Assessing the Infrastructure Level and Growth Performance of Indian States

Infrastructure is vital for economic growth and development of any nation. Although national infrastructure plays an important role, the development of infrastructure and its growth, however, may depend upon the peculiar priorities and performance of state governments in a federal structure such as that of India. India has been growing extensively in the terms of infrastructure but the states may show differential performance in terms of infrastructure development due to various reasons. It is in this context that this article reports the findings from a study to assess the performance of Indian states on ‘developable/constructible infrastructure’ using levels and growth data. The performance assessment of the states has been done using ranking criteria on the chosen parameters of the six major infrastructure categories for two time points and they have been categorised into—top and bottom performers. Further, rank correlations have been used to analyze the association between (a) two levels and (b) level and growth. The performance of the states has been done in terms of ranking on infrastructure level, growth and index. The performance of the states has also been depicted in the form of ‘cobweb’ diagrams using normalised performance indices computed for category/sector.