After three decades of quantitative control regime, development policy in India had a liberalized mold in the 1980s. Unleashing of full-fledged reform process since 1991 was followed by significant step-up in the rate of economic growth in the country. But as the evidence of unequal distribution of gains of higher growth started surfacing, the development strategy was further modified to make the growth process more inclusive. The present paper is motivated by the question whether regional disparities in development attainment in India tended to increase or decrease during these three phases of development policy in the period since 1980. The analysis has been carried out in terms of beta convergence of real per capita income of states of India. The results suggest divergence in the early years but a moderation of the divergent tendencies in the subsequent period. However a convergence process has yet to be set in motion.

 KEY WORDS: Regional disparity, Convergence, Divergence, Development attainments.