Abstract
Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh are coming closer as India's largest state has to vote before May 2007. Before elections different political parties have to come out with their election manifestoes and it is high time for researchers to present the true picture of development in the state so that development issues find a place on the agenda of the coming assembly elections. Voting on development issues may influence priorities of the coming government.
There have been numerous studies regarding development issues in India and many of them cover UP as well. These studies focus on one or the other aspects of the development and fail to cover different dimensions of development. In this situation this paper attempts to present an overall picture of development in the state on the basis of secondary data provided by Census of India, National Sample Survey Organisation, National Family Health Survey and different reports, papers and books published on the subject. To present the true state of development this paper covers different aspects of development including poverty, land possession, employment, per capita consumer expenditure, education, health, structure of dwelling, access to drinking water and electricity. It also tries to capture differentiation that exists at regional, rural-urban, caste, class and gender levels. After the Introduction, the main body of the paper discusses various development indicators and ends with a few observations of different scholars. This paper notes that despite some development in a few dimensions, UP lags far behind other Indian states. It still houses a large poor population and disparities among different groups are substantially high. This situation is related to the dominant caste-class structure.
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