State level reforms, growth, and development in Indian States /
Arvind Panagariya, Pinaki Chakraborty, and M. Govinda Rao.
- x, 309 pages ; 25 cm.
- Studies in Indian economic policies .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-300) and index.
Most discussions of India's substantive economic growth since the 1990s tend to focus on national level statistics or on particular sectors such as the financial and call service sectors or on the pharmaceutical industry. But with a population of 1.2 billion, India demands to be treated like a collection of individual "countries," rather than a unified nation. Ten of its states have populations equaling or exceeding that of the United Kingdom. If the state of Uttar Pradesh were a country, it would be the fourth largest, behind China, India, and the United States. These facts pointedly tell us that if we are to understand the ongoing experiment in economic reforms and poverty alleviation, we must study India at the level of the state.