REGIONAL DISPARITIES IN INDIA 53 The growth strategy that was adopted helped in the process of urban agglomeration and accentuation of regional disparities within the space economy, notwithstanding the emergence of new industrial centres and market centres in response to directed public investment. The new industrial centres have very little linkages with their respective regional economies and have failed to become "growth poles" as intended by the planners because of structural imbalances and absence of channels of transmission of growth. The poles and nodes of development are generally rootless, incapable of acting as dynamic centres of growth and change. The hinterland continues to be so poor and backward that it is not capable of taking advantage of the process of ^growth' initiated at the centre. These centres have become centres of exploitation of regional resources without much trickle-do^ eifectls. We fltid the emergence of a new class of contractors, traders, government functionariesi and 'consultants' who are squeezing out the maximum surplus from these areas. The backwash effects outweigh the spread effects. The concentration of oligopolies, multinationals and large business houses in urban agglomerations continues unabated despite industrial licensing and the mechanism of incentives and disincentives to regulate industrial location. Industrial development continues to be concentrated in a few pockets of the country. Even in the so-called industrially advanced States, industrial activities continue to agglomerate at metropolitan cities. In Mabarashtra which is the most highly industrialised State of India, the distribution of the manufacturing sector in 1975*76 shows that the developed districts of Greater Bombay-Thane-Pane with a population of 23 per cent of the State, accounted for 80 per cent of the gross value of output and^ per cent of the net value added by the organised industries in that year^ In fact, Maharashtra excluding this region is industrially as backward as Uthar Pr^dCsb, Bihar or Rajasthan. EveB small-scate units have concentrated in metropolitan cities and big towns. A recent survey by the Reserve Bank of India shows that nearly 40 per cent of small-^cale units are located in cities with a population of one lakh and above and only 25 per cent in towns of less than 10,000 population. The instruments of industrial policy like MRTPA, FERA, industrial licensing, control of capital issues, mechanism of incentives and disincentives and flow of centra allocations, have not succeeded in correcting distortions and imbalances in the industrial structure of the economy. Extent of Regional Disparities Over the plans, inter-regional disparities have widened as revealed by the relative range between the highest per capita and the lowest per capita income States^ the coefficient of variations in per capita income and expenditure, and the Gini coefficient of inequality.