PTI

New Delhi, Feb 27: The economic health of West Bengal is dismal with the state having a backlog of 7.72 million at employment exchanges, the highest in the 
country, and way behind Bihar and Jharkhand in facilitating business, a report has said.

"We had started tracking the state's own data from the early 60s, when it was one of India's better performing states, to now when it figures moderately on all parameters in the middle order of all states," economic research firm Indicus Analyticus founder director Laveesh Bhandari told reporters.

The study, 'Transforming West Bengal', by economists Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari, identifies five "symptoms" that are telling instances of the state's degraded position.

The backlog at employment exchanges is at 7.72 million, chiefly due to the fact that employment growth has stagnated with the average annual growth at zero per cent in urban areas.

Also the state is not growing fast enough in terms of net state domestic productivity (5.8 per cent for 2001-06); average West Bengal residents are poor (gross state domestic product per capita for 2007-08 at Rs 29,457 against the national average of Rs 33,299); high levels of poverty in backward districts (28.6 per cent BPL population).