Is Karnataka’s Economic Advancement Relegated Social Development? A Review of Some Evidence in The Recent Time

Karnataka state in southern India is an advanced regional economy with a higher Net District Domestic Product and higher Per Capita Income. This was achieved with the help of the well-positioned secondary and tertiary sectors’ contributions and employment opportunities. It is also largely urbanizing regional economy with almost half the number of households living in urban areas of different class sizes. However, the positive emergent economic strengths have kept social advancement at bay, particularly poverty and deprivations in human settlements remain unattended. Regrettably, the growing urbanization trend is highly skewed towards the metropolitan and major urban centers, resulting in the other tiers facing development starvations. Besides, it has accommodated a world of slums within the urban areas with substandard living of the dwelling poor families. Deficient housing stock as a principal source of poverty and deprivations of human necessities have left unaffordable poor households to face life threats and no access to amenities respectively. The poverty trap is very conspicuous in slums and informal settlements of poorer segments. This paper highlighted all these issues in greater detail with the help of the official data and offered a few policy implications for corrective public actions.