Economic Reforms and the Less Developed Regions : A Study of Uttar Pradesh in India

The economic reforms introduced in India in 1991 following the neo-liberal approach, have sparked a debate on regional inequalities and the uneven progress of the states. Uttar Pradesh, which is the most heavily populated having 16 per cent of the country's population, is also a less developed state of India. An outcome of the reforms has been decline in credit to the less developed states. Hardly few studies have focused exclusively on this outcome of reforms and its implication for such states. Even the current literature on the state does not take cognisance of this development for the state. This paper examines the credit given by the banks to the state at the aggregate level, covering a span of 33 years from 1972-2004 looks into the trends and pattern of credit in the state