Development goals, population demography and state expenditure on human priority sectors: a study of Indian major states.

The paper examines the spending pattern of Indian states on human priority sectors (HPS) during 2001–2019 particularly stressing on its responsiveness towards the Development Goals and Population Demography. The observed expenditure pattern reveals that among all the major Indian States, Bihar is the most vulnerable state having the lowest spending and lowest growth rate of expenditures. We also find Water Sanitation and Family Welfare to be the most neglected subsectors of HPS as these sectors received only 3% of HPS expenditure on an average. Besides, the pattern also exposes the huge inter– state disparities in HPS expenditure, which is detected to be highest as regard Nutrition and has a rising trend for the Family Welfare component. Moreover, in response to Millennium Development Goals we find there was no significant change in spending pattern, however, we find mixed bearing of population demography on the HPS. For instance, states with a large base of rural population are observed to spend more on the priority sector, but contrary to the expectation, the size of the poor population has no bearing on the states' allocation of resources. The findings of the paper are particularly significant for policy prescriptions to attain the Sustainable Development Goals as it offers sufficient evidence of negligence of timely spending on the HPS in response to the development goals and population composition. So, we find there is a need for introspection on HPS spending and its concurrent evaluation in terms of its allocation criterion and timing of allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]