Growth and spread of manufacturing productivity across regions in India

An expected outcome of economic reforms in India is enhanced pace of industrialization with manufacturing sector playing a crucial role by increasing its share in output via higher investments and increased productivity. This process of industrialization was also expected to usher in possibilities for the slow growing states to catch up with the fast growing ones. This paper assesses the extent of regional manufacturing performance in India by analyzing the trends in labour and total factor productivity for the organized manufacturing sector of 15 major Indian states. Data Envelopment Analysis is used to compute Malmquist total factor productivity index and its components. The results indicate that labour productivity diverges in the reform era and its growth and TFPG follow more or less a similar pattern. The study also finds that growth in productivity vary considerably across states and this variation in productivity growth can be explained, to a great extent, by differences in infrastructural development at the regional level.