Short Abstract:

This study pioneers a novel development approach, centred on human substantive freedom, drawing from Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom theory. Utilising state-level data (1990–2022), it underscores freedom's vital influence across political, economic, social, transparency, and security dimensions, revealing stark disparities across the states of India, in comparison with existing measurement.

Long Abstract:

Introduction: Sen’s vision is widely acclaimed and universally accepted, known as the ‘capability approach’. This is mainly a framework of thought that innovates the basic concern of human development: “our capability to lead the kind of lives we have the reason to value," rather than the usual concentration on rising incomes, technical progress in education and health, or industrialization.

Objective: The study has four-fold objectives: First, conceptualise and formulate empirical framework for uncovering the Development as Freedom (DAF) Index from the theoretical formulations provided in the 1999 book ‘Development as Freedom’ by Amartya Sen. Second, we advanced the key idea in support of Sen’s notion of substantive freedom as a measure of human development, a check for economic growth using a comprehensive or holistic measure known as the “Freedom Index.”. Third, we further advance the proposed Index to act as catalyst to explain the role of freedom with five domains (viz., instrumental freedom, emphasised by Sen) in explaining the progress of developmental success

Data Source: The proposed study used secondary sources of data triangulated from the Sample Registration System (SRS, 1991–2020), all five available rounds of National Family Health Survey (NFHS), National Crime Record Bureau, multiple rounds of Agriculture Census, National Consumption Expenditure Survey, Employment and Unemployment Survey, Periodic labour Force Survey, India Human Development Survey 1 & 2, Census India (1991–2011), and RBI Handbook to construct Development as Freedom Index.

Results: The existence of inequality in access to health, education, land, political freedom, finance, protection against crime, child labour, measures of development showed a high divergence among the states of India with the freedom index, compared with the existing measures of the wealth index, HDI, and consumption-based poverty measures.

Conclusion: We conclude that the proposed measure of well being on the basis of human needs as choice in terms of capability as deprivation (i.e., unfreedom) exhibited the emerging and significant role of inequality in explaining the demographic outcomes among the states of India. Existing methods were unable to capture the diverging demographic outcomes in relation to inequality adjusted poverty estimation.