Disparities and development policy : a regional perspective

The phenomenon of inter-regional and intra-regional disparities in the process of economic development within a nation-wide economy has long attracted increasingly active attention of economists, social scientists, planners, policy-makers, and, of course, politi cians. The emergence and inevitable self-perpetuation of such imbalances and inequities have been unfailingly observed at particular levels of national development. Development policy and 'planning in stages' as a dynamic and indivisible process, involving also the reorganisation and reorientation of the entire system of regions in a national economy, aims at reducing the dis parities between regions, and mitig ating the backwardness of lagging regions over time.

The focus of the present book is on the regional lags and leads, stresses and strains, strengths and stakes, endowments and combinations, and environments, settings-the diverse characterstics of a system, with spatial reference to which the choice of specific strategy and proper policy measures has to be struck. Subsuming the spatial analytical frame work with the most practical consider ations, issues, and experiences in dif ferent countries, it seeks to identify an appropriate regional strategy and suit able policy instruments for Indian development.

The book further unravels the dynamic interplay of forces which would explan as to why and how did the different regions fare in certain specific ways christallised in particular patterns of spatial differentiation in the incidence of growth over the develop ment spectrum. Keeping India's regionalised polarisation' is favoured experience in the centre, a new together with the matching growth centre' policy measures for effecting a relatively balanced regional develop ment in India in the long-run. In this for the first time, the regional context, which this book seeks to cast into a mould of 'ecosystems', incor porates the implications of environ ment for development, environmental assessment and management, and supporting measures for the develop ment of regions.