31.

Give any six factors responsible for regional imbalances in India. 

The factors are mentioned below :

i. Historical Factor: Historically, regional imbalances in India started from its British regime. The British rulers as well as industrialists started to develop only those earmarked regions of the country which as per their own interest were possessing rich potential for prosperous manufacturing and trading activities. British industrialists mostly preferred to concentrate their activities in two states like West Bengal and Maharashtra and more particularly to three metropolitan cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai. They concentrated all their industries in and around these cities neglecting the rest of the country to remain backward.

ii. Geographical Factors: Geographical factors play an important role in the developmental activities of a developing economy. The difficult terrain surrounded by hills, rivers and dense forests leads to increase in the cost of administration, cost of developmental projects, besides making mobilization of resources particularly difficult.

Most of the Himalayan states of India, i.e., Himachal Pradesh. Northern Kashmir, the hill districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh and other North-Eastern states, remained mostly backward due to its inaccessibility and other inherent difficulties. Adverse climate and proneness to flood are also responsible factors for poor rate of economic development of different regions of the country as reflected by low agricultural productivity and lack of industrialization. Thus these natural factors have resulted uneven growth of different regions of India.

iii. Locational Advantages: Locational advantages are playing an important role in determining the development strategy of a region. Due to some locational advantages, some regions are getting special favour in respect of site selections of various developmental projects. While determining the location of iron and steel projects or refineries or any heavy industrial project, some technical factors included in the locational advantage are getting special considerations. Thus regional imbalances arise due to such locational advantages attached to some regions and the locational disadvantages attached to some other backward regions.

iv. Inadequacy of Economic Overheads: Economic overheads like transport and communication facilities, power, technology, banking and insurance etc. are considered very important for the development of a particular region. Due to adequacy of such economic overheads, some regions are getting a special favour in respect of settlement of some developmental projects whereas due to inadequacy of such economic overheads, some regions of the country, viz., North-Eastern Region, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar etc. remained much backward as compared to other developed regions of the country. Moreover, new investment in the private sector has a general tendency to concentrate much on those regions having basic infrastructural facilities.

v. Failure of Planning Mechanism: Although balanced growth has been accepted as one of the major objectives of economic planning in India since the Second Plan onwards but it did not make much headway in achieving this object. Rather, in real sense, planning mechanisms has enlarged the disparity between the developed states and less developed states of the country. In respect of allocating plan outlay relatively developed states get much favour than less developed states.

vi. Political Instability: Another important factor responsible for regional imbalance is the political instability prevailing in the backward regions of the country. Political instability in the form of unstable government, extremist violence, law and order problem etc. have been obstructing the flow of investments into these backward regions besides making flight of capital from these backward states. Thus this political instability prevailing in same backward regions of the country are standing as a hurdle in the path of economic development of these regions.