New Delhi: Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — home to India’s three largest industrial clusters in the 1960s — have seen their fortunes subsequently diverge when it comes to their share of the national economy since 1960-61, with Mamata Banerjee-led state facing the steepest decline — especially after she became the Chief Minister in 2011, a new paper by the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to the Prime Minister showed on Tuesday.  

While Maharashtra clocked broadly steady performance throughout the 1960-61 to 2023-24 period, West Bengal’s share has been in continuous decline while Tamil Nadu, after a mid-way decline, picked up post-1991, according to the EAC-PM paper which looked at the relative performance of states in terms of their share of the national economy and their per capita GDP as per cent of the national average.

West Bengal, which held the third-largest share of national GDP at 10.5 per cent in 1960-61, now accounts for only 5.6 per cent share in 2023-24. The state had a 6.7 per cent share in the nation’s economy in 2010-11 when Mamata Banerjee assumed CM’s office.

“It (West Bengal) has seen a consistent decline throughout this period. West Bengal’s per capita income was above the national average in 1960-61 at 127.5 per cent, but its growth failed to keep pace with national trends. As a result, its relative per capita income declined to 83.7 per cent in 2023-24, falling below that of even traditionally laggard states like Rajasthan and Odisha,” the paper revealed.

Maharashtra’s economic performance has remained relatively steady throughout the period, despite a slight decline in its share over the last decade.