Infrastructure appears to be the secret sauce that separates the growth engines from the laggards in India
One of the most striking features of India’s growth trajectory has been its uneven spread, with different states at different stages of development. One big difference between poorer and richer states lies in their state of infrastructure, a Mint analysis shows.
States that rank high on the Mint state infra index are also among the top states ranked according to per capita incomes (see chart). The Mint state infra index is a proprietary index of this newspaper that provides a summary measure of the level of infrastructural facilities in a state.
The Mint state infra index is a composite index based on five sub-indices that capture the spread of roads, railways, airways, power and telecom networks in a state. Higher the spread of these networks, higher will be the index value, which has been normalized to take values between 0 and 1.
The analysis is restricted to the 18 largest state economies for which comparable data is available for the past decade. The roads and railway sub-indices capture the density of roads and railway lines, respectively. The airways sub-index is based on air traffic data. The power and telecom indices are based on data on power consumption and telecom penetration.
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