RURAL GUJARAT

Development is biased in favour of areas having proximity to the urban corridors, which also attract the largest magnitude of investment flows. The remote hilly areas in the east and to the south have witnessed little growth of per capita income or employment matching the growing workforce. Regional imbalances are glaring and growing. The development gains have trickled down unevenly among rural and urban areas, developed and backward pockets and among scheduled and non scheduled sections of population. Some aspects of the phenomena of social retrogression are quite visible as can be seen from the discrepancies in some key demographic variables. Education and health care facilities face problems of delivery and access The selective path of development being followed is bound to pose major impediments for the overall growth of the economy, so far as distributive justice is concerned. Under these circumstances, the optimal use of resources for realizing full potential of the economy requires a careful analysis of the economic structure in the long run perspective. The present paper highlights the need to usher in a development process that is equitable, sustainable, participative, stable and efficient- in divergence to the selective growth paradigm that has become the hallmark of the state’s development so far Other forms of inequalities are manifest in the state. The development path followed by the state so far has led to reversal of the equalization process. The coefficient of variation in the incidence of rural poverty in 1993-94 between the geographical sub regions of Gujarat was 0.225; for urban poverty it was 0.157. The coefficient rose in 1999-00 to 0.258 (rural) and 0.245 (urban)