India’s public conversation likes to frame inequality as a question of class, the rich rising, the poor left behind. But the country’s deepest fracture runs not between high and low incomes, but between two geographies. Western India has been built for ascent. Eastern India has been left to endure. This is not a historical accident. It is the product of three decades of policy preference emanating from one capital: Delhi.
Kolkata is the clearest testament. Once the centre of colonial finance and nationalist thought, it housed the subcontinent’s first banks, stock exchanges, universities and literary circles. Yet today, the city stands stranded between its past and a future denied to it. Its ports are underused, its factories dismantled, its youth outbound. Kolkata did not collapse because it ran out of intellect. It collapsed because the nation withdrew investment.
Delhi Built India on Half a Map
When liberalisation began in the 1990s, capital and infrastructure were mobilised to create a new economic India. But the map was drawn narrowly. The western corridor, from Delhi to Mumbai, Pune to Ahmedabad, became the axis of ambition. Further south, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad were equipped to receive technology and capital. Eastern India was treated as a logistical hinterland, not an economic frontier.
Per capita income figures expose the outcome. According to the Reserve Bank of India’s 2024 State Finance Handbook, Maharashtra and Gujarat now record over ₹2.5 lakh per capita income. Bihar remains below ₹54,000. Odisha lingers near ₹1.2 lakh. NITI Aayog’s 2023 Multidimensional Poverty Index confirms that poverty in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh remains above 27–30 percent, while Tamil Nadu and Gujarat hover around 10–12 percent. These are not developmental delays. They are deliberate imbalances.
Per Capita Income & Poverty: East vs West (2023–24)
Region / State | Per Capita GSDP (₹) | Poverty Rate (%) |
---|---|---|
Bihar | ₹54,000 | 33% |
Odisha | ₹1.27 lakh | 29% |
Eastern UP (Estimate) | < ₹90,000 | 27–30% |
Gujarat | ₹2.45 lakh | 12% |
Maharashtra | ₹2.76 lakh | 13% |
Tamil Nadu | ₹2.41 lakh | 10% |
According to these national records, opportunity in India is not born of effort, it is born of geography.
The Illusion of Inequality- A Convenient Debate
Delhi’s elite circles frequently summon income inequality as India’s great challenge. Yet the National Sample Survey Office’s 2022–23 study shows that consumption inequality has slightly narrowed — the Gini coefficient falling from 28.8 to around 25.5. Wealth inequality, however, has sharpened — and more importantly, it has sharpened by region.
National Wealth Concentration (2024)
Indicator | Share Held by Top 1% |
---|---|
National Wealth | 40.1% |
National Income | 22.6% |
Reuters, citing the World Inequality Lab’s March 2024 report, notes that these levels are the highest in India for nearly a century. Yet almost none of this concentrated wealth has Eastern origins. It accumulates in cities that received infrastructure and flight paths, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad. Private fortunes require public foundations. In the East, those foundations were never laid.
Infrastructure of Exclusion, Policy by Omission
India’s leaders claim that capital seeks efficiency. The truth is simpler: capital follows state planning. And the state did not plan for the East.
National Projects & Eastern Exclusion
National Project / Corridor | Eastern Inclusion? |
---|---|
Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) | ❌ No |
Dedicated Freight Corridors (East & West) | ❌ Skips Kolkata Belt |
Coastal Economic Zones | ❌ West/South only |
FDI Allocation (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, NCR) | 65%+ |
FDI to East (Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand) | <5% |
According to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade’s 2023 figures, Eastern India is nearly invisible in the maps of foreign investment. Delhi gave this region elections and museums. It gave the ports, parks, and corridors to others.
Migration: A Silent Referendum
Those who depart from the East are not aspirants, they are exiles. They do not leave because they wish to explore; they leave because no economy awaits them at home. These people are not migrants, but evacuees from the national imagination.
These young men and women do not return as investors. They return as visitors. Their skills fuel Western industry, their remittances support Eastern households. They live in India. They work for another India.
The Psychological Rift, Heritage Without Horizon
Delhi praises Eastern India for its intellect. It celebrates Bengal’s poetry, Bihar’s history, Odisha’s spirit. But praise without investment is condescension. No nation can ask a region to remain cultured while denying it capital. A civilisation cannot live in memory alone. Without future, memory turns into mourning.
A Nation Cannot Stand on One Coast
Eastern India is not marginal to the republic, it is central to its long-term stability and expansion. It anchors the Ganga basin, guards mineral belts, borders South Asia’s strategic gateway, and contains the demographic spine of the nation. To leave it as a labour colony while building financial kingdoms elsewhere is not simply unjust, it is strategically unsound.
A country preparing for competition with China cannot afford to leave the Bay of Bengal without ambition. The revival of the East is not a regional plea. It is a national necessity.
The Eastern Question Is a National Question
Delhi has long asked why the East declined. The correct question is why Delhi allowed it to? The fall of Kolkata, the stagnation of Patna, the outmigration of Jharkhand, these are not regional failures. They are national omissions. A republic cannot unify through anthem and flag alone. It must unify through infrastructure and investment. Until the East is given purpose, not pity, India will remain a country with two destinies.
Kolkata’s tramlines are not rusted steel. They are the first tracks of India’s modernity. A nation that forgets where it began will never truly know where it intends to go.