I've talked twice before about convergence and divergence, which is one of the key ways we think about how states are growing and progressing. If gaps are reducing and they're all coming closer to a single point, we call it convergence; whereas if the gaps, particularly between the most and least developed states are growing, we call it divergence.
But there are two ways in which convergence could happen. The first is if states that lagged behind in the past start growing faster than the leading states, gradually reducing the gap between them. This is the type of convergence that would have seen the gap between richer and poorer states narrow, but as I wrote in an earlier edition of The Big Shift, the opposite in fact seems to be happening in economic terms.
The second is when there is a maximum or minimum possible limit to an indicator, and while more developed states have already got there, the less developed states are now beginning to catch up. We're seeing this trend in declining fertility rates, which I wrote about earlier. That's also the big shift that we're seeing when it comes to access to electricity, as my colleague Nileena Suresh wrote about for us.
"There has been a significant expansion in the access of Indian households to electricity over the last two decades. In 2000, only 60% of the population had access to electricity. By 2021, this figure had risen to 99.6%," Nileena writes in the piece.
In 1993 Delhi was the only state/UT with more than 95% of households connected, and seven out of the then 25 states/UTs had less than half of their households electrified, Nileena writes. By 2016, all of the southern states had already electrified most households, meaning that there was no way up for them when it came to this indicator. Then by 2021, the others caught up, and 31 of the 36 states and Union Territories had electrified over 95% of their households.
It is a big shift. In fact, it is one of the biggest that India has seen over the last two decades. But when you break down the shift into its parts, it becomes clear that this isn't straightforward convergence, but a series of changes unfolding at very different speeds.
