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This book is developed from out of my M. Phil dissertation which I have completed at Centre for Development Studies under Jawaharlal Nehru University.The main readers of the book will be researchers and policy makers of Indian Economy. This book will be helpful for all the researchers and policy makers in India to understand the present scenario of Indian States in achieving Human development and why there is discrepancy among Indian States in achieving higher human development. This book has attempted to analyze various aspects of human development index such as the critic on human development, its various theoretical, methodological, indicator and dimensional issues as well as to study the efficiency in human development achievement for Indian States using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).In this present study, the poor performing States are compared with best practice States which are the most efficient States. This study brings to light interstate disparity and shows the ways for improvement. In this study Human Development is benchmarked on the basis of empirical observations of the best practice States and this is the novelty of this book.

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Mis Swati Dutta is doing her Ph.D now in Economics under Madras University at Institute for Financial Management and Research. She did M.Phil in Applied Economics at Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram -695011, Kerala under Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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