The third debt and investment survey which looks at the assets and liabilities of households brought out by the NSSO show the vast differences in household assets across the country. Average assets of households in rural India in 2012 was Rs 10 lakhs which is just about half the average assets of the households in urban India which stood at Rs 22.8 lakh.

But what is striking than the rural urban disparities is the differences in average household assets across the states. Average assets of households in Orissa, which was the poorest state, was only Rs 2.8 lakh which is less than one tenth of the Rs 46.1 lakh owned by the rural household in Haryana. Similarly in the urban sector, where Odisha remained the poorest state, its household asset of Rs 7.8 lakh was less than one fifth of the average asset of Rs 43.3 lakh possessed by urban households in Maharashtra, the richest state. This shows that disparities in household assets across states are substantially higher in the rural sector than in the urban one.

However, the new debt and investment survey numbers also show that the richest states in the country are going through a churn. Four states which have the richest households in both rural and urban sectors in the current decade are Haryana, Punjab, Kerala and Maharashtra. They together with Gujarat had the maximum assets in rural areas. In the urban sector these four states were joined by Punjab in the five top rankings.

And the disparities in the wealth of households in the rich and poor states are showing contrasting trends in the rural and urban sectors. For instance in the rural sector Haryana which was ranked first with the highest household assets both in 1991 and 2012 saw the average wealth of its household go up from three times the national average in 1991 to more than four times in 2012.

However, in the urban sector the disparities in wealth of households were more stable. Assets of urban households in Punjab, the richest state in 1991, was close to double that of the national average. In 2012 assets of rural households in Maharashtra, which has emerged as the richest state, was also almost two times as large as the national average.

The most recent numbers show that the five states with the richest households with the maximum assets in the rural areas now are Haryana (Rs 46 lakhs), Punjab (Rs 42 lakhs), and Kerala (Rs 27 lakh). Gujarat (Rs 18 lakh) and Maharashtra (Rs 11 lakh) in that order. In the urban sector the states with the richest households include Maharashtra (Rs 43 lakh), Kerala (Rs 40 lakh), Haryana (Rs 36 lakh), Assam (Rs 28 lakh) and Punjab (Rs 26 lakh).

But what is more significant than the current ranking is the trends across time. In fact the numbers for 1991 and 2012 show that the relative assets of households as a share of the national average has fallen in many states. In the rural sector these states include Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In contrast the assets of rural households as a proportion of the national average has gone up in states like Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu.

In the case of urban segment the states where assets of rural households as a ratio of the national average has shrunk include Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In contrast the average size of urban household assets as a ratio of the national average has gone up in the states of Assam, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Thus one can safely conclude that the highest improvement in household assets in both rural and urban sectors during the last two decades were in the five states of Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.