StatsGuru-12-August-13

How have new states performed vis-a-vis their parents?

As a new state, Telangana, is formed, how did India's last experiment with smaller states turn out? In 2000, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand were formed from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, respectively. As Table 1 shows, Jharkhand's economic growth has largely been below Bihar's in recent years.

However, Chhattisgarh has largely kept pace, if not bettered MP in the past decade; and Uttarakhand has easily outperformed UP. In terms of revenue and efficiency, as Table 2 shows, the small new states (and the smaller old states) have little to choose between them. If anything, as the experience of Uttarakhand shows, they have not been able to raise revenue in keeping with their higher local income. All states have brought down public debt, as Table 3 shows. But the record among the smaller states is mixed; Jharkhand has not done as well as Chhattisgarh. With respect to investment, the record is mixed.

For example, as Table 4 shows, neither Bihar nor Jharkhand has been able to increase power capacity; but both Chhattisgarh and MP have done so, in comparable amounts. However, there is a clear difference between Uttarakhand and UP - driven by the former's turn to hydropower. On social sectors, the record is less mixed. Consider Table 5, on access to safe drinking water. Uttarakhand has done marginally worse than UP in improving access, but both Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have outperformed their parent states.

Meanwhile, on infant mortality - seen in Table 6 - the pairs of Uttarakhand and UP and Chhattisgarh and MP ended a decade of improvement with approximately the same difference between them as before - but Jharkhand, with worse figures than Bihar when it became a state, managed to be better than Bihar by the end of the decade. But on improving literacy, surprisingly, as Table 7 shows, each of the parent states did better. (Click here for tables)