INDIA, CLUSTERS AND THE CASE FOR UNIFORM GROWTH

ONE OF THE MAJOR ISSUES in policy has always been what drives a country’s growth. It sometimes happens that particular areas with booming economic activity tend to be the main drivers of this growth and development, resulting in a varied spatial economic landscape.

- Amit Kapoor& Amitabh Kant

 

The need for a more uniform spatial distribution of economic growth is rooted in a fairly simple argument – the more high-performing regions there are within the country, the more significant the economic growth will be. While the backing logic is unmissable, ensuring and achieving uniformity of growth and progress across the country remains a considerable challenge.

Most definitely, this raises a clarion call for adopting new perspectives, especially in India’s case, for realising ways through which growth is not isolated, or progress propelled by only a minority of regions. According to the Competitiveness Roadmap for India@100, by Dr Amit Kapoor, Chair, Institute for Competitiveness, Professor Michael E. Porter, and Dr Christian Ketels of Harvard Business School, urban districts only make up about 30 per cent of all districts in India, despite accounting for more than 55 per cent of all wages paid there and close to 45 per cent of all jobs. Similarly, Maharashtra and Gujarat, two states, account for close to half of all exports. States also vary on a number of other factors, including capital generation and innovation. The necessity of achieving a more uniform spatial development in the nation has been widely discussed. However, the need of the hour for India is a new strategy for comprehending what propels growth in distinct areas.