Where did I go wrong ?

By here "I" mean my home state in North.

Today South and West of India is making rapid progress and already leads, while North and East have remained laggard, there must be something which North (and east) has done terribly wrong , whereas the others did right to come to this situation.

Generally opinions point out that whereas South invested heavily in education with particular emphasis on female literacy, North neglected it since independence, indeed it can be said that while South invested wisely in social sector (health, education) and in general acted pro-actively on social reforms, North (perhaps willfully) shunned the path to social emancipation.
Here is my dilemma, assuming that post independence the quality of leaders both south and north got were same (a reasonable assumption considering both were ruled by Congress), why did leaders in North did not have the foresight to do what needed to be done.

First explanation that I have seen put up is perhaps, that South is genetically superior to North.
If that is true then unfortunately my state is doomed and discussion end right here.

However if that is not so and the above reason is more in line of North- South malice (Ah ! What is life without a little dash of malice), what then are the reasons.

One reason that Rajeev put forward was that original Indic culture of North was swept away by Turkish and afghan (or Islamic) invasion, which will explain it's backwardness.

While this reason may explain predominance of folk culture in North as opposed to Classic culture in South, I am not sure it does explain the economic backwardness of North for the reason that Gujarat bore as much brunt, if not more than North, of Islamic invasion and yet it is one of the most progressive state in India (here a distinction can be made because Gujarat was a prominent trade centre since times ancient and hence privy to new Ideas, but even North was not totally insulated to world).

One reason that I can think of is that of different land revenue system employed by Mughals and British (Zamindari in North vs. Ryots in South) and resulting asymmetry in power and social inequality and oppression, however I am not sure about this as I have not read anything of significance about land ownership. But at any rate I think social inequality is more pronounced in North than in South.

The other reason could be that politics in North was entirely socialist (with the exception of Jan Sangh which was most of the times a marginal player). I am not an expert on politics south of Vindhyas (except for a cursory knowledge ) and while it had socialist leaders (Nijlingappa and Kamraj), I will like to think that it was less obsessed with socialism (except for Kerala) than North.

Yet another reason may be that while social reform in south and west continued well into 20th century, in North it was co-opted in freedom struggle by initially Nationalists and later Mahatma with a result that reform in North could not be realized as much as it was realized in South.

Or it could be that North is seduced by power for its own sake (as this article may suggest). It might be true , as despite not from a particularly politically aware family, inexplicably I along with my friend circle were fascinated by political power and intrigue since early teens(in fact one of my childhood dreams was to be in politics, which is unusual for a child) . Even today , most of the small town gossip is related to latest power intrigue, whether at corporate level or state level or national level.

Identity politics as practiced in North is not observed in South.
Is it then our morbid fascination with power will explain our failure ? In that case shouldn't popular cliche about "power corrupts" be extended to include that even siren song of power and not the actual exercise of power makes for a dismal failure.