INTRODUCTION:

Balanced regional development is the ultimate aim of any government. The widening of inter-regional disparities in recent times has been well recognised. In India initial plan periods were focused on the resource centric development. Investments were made on the basis of external economies. So the interregional disparities are widened. But recently policies are emphasizing on filling the gap between developed and backward areas.

In this regard it is important to capture the development gap across the states and within the state itself. It is very unfortunate that in states like Maharashtra there exist a large development gap between the regions and within the regions i.e. the inter district disparity (Kelkar Committee Report 2013).

Some studies highlighted the development gap based on the differences in Human Development Indicators i.e. income, education and health (Sangita Kamdar 2017)

There are several aspects of analysing the regional inequality which gives us an idea about the development status of the particular study area. The development disparity can be well explored by the status of infrastructure in particular area. So infrastructural development can be suitable proxy to analyse the development status or development potential. The world development report of 1994, entitled the Infrastructure for Development underlines the importance of infrastructure in the development of any region or area. In this context this study explores the development status of different regions/divisions in Maharashtra in general and status of individual district in particular.

The economic planners distinguishes the infrastructure in two broad categories i.e. economic infrastructure and social infrastructure. The infrastructure that promotes economic activity is called Economic infrastructure and the social infrastructure is that promotes education and health wellbeing of the society.

Development linkage of infrastructure:

The development linkage of infrastructure can be drawn as, it connects goods to markets, workers to industry, people to services and the poor in rural areas to urban growth centres. It also lowers the costs, enlarges the markets and facilitates trade. So the infrastructure supports the economic growth by increasing the productivity of labour and capital thereby increases the profitability and it also improves the quality of life of the people in particular area.

The focus of this study is on analysing the availability of essential infrastructure in the districts of Maharashtra and its region/division wise comparison. In this paper the infrastructure items has been arranged in eight categories, namely Transport, Energy, Communication, Irrigation, Drinking water supply and Sanitation, Storage infrastructure, Education and Public Health. Among these eight categories first six are called economic infrastructure and last two are called social infrastructure. So the comparative development status can be understood across the regions and districts in Maharashtra state.

OBJECTIVES:

1) To highlight a comparative status of economic infrastructure between regions of Maharashtra.

2) To highlight a comparative status of social infrastructure between regions of Maharashtra state.

3) To explore the overall development status of infrastructure across the region in Maharashtra.

METHODOLOGY:

A) The frame work:

The frame work of the study comprises the Nature, Area and Source of data used.

The nature of this study is analytical one, where an attempt is made to explore and analyse the availability of infrastructure with several genuinely required aspects. The area of this study covers 35 districts of Maharashtra State. The data for this study is collected from the secondary source i.e. Infrastructure statistics of Maharashtra state and various other publications. The analysis is based on the two point data collected from the Infrastructure statistics of Maharashtra state for the year 2010-11 and 2014-15.

The method of comparison

B) Concept Building:

The term infrastructure in this study refers to economic and social infrastructure. The indicators used for each infrastructure category are defined as follows.

C) Method of Analysis:

To analyse the levels of development of various regions and to measure the inter districts disparities method of ranking analysis is used. This is the simplest method in which individual region is provided a rank according to ascending or descending order of magnitude for each indicator separately as follows.

Rij = ranking of ith region for the jth variable

Index of development: The final index of development is calculated as follows

I = Ri₁ + Ri₃ + Ri₃ + Ri₄+……+ Ri_m or

Where m = variables or indicators of infrastructure. The addition of rank is known as Borda Score or Index. The lowest value of rank total indicates high level of development.

The comparison is made between the two periods (P1 = 2011 and P2 = 2015) to show the improvement or fall in the ranking of region in terms of respective indicator.

Infrastructure category wise development:

There are six revenue divisions in Maharashtra state this is also called regions that comprise Pune, Konkan, Nashik, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Amravati division. The following analysis will highlight the eight infrastructure category wise development status across the divisions / regions in Maharashtra State.

I) Transport Infrastructure:

Road Development: Road Transport is a very important segment of physical infrastructure that leads to economic social development in the State. In the ranking of roads available per square kilometre in period two Nashik region has shown improvement whereas the Konkan region has shown step down in ranking (Annexure-1). The Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati are standing at the bottom in the ranking. In terms of Roads per lakh population Nashik and Aurangabad stands at the top and Amravati and Konkan stands at the bottom. There is no change in ranking during P2 in roads available per lakh population. The motor vehicles per lakh population is an indicator of road development and it is also comprise as a part of transport infrastructure shows that Pune, Nagpur and Konkan stands in top three region in having more motor vehicles per lakh population. The increase in vehicles in Pune Nagpur and Konkan could be due to the economic development and quality if roads in these region as they stands at the top in overall economic development of the state in the form of value added (Economic Survey 2019-20).

Railway Development: The fourth important indicator of infrastructure is availability of railway track in per sq km geographical area. Railway is one of the important means of transport infrastructure of state with its network of 6,253 km. It includes 5,688 km. of broad gauge, 459 km. of narrow gauge and 106 km. of meter gauge lines. The data shows that railways are more available in Konkan and Nagpur region and less available in Aurangabad region. The data also shows that in P2 period there is an improvement in Amravati and Pune region in rail availability.

II) The Energy Infrastructure:

Energy infrastructure comprises mining and quarrying and the electric power consumption. Here the status is shown in the form of per capita electricity consumption. Konkan and Pune stands at the top in per capita electricity consumption whereas Aurangabad and Amravati stands at the bottom and they have very little share in electricity consumption for industrial and commercial purpose (Infrastructure statistics of Maharashtra 2015). During P2 Nashik region has shown the improvement in per capita consumption of power.

III) Communication Infrastructure:

The communication infrastructure here is reported in the form of number of post offices available in each region. There are 12,600 post offices in the State, out of which 1,317 are in urban areas and 11,283 post offices in rural areas during the year 2014-15. As per the ranking the Pune stands at the top and it is followed by Nashik, Aurangabad, Konkan, Amravati and Nagpur. This ranking sequence has remained the same in P2 period also.

IV) Irrigation Infrastructure:

Maharashtra State Government has undertaken various major, medium and minor irrigation projects to create maximum irrigation potential. Irrigation Infrastructure here is measured in terms of actual irrigated area in the region. The ranking shows that Pune stands at the top and Konkan stands at the bottom in P1 and P2 period. But there is an improvement in Nagpur region in P2 period where as there is a fall in ranking of Nashik and Aurangabad in P2 period.

V) Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation:

Water and Sanitation have been recognized as the essential needs of human development and are also part of the Millennium Development Goals. In this study under the drinking water and sanitation infrastructure the availability of treated tap water and availability of latrines is considered in this analysis. As per Census 2011, about 67.9 per cent of households receives tap water. There is a wide gap in availability of treated tap water across the regions where Konkan and Nashik have more than 80% of households with treated tap water and on the other hand in Aurangabad and Amravati it is 64% and 68%. The analysis on the basis of ranking shows that, there is no change in the ranking of regions in both the periods P1 and P2. The situation of sanitation shows that only one third households have latrine facility in Aurangabad and Amravati region, whereas it is two third in all other regions. The ranking shows Konkan, Pune, Nagpur stands at the top and Amravati and Aurangabad stands at the bottom.

VI) Storage Infrastructure:

Storage facility is very much important for agriculture sector and industrial sector. Godowns play a vital in creating a linkage between producers and consumers; it helps in combating seasonal fluctuations in production and prices. There are 984 Godowns and 186 warehouses available in the state with storage capacity of 6.13 lakh MT and 16.60 lakh MT respectively. The ranking shows high availability of storage capacity in Aurangabad and Pune region. There is a progress in storage capacity in Nagpur and Konkan in P2 period.

VII) Educational Infrastructure:

Education is the important tool for social and economic transformation. There are 106495 schools in the state. As per the ranking Pune, Konkan and Nashik have highest number of schools in the state and Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati stands at the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th position in having number of schools in the district.

VIII) Public Health Infrastructure:

The health infrastructure is the second but equally important social infrastructure. In Maharashtra there is a three-tier system of public health infrastructure. The primary health centres work at the village and block level. The district level hospitals are the second tire. The tertiary tier include high technology equipped diagnostic and investigative facilities. Here the number of beds available in each region is considered as an indicator for Public health infrastructure. The ranking based on it shows that Konkan, Pune and Nashik are at the top in having health infrastructure in the state and this is followed by Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati. It is observed that there is an improvement in health facility in the Aurangabad region in P2 period with third rank.

The Overall Region Wise Development:

Based on the Borda Score shown in the following table the overall region wise infrastructure development in Maharashtra shows that, during P1 period Pune region was at the top with score or index value or 26 and the Amravati region was at the bottom with the score 63. The gap between top and bottom region in P1 period was 36, showing the huge regional disparity within the region in the state. The same story of regional inequalities in infrastructure development has been continued in P2 period also where Pune stands at the top and Amravati stands at the bottom. The gap between these two regions is computed as 39 showing the widening regional disparity during two periods i.e. from 2011 to 2015. The other regions like Aurangabad and Nagpur also shows comparative low level of development in both the period (P1 andP2) with the index value 45 and 49 in first period and 44 and 47 in second period.

Region/Division	RNKTOT in P1	RNKTOT in P2	RNK of RNK
Pune Division	26	24	1
Konkan Division	32	35	2
Nashik Division	38	39	3
Nagpur Division	45	44	4
Aurangabad Division	49	47	5
Amravati Division	62	63	6

Source: Authors calculation based on the ranking methodology

CONCLUSION:

Considering all important aspects of economic and social infrastructure it is found that in most of the indicators the regions like Aurangabad and Amravati stands at the bottom with huge disparity in infrastructural development. Except better achievement in storage capacity and railway line available the Aurangabad region is in the lower strata represented in its ranking. The Amravati region is found at the bottom in nearly all indicators showing the huge developmental gap if this region in comparison with the developed regions. The dominance of Pune, Konkan and Nashik region is found in infrastructure development in the state. The widening gap in infrastructure development in P1 and P2 period highlights the serious concern of governmental intervention in bridging the development gap in infrastructure and resultant inequalities.

	RDPSQKM			RDKMPLP			MVPLP
Rank	P1	P2		P1		P2	P1	P2
1	Pune	Pune		Nagpur		Nashik	Konkan	Pune
2	Konkan	Nashik		Aurangabad		Aurangabad	Pune	Nagpur
3	Nashik	Konkan		Nashik		Nagpur	Nagpur	Konkan
4	Aurangabad	Aurangabad		Pune		Pune	Nashik	Nashik
5	Nagpur	Nagpur		Amravati		Amravati	Amravati	Amravati
6	Amravati	Amravati		Konkan		Konkan	Aurangabad	Aurangabad
	RWKMPSQGA			PCEC			NOPOS
Rank	P1	P2		P1		P2	P1	P2
1	Konkan	Konkan		Konkan		Konkan	Pune	Pune
2	Nagpur	Nagpur		Pune		Pune	Nashik	Nashik
3	Nashik	Amravati		Nagpur		Nashik	Aurangabad	Aurangabad
4	Amravati	Pune		Nashik		Nagpur	Konakan	Konakan
5	Pune	Nashik		Aurangabad		Aurangabad	Amravati	Amravati
6	Aurangabad	Aurangabad		Amravati		Amravati	Nagpur	Nagpur
	ACIEA			TTPWTR			AVLTRN
Rank	P1	P2		P1		P2	P1	P2
1	Pune	Pune		Konkan		Konkan	Konkan	Konkan
2	Nashik	Nagpur		Nashik		Nashik	Pune	Pune
3	Aurangabad	Nashik		Pune		Pune	Nagpur	Nagpur
4	Nagpur	Aurangabad		Nagpur		Nagpur	Amravati	Amravati
5	Amravati	Amravati		Amravati		Amravati	Nashik	Nashik
6	Konkan	Konkan		Aurangabad		Aurangabad	Aurangabad	Aurangabad
	STRG			NOSCHL			NOBED
Rank	P1		P2	P1	P2		P1	P2
1	Aurangabad		Aurangabad	Pune	Pune		Konkan	Konkan
2	Pune		Pune	Konkan	Konkan		Pune	Pune
3	Nashik		Nagpur	Nashik	Nashik		Nashik	Aurangabad
4	Nagpur		Nashik	Aurangabad	Aurangabad		Aurangabad	Nashik
5	Amravati		Konakn	Nagpur	Nagpur		Nagpur	Nagpur
6	Konkan		Amravari	Amravati	Amravati		Amravati	Amravati

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Received on 02.07.2021 Modified on 05.09.2021

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2021; 12(4):218-222.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5828.2021.00038

Infrastructure Category	Indicator	Infrastructure Category	Indicator
Transport Infrastructure	1) Road per 100 sq.km.of area 2) Road per Lakh population 3) Motor Vehicles per lakh population. 4) Railway in Km per 100 sq km geographical area	Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation	8) Treated Tap Water 9) Availability of Latirin
Energy Infrastructure	5) Per capita electricity consumption	Storage Infrastructure	10) Storage Capacity in Metric Tons
Communication Infrastructure	6) Number of post offices	Educational Infrastructure	11) Number of Schools
Irrigation Infrastructure	7) Actual Irrigated Area	Public Health Infrastructure	12) Number of beds