Western India is leading India’s economic revolution.  Maharasthra and Gujarat together are India’s manufacturing powerhouses, but that does not take away from the impressive achievements of Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu in the post reform years.  This region is not known for its natural resources as eastern India is, neither does it have population concentrations as high as in the north, nor does it have high human development indicators as in the south.  Despite that it has some of the highest investment levels – both private as well as public.   

What accounts for this rapid growth?  The answer is a combination of location, history, circumstances, and arguably the most important – initiative.  There was a time when Indian industry was largely concentrated in the east, but with the rapid rise of Bombay as a commercial centre Industry expanded rapidly in Maharashtra and later Gujarat.    

My colleagues at Indicus Analytics and I have been following the growth of more than a 100 major cities in India for almost a decade now.  At the time of independence, amongst the major cities of India, only Mumbai counted among the major metros in Western India.  Today, Mumbai has been joined by Ahmedabad and Pune as large metros and important commercial and industrial centers of Asia.  And we are now seeing the rapid growth of a whole group of cities in Western India that will be among the largest manufacturing and service centres of this continent.   

Take this example.  What seemed like a momentary spurt in the early 2000s is now more or less confirmed - Surat is the most rapidly and consistently growing large city in the whole country.  What was once a small commercial town has already entered the ranks of the top 10 urban economies in India. At the rate it is growing, it would surpass many of the larger cities in the next decade, as Bombay had surpassed Kolkata in the nineteen sixties.  The world might today talk about Bangalore, or Gurgaon or Tirupur, but the real wonder of post reform India is actually Surat.   

Take another example.  Pune.  What was once a sleepy city with a few good educational aned cultural institutions, first became a minor automobile manufacturing centre, evolved into a major professional educational centre, and today is the place where the best engineering companies in the world would want to have production centres. 

Yes Pune is a now a major metro, with one of the highest levels of in-migration from all parts of the country.  In a sense, Pune and Surat’s story provides vital clues to why the west continues to be the economic powerhouse of India.   

First, there is a long history of international trade and commerce.  Economic reforms have more than proved that India’s future lies in both selling to and buying from international markets. And past experience in international commerce helped this region in making full use of the opportunities that reforms opened up for everyone in the country. 

Second, is the proximity to the sea and major ports.  By my estimate proximity to the sea pushes up economic growth by about two percentage points annually.  Of course there are many other states that are on the sea and have ports – Orissa is one such example.  But only states that are able to improve their port infrastructure, and build appropriate connecting means with the major production and consumption centres, can benefit from this proximity.  And here western India far surpasses both the south and the east.   

Third, higher education and learning.  Kolkata was for many decades the intellectual, commercial and cultural capital of India.  But at some point, its educational institutions faded away, and slowly and steadily everything else withered away.  No region can grow without higher learning, and Western India boasts of the finest professional education institutions in the country, and they are not only in one state, but are spread everywhere in the region.