Hypothesis 3

Here we consider variables which require significant government support, and call them social infrastructure variables. This includes the main source of light, where electrification is predominantly provided by government utility companies, and the main source of water which requires tap water distribution networks or hand pumps and wells funded by the government. Observing the maps below we see that both these indicators have improved considerably over the years, demonstrating government support. However, between the two, the main source of light has improved much more, with non-agricultural districts showing the strongest change, but not any significant differences based on the current status of a district. This indicates a consistent effort in infrastructure provisioning by the government irrespective of the current status of a district, but with a bias towards electrification over drinking water provisioning. Historical reports indeed point towards this gap. The introduction of the Electricity Act of 2003 encouraged participation of the private sector in electricity production, and the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) launched in 2005 was aimed at creating rural electrification infrastructure so as to electrify all villages and give electricity connections free of charge to families living below the poverty line. The evaluation gave a 93.3% success rate to RGGVY in meeting its targets, and access to electricity rose from 59 % of the population in 2000 to 74 % in 2010. In contrast, the government also launched the Bharat Nirman Program in 2005 with an emphasis on providing drinking water especially to habitations affected by poor water quality, but achieved limited goals with six states reporting less than 50% achievement against targets, and an average achievement of 80.4%.