To Equitably Become ‘Viksit’ by 2047, India Must Urgently Reverse Its Income Growth Differential
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In our journey towards a ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047, in order to ensure prosperity for every section of society, achieving the target of a $30 trillion economy with a per capita income of $18,000 will be the primary stepping-stone. Another vital aspect, from an equity perspective, is to reverse the income growth differential across states and sectors, particularly between the agriculture and non-agriculture sectors.
In this article, we explore the inter-state disparity in Indian rupee and US dollar terms. We also examine the difference in value-addition from agriculture and allied activities (AAA) and, implicitly, income from non-agriculture activities.
The main sources of data in our analysis are the state gross state domestic product (GSDP) and the sectoral gross value added (GVA) from the National Accounts Statistics 2025 (NAS 2025). It is also germane that while the data sources and methods for compiling GSDP may not match across states, the broad inferences would be tenable at the macro level.
It is relevant to recall that though agriculture employs almost 46% of the workforce, its contribution in GVA terms is only around 18%.
Inter-state disparity
We have taken the average value of the US dollar as Rs 82.79. The all-India per capita GDP in 2023-24 was $2,608.
Seven states – Kerala ($3,824), Maharashtra ($3,859), Gujarat ($4,069), Tamil Nadu ($4,218), Haryana ($4,310), Karnataka ($4,546) and Telangana ($4,625) – have per capita GSDPs higher than the national average by more than 45%. Hence, for these states, achieving targets of Viksit Bharat may be relatively easy.
For the two largest states of India, Bihar ($829) and Uttar Pradesh ($1,346), their per capita GSDP is much lower than the national average. The situation is not that different in respect of Jharkhand ($1,415), Madhya Pradesh ($1,876) and Assam ($1,915).
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are also burdened with high total fertility rates (according to the National Family Health Survey-5, Bihar's rate is 3.0 and Uttar Pradesh's 2.4).
The rates in these states are projected to come down to 2.1 only by the 2030s. This will make the target of achieving a much higher per capita GSDP that much more difficult.
It must be noted that GDP and GSDP alone do not reflect the status of the well-being of the entire population. A very high income among a small number of people can raise per capita incomes. Therefore, income distribution is equally critical to national well-being.
Agriculture productivity per worker
The real GVA per worker in AAA during 2015-25, as per the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Progress Report 2025 (published by the Union statistics and programme implementation ministry), increased remarkably by 53.2%.
However, cursory data-digging reveals that the annual growth rates of GVA per worker in AAA computed from the values given in the SDG progress report, and that of the total GVA in AAA taken from the NAS 2025, were practically identical.
This leads to the question of whether the number of agriculture workers has remained similar for all these years, that is between 2015 and 2024.
A reverse computation, using the GVA per worker of AAA as in the SDG progress report and the corresponding total GVA from the NAS 2025, indeed shows that (leaving aside minor rounding-off issues) in the official calculations, the total number of agriculture workers during the nine-year period of 2015-24 has remained static at 263.1 million (increasing marginally to 263.18 million in 2024-25).
This seems to be prima facie untenable and requires a deeper examination by the statistics ministry.
A comparative statement of the real GVA per worker in AAA as per the published data, and that recomputed by us for 2017-18 to 2023-24, is given below:
In the beginning of the above period, the GVA per worker in agriculture computed by us was quite high in comparison to that given in the SDG progress report, but the gap reduces over time.
Also, the former is seen to have declined by 4.5% between 2017-24, against a 28.7% increase during this period reflected in the SDG progress report.
The overall increase in the computed GVA per worker being 1.1%, it is obvious that the gap between the agriculture and the non-agriculture incomes has in fact widened during the period of 2017-24.
Conclusion
In our view, both the disparities, i.e. spatial as well as sectoral, call for urgent policy attention. The inter-state disparity is an obvious challenge for equitable growth and the federal polity. The challenge of reducing the disparity between agriculture and non-agriculture is also not easy owing to various factors, including climate change and the dependence of an extremely large number of people on agriculture (and allied activities).
For this to materialise, investment in labour-oriented manufacturing and the skilling of a large section of the workforce is necessary.
Sanjay Kumar and N.K. Sharma retired as additional director general and director general respectively from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Siraj Hussain is a former Union agriculture secretary. Views are personal.
Sources:
- Sustainable Development Goal Progress Report, 2025; MoSPI.
- National Accounts Statistics, 2025; MoSPI.
- National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare
- Unit level data from the annual Periodic Labour Force Surveys for 2017-2024, MoSPI.
- GSDP/per capita GSDP of State from MoSPI portal.
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