INDICATORS OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Development implies progress and in modern world, progress usually means improvement in
technology and production, as well as improvement in social and economic welfare of people.
To say a country is developing, then, is to say progress is being made in technology, production
and socio-economic wellbeing. The modern notion of development is related to the industrial
revolution and the idea that technology can improve the lot of humans. through advance in
technology, people can produce more food, create new products and accurate material wealth.
But these things do not necessarily bring happiness, social stability or environmental
sustainability, which makes development a narrow and sometimes controversial, indicators of
human condition. Development is a multidimensional phenomenon it is absolutely impossible
to capture the whole gamut of development by a single indicator we will classify the indicators
of development into following sub categories:

Indicators of Agricultural development:

• Per hectare yield of food grain

• Consumption of fertilizers per hectare of cropped area
• Percentage of gross irrigated area to gross cropped area.
• Number of tractors to per thousand hectares of agricultural land
• Percentage of area under HYV seed.
• Average agricultural productivity per hectare
• Percentage of area under cash crop
• Percentage of double cropped area to net sown area
• Number of electric pumps set per thousand hectares.
• Number of composite harvesters per thousand hectares
• Net area irrigated as percentage to the net sown area
• Crop output per head
• Per capita agricultural credit

Indicators of industrial development

• Average daily employment of factory workers per lakh population
• Per capita industrial gross out put
 • Per capita industrial consumption of electricity
• Percentage of industrial employment in the state
• Percentage of non-agricultural workers in the rural workforce
• Number of industrial employees per lakh population
• Number of industrial units per thousand Km square
• Per worker factory output
• Industrial investment per capita
• Number of SSI units per lakh rural population.
• Number of SSI units registered per lakh population
• Annual growth rate of industrial output
• Percentage of male workers in manufacturing industries to all male workers
• Male workers in manufacturing other than household industry
• Percentage of industrial output exported.

Indicators of economic development

• Per Capita availability of food grain

• Per Capita income
• Per Capita NSDP
• Growth rate of NSDP
• Per Capita Consumption expenditure
• Percentage of population below poverty line
• Per capita plan outlay
• Number of registered motor vehicles per lakh population
• Deposits per capita
• Credit per capita
• Credit-Deposit ratio
• Per Capita availability of Capital
• Per Capita investment
• Per Capita state government developmental expenditure
• Per Capita private investment
• Per Capita Consumption of petrol and diesel
Indicators of social-cultural and demographic development
• Number students in primary school per thousand population
• Number of students in secondary school per thousand population
• Number of primary schools per lakh population
• Number of primary schools per 100km square
• Number of secondary schools per lakh population
• Number of secondary schools per 100km square
• Number of colleges per lakh population
• Number of colleges per 100km square
• Literacy rate total
• Literacy rate Male
• Literacy rate Female
• Per Capita expenditure on education
• Number of teachers per school
• Number of teachers per lakh population
• Average number of class rooms per school
• Gross enrolment ratio
• Annual growth rate of population
• Crude birth rate
• Crude death rate
• Infant mortality rate
• Sex ration
• Mean age at marriage
• Level of urbanisation
• Number of hospital beds per lakh population
• Number of Hospitals per hundred Km Square
• Number of ladies Hostel.
• Maternal Mortality rate per thousand live births
• Percentage of population not morbid
Indicators of Infrastructure Development

• Number of post offices per lakh population

• Number of post offices per hundred Km square
• Number of telephone/ Mobile connection per hundred population
• Percentage of electrified village
• Number of Bank branches per lakh population
• Number of bank branches per hundred Km square
• Number of cold storages per hundred Km square
• Number of cooperative societies per lakh rural population
• Percentage of villages connected by all-weather road
• Availability of agricultural marketing infrastructure
Indicators related to improvement in standard of living
• Per Capita electricity consumption
• Availability of safe drinking water
• Availability of toilets
• Percentage of household living in pucca houses
• Per capita calorie intake
• Per capita allocation of food grain under PDS
• Per capita consumption expenditure for 30 days.
Relevance of these indicators
1. Per capita Income: Per capita income is important indicators because if the per capita
income level is high enough then both purchasing power parity, saving consistency will
be increased. So, both money circulation and savings account or capital formation are
essential for all round development of a country
2. Poverty level: The magnitude of poverty can be computed with the help of intake
capacity of calories/ day/ persons and earned income. It has been observed that rural
people of India require about 2400 calorie/day/person whereas it is 2100 cal/day/ person
of the urban people. India still holds 35.56% of average BPL.Percentage of BPL if is very
small that means smoothness in life e.g. in Punjab BPl is 11.76%, but in Bihar it is54%.
3. Level of literacy: Literacy is the key for all round development of a country because it
arises economic awareness, social consciousness, builds up creativity etc. So, there is a
 positive relationship between education and other sets of ingredients. That’s why in Kerala
where education is 90.92%. The HDI is >0.597 (highest of all states in India)
4. Levels of Industrial development: If the levels of Industrial activities is increased then
structural changeover in employment, social and economic status also will be increased,
Per capita income, purchasing power parity will be raised.
5. Consumption of electricity: It is directly related with the better mode of life, e.g. better
industrial development, automation, comfortability or so. That’s why it may be included
as the indicator of development.
6. Nutritional density: It indicates the ration between the productive areas and the total
population if the nutrition density is quiet more, the possibility of food security with and
economic development will be promising.
7. Surface road: The amount or length of surface road is related with industrial, transport
and social service. Transport line that’s why is called moderator of economy or ‘lifeline
of development”
8. Human development index: Human development Index is the composite and more
perfect indicators of development including both social services, economic status etc.

Measurement of levels of regional development

Ways of measuring development fit into three major areas of concern development in
economic welfare, development in technology and production and development in social
welfare. Beginning with the 1960s the most common way of comparing development in
economic welfare was to use the index economists created to compare countries:

The Gross National Product: Is the measure of the total value of the officially recorded goods
and services produced by the citizens and the corporations of a country in a given year. It
includes things produced both inside and outside the country’s territory and it is therefore,
broader than Gross domestic Product (GDP), which encompasses only goods and services
produced within a country during a given year. In recent years economists have increasingly
turned to gross national income. Which calculates the monetary worth of what is produced
within a country plus income received from investments outside the country minus income
payments to other countries around the world. GNI is seen as a more accurate way of measuring
a country’s wealth in the context of a global economy. In order to compare GNI across
countries, economists must standardise the data. The most common way to standardise GNI
data is to divide it by the population of the country, yielding The per capita GNI.
Human Development Index: The Human Development Index is a composite measure of
health, education and income that was introduced in the First Human Development Report in
1990, as an alternative to purely economic assessments of national progress, such as GDP
growth. It was created by the Pakistani economists Mahbub-Ul-Haq the Indian economists
Amartya Sen in 1990 and was published by the United Nations Development Programme. It
soon became the most widely accepted and cited measure of its kind and has been adapted for
national use by many countries. HDI values and rankings in the Global human development
report are calculated using the latest internationally comparable data from mandated
international data providers. The first Human Development Report introduced a new way of
measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment
and income into a composite human development index, The HDI. The HDI sets a minimum
and maximum for each dimension, called goal posts and then shows where each country stands
in relation to these goal posts, expressed as a value between 0-1. In its 2010 Human
development report, The UNDP began using a new method of calculating the HDI.

It combines the following three dimensions;

• Long and healthy life: life expectancy at birth

• Education Index: Mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling
• A decent standard of living GNI per capita.
The education component of the HDI is now measured by means of years of schooling
for adults aged 25 years and expected years of schooling is estimated based on
educational attainment data from the censuses and surveys available in the UNESCO
Institute for statistics database and Barro and lee methodology. Expected years of
schooling estimates are based on enrolment by age at all levels of education and
population of official school age for each level of education.
Gender Inequality index: Gender inequality index is a new index for measurement of gender
disparity that was introduced in 2010, Human development report. The new index was
introduced as an experimental measure to remedy the shortcomings of the previous and no
longer used indicators, the gender development index and the gender empowerment Measure,
both of which were introduced in the 1995, human development report. GII reflects the
women’s disadvantage in three dimensions reproductive health, empowerment and the labour
market for as many countries as data of reasonable quality allow. The Index shows the loss
in Human development due to inequality between male and female achievements in these
dimensions. It ranges from 0 which indicates that women and men fare equally, to 1, which
indicates that women fare as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions.
• The health dimensions are measured by two indicators: maternal mortality ratio and the
adolescent fertility ration
• The empowerment dimension is also measured by two indicators: The share of
parliamentary seats held by each sex and by secondary and higher education attainment
levels
• The labour dimensions is measured by women’s participation in the work force.
The Gender Inequality Index is designed to reveal the extent to which national
achievements in these aspects of human development are eroded by gender inequality
and to provide empirical foundations for policy analysis and advocacy efforts.

Therefore, the measurement of levels of regional development is very important in

today’s world because it helps in future planning of the region. A large number of
methods are employed to measure the levels of regional development, a few are as
follows.
1.Biplab Das Gupta’s method: He gave two measures to measure the levels of
regional development which are: (a) Simple Ranking Method and (b) Indices Method
(a) In simple Ranking method whole country has been ranked according to the
proportion of the village amenities, educational, medical, electricity, approach by
concrete road, post and telegraph, telephone facilities. The all India percentage for
having these facilities were taken as 100, and those districts having the value above 100
are termed as satisfactory and those having less than 100 are considered as
unsatisfactory.
(b) In the indices method ranks were calculated by two methods: One is the unweighted
indices in which every amenity is given the same importance and the weighted indices
in which the weightages were given according to significance of the amenities as for
example: weightage of drinking water (6), Medical (5), Education (11), Electricity (3),
Pucca road (2), Post and telegraph (1) etc.
2.Siv Kumar’s method: another method of measuring the levels of development was
given by Shiv Kumar. He made the Basis of UNDP’s HDI of 1990, which argue that
development is not merely as a comparison of income and wealth but as process of
enlarging people’s capabilities. He gave more emphasis on these elements of living
standards. (a) Longevity (b) literacy (c) measure of necessary income.
Shiv Kumar computed HDI on the basis of 1987 data for 17 major states. He has taken
the log value of per capita income, life expectancy and adult literacy.
He calculated and said that India’s rank is 37th out of 84 countries considered on this
front. And out of 17 states only 4 states (Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Maharashtra)
have fallen in medium category and rest were in lower category. Uttar Pradesh
remained the lowest with 0.292-point Punjab got highest rank with 0.651 point among
the Indian states.
3. Ashok Mitra’s study: Based on 1961, census data Ashok Mitra, the then Registrar-
General of India, conducted a pioneering study on the “levels of regional development
in India’. His study was first to show the regional disparities at district level. The
indicators used by Ashok Mitra were divided by him into following six blocks and
information collected on them for each district of India.:
Block I: (a) geology, topography, Rainfall, house Type, Language, Sc and St.
(b) Soils, crops, and yield of rice
Block II: Agricultural infrastructure
Block III: Participations rates in traditional Sector
Block IV: Potential of Human Resources
Block V: Distributive trade, manufacturing and infrastructure
Block VI: Organized industrial activity in the modern sector.
Mitra’s analysis shows that out of the total 327 districts in India, 79 were at the lowest
level of development and 88 at the second lowest level of development. The number of
districts at the highest level of development was 84.
4. V. Nath’s study_ Utilizing the conclusion of Ashok Mitra’s study and adopting a
similar method of combining ranks V. Nath attempted to highest disparities between
different regions of India. Nath considered data for 14 state and took the following
indicators into account:
(a) Per Capita income (b) Proportion of urban population to total population (c)
Proportion of male workers in manufacturing industries to all male workers (d)
Proportion of population living in districts at the two higher levels of developments
(data for this was obtained from Ashok Mitra’s Study) €Literacy rate for population in
age groups of five years and above.
5. Hemlata Rao’s study: Hemlata Rao selected 244 variables from the following four
specific sectors: agriculture, Industry, education and banking. Five indicators selected
related to agriculture, eight to industry, six to banking and five to education.