Physical Infrastructure in Indian States of Punjab and Haryana with Respect to Electricity and Road Transport during 1970-71 to 2012-13

Abstract

Historically, the Indian Punjab was once five times the size it is now and was littered with wealth until the British Empire invaded.  During partition in 1947, Punjab was divided into two parts. On November 1, 1966, the Indian part of Punjab was trifurcated, leading to the formation of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh on linguistic lines. Hence there are many similarities about the development pattern between these two states. Though Haryana grows more rapidly than Punjab on different indicators of economic development, still then, there are some areas which should be paid attention by the policy makers for achieving higher economic growth rates. Present paper attempts to analyze the development of physical infrastructure in these two major Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. The growth and comparative analysis of development of electricity sector and road transport sector, which are two important components of physical infrastructure of Punjab state and Haryana state have been examined in this paper during the period of 1970-71 to 2012-13. The paper uses semi log regression model for finding the growth of different components of physical infrastructure and independent sample t-test for making a comparative average performance of different indicators of physical infrastructure. The paper suggests that for achieving economic development both the governments of Punjab state and Haryana state should improve electricity and road transport.