Regional Disparities in Education, Health and Human Development in India Madhusudan Ghosh* This paper evaluates the relative performance of fifteen major Indian states on the issues of education, health and human development. It examines the regional disparities in human development and their association with per capita income and per capita social sector expenditure. The results show regional convergence in human development despite a divergence in real per capita income, indicating that the poor states, which have failed to catch up with the rich ones in terms of per capita income, have, however, managed to catch up in terms of human development. Female literacy is found to have a significant impact on human development. The effects of the per capita social sector expenditure on human development are found to be stronger than those of per capita income, suggesting that the strategy for improving various dimensions of human development by increasing the per capita government expenditure on social services would be more effective than the automatic improvement in human development resulting from the growth in per capita income. Keywords: Education, Health, Public expenditure INTRODUCTION There has been a remarkable shift in the focus of development planning since the early 1990s. The shift has been from mere economic growth to the enhancement of human well-being. It has been recognized that economic growth has to be accompanied by an improvement in the quality of life, for the development process to be sustainable. Many argue that development should be viewed as the process of enhancing people’s capabilities for improving the quality of life (see, for example, Dasgupta, 1993; Sen, 1985; 1987; UNDP, 1990). Mere growth in the production of goods and services and the consequent increase in per capita income may not necessarily lead to an improvement in human well-being, which is broadly conceived to include not only the consumption of goods and services but also the accessibility of people to the basic necessities required for leading a productive and socially meaningful life. Human development is defned as a process of enlarging people’s choices to enable them to lead long and healthy lives, to acquire knowledge and be educated, and to have access to resources needed for a decent level of living. The Human Development Index (HDI), which is used as a summary measure of three dimensions of human well-being, viz. a long and healthy life, education, and a decent standard of living, is usually constructed by combining Indian Journal of Human Development, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2011 * Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Politics, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, Birbhum, West Bengal. E-mail: msghosh123@rediffmail.com; ghosh_m55@yahoo.co.in