Study On Cost Disability In TSP Areas Of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand And Odisha

Abstract

The Report on Cost Disability in TSP areas examines factors that are endowed to the state which are beyond its control but it influences on the administrative performance and governance outcomes. These factors are exogenous in character and a state has less or no control over it. These factors create cost disability in extending required facility and services. The TSP areas with high forest coverage and inaccessible pockets create development disadvantage and adversely impact upon providing public services. While it becomes an obligation for the state to nurture and maintain certain endowed and exogenous factors, it impacts on the state financially and overall cost of providing services. Such a situation crates development disadvantage for the state and promote regional development disparity. The expected output per unit of investment also remains low in comparison to other regions that are not disadvantageous in the same sense. Coupled with public service delivery, cost of infrastructure development also increases substantially due to prolonged duration of projects, higher transportation cost of materials, engagement of manual labour force etc. It can be argued that the additional cost incurred due to endowment factors and maintaining the constitutional and legal obligations could have been less in plain areas in comparison to topographically disadvantaged areas. Regional disparity and underdevelopment of specific regions in a state is primarily due to endowment factors. Inaccessibility coupled with Left Wing Extremism contributes immensely for the underdevelopment of many tribal dominated districts LWE affected states in the country. From time to time states propose to compensate for these factors with additional allocation of resources to come out of these disabilities. According to 14th Finance Commission, a majority of the states favoured retaining area as an indicator in the devolution formula. The overall objective of this study is to develop understanding on cost disability linked to development disability, factors of cost escalation and its impact on eastern states of India to promote inclusive growth. The study attempted to explore the endowment effect on development / under-development of tribal dominated districts. The study looks at aspects like endowment factors, development disadvantage due to Acts / Policies; unit cost of providing public services in different topographical regions and allied factors of cost disability.