This study aims to address two key research issues: (i) whether gender equality promotes economic growth across Indian states and (ii) whether interstate differences in gender equality can explain per capita income disparities among the Indian states. Controlling for the relevant key factors such as components of government developmental expenditures, private investment, human capital formation and institutional quality in a regional growth model, our empirical findings confirm that gender equality leads to economic growth and that interstate differences in gender equality lead to disparities in per capita income among the Indian states. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We examine the role of the enforcement of property rights, human capital formation, and the efficiency of various components of state governments' developmental expenditure on states’ economic growth and interstate income inequality. Together with private sector investment in rural areas, property rights enforcement, human capital, government expenditures on economic services, and health and education are found to have positive effects on states’ growth. We also observe that the interstate difference in the provisioning of government economic services is the leading factor in contributing to interstate income divergence in India. These findings can serve as vital technical inputs for formulating economic policies to achieve faster economic growth and mitigate regional income inequality in transitioning developing economies like India and hold greater relevance for other developing economies on their way to experiencing similar social and economic transitions.

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To overcome the macroeconomic crisis of the early 1990s, the Government of India persuaded the state governments to adopt market-oriented reforms for loss-making state public sector undertakings in general and power sector utilities in particular with an aim to limit the overall size of the public sector. This led the state governments to undertake unbundling of their vertically integrated State Electricity Boards (SEBs), establish independent regulatory bodies in the form of State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs) to regulate the power sector, and allow for an active participation of private sector. Given this backdrop, the present study attempts to examine the effect of establishment of SERCs on the cost-efficiency of electricity distribution in the Indian states. Thereby, it evaluates whether the establishment of SERCs has induced efficiency gains in the electricity distribution. Estimating a Cobb-Douglas stochastic cost frontier function, it finds that the establishment of independent regulators in various states has resulted in significant improvements in the cost-efficiency in the electricity distribution.