Indias regional inequality could be politically explosive

The southern states make more money while northern states make more babies

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Goa, on India's western coast, is famed for its endless beaches, plentiful prawns and high quality of life. Bihar, along the fertile Indo-Gangetic Plain in the north, has a less savoury reputation. It is thought of by many Indians as a land of deprivation and lawlessness. Neither stereotype is entirely accurate, but they hint at a deeper truth. In terms of economic development, the difference between Goa and Bihar is like that between southern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

If the two states were countries, Goa's annual output per person would put it among upper middle-income economies; Bihar, by contrast, would still be years away from leaving low-income category. The average Goan is 10 times richer than the average Bihari. That disparity is much more striking than in China, also a large emerging market, where the richest province has annual output five times higher than the poorest. America, that famous beacon of egalitarianism, has nothing on either Asian country. New York, the wealthiest state, is just over twice as rich as Mississippi, the poorest.

India is one of the big development success stories of the past few decades. Since 1980, its gross domestic product (GDP) per person has grown at an annual average rate of nearly 7 per cent, a performance matched by only a handful of other countries. But a combination of persistent regional inequality (20 years ago the average Goan was only 6.5 times richer than the average Bihari), fractious state politics and stark differences in population growth threatens to reinforce, and potentially worsen, the country's political divisions. That, in turn, could hurt future economic growth and make it ever harder to bridge the divide.