Regional disparity refers to durable differences between the territorial units of a single political economy — states, districts, coastal and interior belts — in per capita income, literacy, health outcomes, industrial investment, credit and physical infrastructure. The sociological interest lies in the finding that such gaps do not close automatically. Growth is spatially selective, and the regions that start ahead capture a disproportionate share of what follows.
Where it comes from
Gunnar Myrdal explained this through circular and cumulative causation. An initial advantage in one region attracts capital, skilled labour and enterprise; this thickens markets, deepens the supply of skills and improves infrastructure, which attracts still more investment. Simultaneously backwash effects drain the lagging region of its savings, its educated young and its enterprise, while the expected spread effects — demand for the poorer region's produce and labour — remain too weak to compensate. Equilibrium theory, Myrdal argued, is simply wrong about space. Hirschman took a more optimistic view of polarisation followed by trickling down, and dependency theory later transposed the same logic to the relation between metropolis and periphery.
How it appears in India
India's disparities are well known in outline. The southern and western states, along with the coastal belt, show higher incomes, better human development indicators and greater industrial and service investment; large parts of the central and eastern plains lag, and mineral-rich interior districts illustrate the paradox of resource wealth alongside deep poverty. Liberalisation appears to have widened rather than narrowed the gaps, since private investment follows existing infrastructure and skill. The consequences are political as well as economic: labour circulates from lagging to leading regions, feeding both remittances and nativist reaction; disputes arise over the sharing of central revenue and now over the demographic basis of parliamentary representation; and regional parties mobilise around claims of neglect, giving rise to statehood movements and to sub-regional assertion within states.
For the UPSC answer
Attribute cumulative causation to Myrdal with backwash and spread effects, and set it against equilibrium expectations of convergence. Then apply it to India's north-south and coastal-inland contrasts, noting that liberalisation intensified them. Conclude with the political sociology — migration, federal contestation and regional mobilisation.
References & further reading
- Myrdal, G. (1957). Economic Theory and Under-developed Regions. Duckworth.
- Hirschman, A. O. (1958). The Strategy of Economic Development. Yale University Press.
- Kohli, A. (2012). Poverty amid Plenty in the New India. Cambridge University Press.