Effect of ICT on the Performance of Indian States in Terms of Human Development Indices

The differences among the states in terms of Human Development Index (HDI) can be an outcome of the performance of the regional governments. The components of HDI can be taken as services produced by the state governments while some variables like tax collection of states, population, etc. can be considered as inputs of the states. The differences in the capacity of states in the utilization of grants and revenue of the states are important determinants in explaining the disparities among the states. The objective of the central government is to go for balanced development of different regions. The ICT is expected to improve social indicators like performances in health, education, etc., by effective utilization of social expenditure by states, and can potentially reduce the regional disparity in India. Identifying some services as output produced by some inputs in the different state governments in India, we rank the states according to their performances using Data Envelope Analysis (DEA). We have further estimated the target output that a state government should emphasize for its overall development. We have identified that the ICT, defined as a composite of teledensity, internet and mobile use, has been a responsible factor for the variation of performance of the state governments in terms of improvement of social indicators.