Optimum Allocation of Financial Resources for Reduction of Regional Disparities - An Exercise in Programming

Over the past many years the planners have been preoccupied with the problem of regional disparities in the levels of development. Their desire to allocate more resources to relatively backward regions has led to the investigations of the problem of identifying such regions on the basis of several indicators of development. In the attempts to include in this identification as many facets of development as possible, the number of indicators of development that have been sought to be used has been ever increasing and so has been the feeling of necessity and the desire to combine them into one single indicator of development. A considerable amount of research work has gone into this related problem rather unsuccessfully as the solutions offered so far do not go beyond establishing the order of regions on a scale of development or backwardness. The research workers have not been able to evolve any valid method directly relating the allocation of resources to the combined indicator of development; indeed, it does not appear possible to establish such a relationship.