‘Bimaru’ states turn the tide, top growth charts
In the wake of the blistering growth rates set by some of the country’s most backward states, the Planning Commission is slated to tell the National Development Council (NDC) meeting on Thursday that the concept of “Bimaru” states has, more or less, outlived its relevance as most of the states bracketed under this acronym have now stolen a march over the others.
The term ‘Bimaru’ was coined by a demographer Ashish Bose in the early 1980s, whereby he had classified Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh as laggards struggling to keep up in comparison with the growth rates set by other states.
But the commission’s chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has reasoned that the term can be decisively done away with as states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh have topped the growth charts and are far above the national average.
According to data compiled by the apex planning body, to be unveiled at tomorrow’s NDC meeting, some of the Bimaru states have witnessed better growth and income distribution in comparison to the others. For instance, it says that district-level poverty estimates reveal that the poorest districts in India lie not only in undivided Bimaru states and Orissa, but also in rich states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Further, 24 per cent of the poorest Indian states recorded a growth rate of 6.3 per cent between 2002 and 2008 — compared to less than 4.9 between 1987 and 2002. On the contrary, the growth in richer states like Punjab
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