Hopefully Uttarakhand can follow Himachal Pradesh, but it is ravaged by national parties as of now, best case scenario, the new youth leadership of UKD actually wins and does some work
Uttarakhand will not develop unless there are incentives to invest outside of Dehradun.
HP doesn't have a "Dehradun", which means local netas have an incentive to invest in their zilla instead of hoarding cash and real estate in a major hub. Thus, Himachal benefited from a Pharma and Food Processing industrial policy in the 1990s-2000s that industrialized the rural area around Baddi and Una, and a lot of other smaller food processing and light manufacturing industries across lower Himachal.
Also, Uttarakhand has too few MLAs for the size of population. UK has 70 MLAs but 10 million people, but HP has 68 MLAs with 6.5 million people. This means UK MLAs are much more divorced from local panchayats compared to in HP.
There is a good case study about this at Harvard Business School [0]
Agree on the point of Dehradun, as for the number of MLA's, that is due to the growing concerns of the native Pahadi population. The plain regions of Uttarakhand have been settled by desi people in recent decades and due to the difference in population density and fertility rates, their population is growing more and more. Now the Pahadi people have genuine concerns that everything they fought for during the Uttarakhand Movement will go to waste. And this is already happening, the finance minister of Uttarakhand abused pahadi people in the Vidhan Sabha, thankfully due to many protests, he has resigned. But if plain regions get majority seats, it would give approx 18% of UK the right to govern the entire region!
