Regional Development and Public Policy Challenges in India

This book emphasizes the need for experimenting with more deliberate and rigorous policy processes to attain balanced regional development, which can promote both equity and efficiency in India's development discourse. The institutional mechanisms for dealing with regional imbalance in India have not been very successful so far. With rising discrepancies in development, demand for autonomy continues along with a new dimension of regionalism arising from submerged identity along with political and economic aspirations, which demanded new channels for solution. So far, attempts to create space for autonomy have possibly not optimally accommodated the conceptual mechanisms like equity and democratic process. Thus democratizing policy process using six pillars of voice: knowledge, objective, fundamental values, implementation framework and public awareness can ensure a better policy outcome for dealing with the persistent challenges of regional disparity in India. This book further focuses on the need for democratizing the policy process for regional development through  discussion and inclusion. Such a transition needs innovation in policy regime, which can be attained through following six pillars (i) Democratic voice of stakeholders in policy development and implementation; (ii) Clear policy objectives that advance the common good, based on voice; (iii) Unbiased, sound and comprehensive knowledge and data bases. (iv) Consistency with constitutional values; (v) A sound implementation framework ensuring user-friendliness, transparency and rationality of decision-making processes, effective grievance redress, clear accountability and independent evaluation; (vi) Public awareness and support of policies with relevant and public participation in implementation.

Rakhee Bhattacharya is currently the Associate Director and a fellow at Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi. She is working on various economic challenges of contemporary India. Prior to this assignment, she has worked at others institutes across the country and was Endeavour post-doctoral fellow in Australia. Her research interests are development, disparity, regional economies & conflicts. She has worked on many such issues in India's Northeast and authored 'Development Disparities in Northeast India'. In addition to this, she has edited a number of volumes and has written several articles in both national and international journals.

The contributors to this volume are:

Amitabh Kundu, Professor of Economics, Centre for the Study of Regional Development; Dean of the Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India).

Amitendu Pali, Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore.

Azharuddin Akhtar, Research Associate, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore (India).

Biswa Swarup Misra, Professor of Economics and Dean, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (India). 

J. P. Bhattacharajee, Deputy Director General, Survey Design & Research Division (SDRD), National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of MOSPI, Govt of India, Kolkata.

Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Research Scholar, Institute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai (India).

K. L. Krishna, Chairman, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai; Founder member, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics; former Professor and Director, Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi (India).

Madhusudan Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics & Politics, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal (India). 

Meenakshi Rajeev, Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Policy, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore (India).

Nilanjan Banik, Associate Professor, Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), Chennai (India). 

Pinaki Chakraborty, Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi (India); Honorary Research Scholar, Levy Economics Institute, New York (USA)