BHUBANESWAR:A study has revealed that Odisha’s economy grew faster than the national average and 15 other major States between 2003 and 2013. The latest study contradicts the 2013 report of the Rajan Committee which had ranked Odisha as the least developed State in its index of economic development in 2013. The study titled ‘Political regime persistence and economic growth in Odisha: An empirical assessment of the Naveen Patnaik rule’ claims that Odisha has been performing better in terms of economic growth since 2003.
Out in the peer-reviewed journal Economics Bulletin published by Vanderbilt University USA, the study by Assistant Professor at University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun Jagadish Prasad Sahu and Assistant Professor of Economics at Indian Institute of Management, Amritsar Sitakanta Panda compared Odisha’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) per capita with 15 other major States during 1980 to 2003 and 2003 to 2013. A structural break analysis revealed that the State witnessed an upward shift in its economic growth in 2003 and since then, it has been notching up an average annual growth rate of about eight per cent (pc).
The average growth rate in real GSDP per capita during 2003-2013 is 4.6 pc higher than the period between 1980 and 2003. Odisha has witnessed an uninterrupted upward mobility in economic growth since 2003. When compared to the national economy and that of other States, the study found a significant positive differential trend in Odisha’s growth rate. “Though the eastern State’s economic growth was relatively slow in the 1990s, it had a relatively high growth rate during 2003-2013, the period during which Naveen Patnaik was at the helm,” Panda said.
The present Government has been in power since 2000 and the period has coincided with impressive economic growth of the State, he said. Panda said the periodicity of the perceptible economic change served ample motivation to empirically examine the question: How has the Naveen Government, which won four democratic stints on the trot, really performed on economic growth? While political stability may have been a vital factor that contributed to the growth, a flip side of Naveen’s ruling period has been a perceived decline of political competition amongst parties in State politics. The ruling BJD that faces a relatively weaker electoral competition has the potential of adversely affecting both democratic governance and long-run sustainability of economic growth, the study added.