the luminosity data reveals. In other words, both across states and across districts within each state, this is a wide, and widening, disparity in economic activity across regions.

Source: Mint May 06, 2018 15:56 UTC