INFRASTRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA: Interlinkages and Policy Issues

The role of infrastructure is paramount in development process as shortages in its availability act as a limiting factor in fostering economic growth. Its importance is enhanced in labour-surplus developing economies like India. While large number of people can be gainfully employed in creation of infrastructural facilities, these can thereafter fuel economic growth.

Surprisingly, studies on this important issue have been sparse in India and most of them have been done at the national or state level, or have focussed on select facility. The present book fills in this gap by examining the infrastructure-development interlinkage in India up to the district level, preceded by a national overview of the developments in these two arenas over the last thirty-five years, using a multi-variable approach. Another distinctive feature is an exercise in infrastructure demand projection consistent with Vision 2020 targets and cost estimation for reaching those goals. An extensive discussion on relevant policy issues, both at sectoral and aggregate levels, facing the infrastructural planners today, completes the study.