Spatial Dimension of Social Development in India

Abstract

Most of the recent studies conducted development experiences of India during recent times are done at the states level. This paper tries to find out whether there is any clustering of districts in India in terms of social development outcome. That is there are pockets of growth that are pulling up the national average. The paper basically uses census 2001 and NSSO 2004-05 dataset. Firstly the paper has constructed social development index of Indian states and districts. The paper uses Moran I statistics of development indicators to find out the spatial correlation among districts. The paper also uses simple regression framework to find out the determinants of the social development across districts. To overcome the problem of spatial dependency the paper uses spatial autoregressive model to find out the same. The paper confirms the presence of significant spatial clustering across districts. Moran index implying literacy rate is more or less uniform all over India. The low spatial correlation among household basic facilities, life expectancy, and monthly per capita consumption expenditure, poverty and inequality implies some of the districts are pocketing the benefit and others are deprived. The spatial autoregressive model indicates the spillover effect of the social development in the neighboring district.