Wide gap between higher and lower ranked districts

The best performers among backward districts have development indicators better than the national average

The NITI Aayog has helped draft the first-ever list of 115 backward districts in the country. The second of a two-part series focuses on the degree of backwardness of these districts

An interesting — and intuitive — characteristic of the list of 115 backward districts is that the top-ranked — worst-off — districts on all parameters belong to northern states, while the best performers among the backward districts are spread across the country. 

Warangal district in Telangana, Narmada district in Gujarat, East Sikkim district in Sikkim, and Kiphire in Nagaland perform the best among the laggards on health, infrastructure, education,  and prosperity (poverty). 

Surprisingly, the averages of development indicators for India as a whole lie between the best and the worst among the backward districts (see charts). As a result, the gap between the best and worst among the backward districts is suggestive of the diversity in India’s development. The reason for including relatively well-off districts on the backward districts list is that even the most developed regions in India are under-developed by global standards. 

The list has exclusion errors — meaning all backward districts in, say, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh do not find a place in it — but it does not have any inclusion error. Any district, though better than the Indian average, has some degree of underdevelopment, which needs to be addressed, NITI Aayog officials say. 

Stunting — low height for age — and wasting — low weight for height — among children and the availability of antenatal care to pregnant women were the indicators used to devise the health index. Paschimi Singhbhum in Jharkhand fares the worst on the health parameter, with 60 per cent of its children stunted and 38 per cent of its children wasted.

“Most areas in the district are inaccessible due to forests and hilly terrain, due to which no doctors are willing to visit the interiors. We are coming up with a programme that will pay doctors visiting Paschimi Singhbhum a bonus over and above the stipulated amount,” Kripanand Jha, mission director of the National Health Mission in Jharkhand, told Business Standard. The best performer among the laggards on the health index is Warangal, whose indicators are better than the national average. 


 

 

 

The percentage of households with manual casual labour as the main source of household income has been used as a proxy for calculating the poverty index. While Khagaria district in Bihar has 79 per cent of households earning their livelihood through manual labour, only three per cent households in Kiphire in Nagaland depend on manual labour, representing relative prosperity. On average, 50 per cent of rural households in India depend on manual labour for their main source of income.

Khagaria district ranks poorest after Saharsa in Bihar, according to a 2010 report by Jeevika, a poverty alleviation initiative of the Bihar government. In terms of education, East Sikkim district performs the best with an elementary school drop-out rate of one per cent, meaning only one student among 100 drops out between Class 1 and Class 5. The district has one teacher per eight children in primary schools. 

Mewat in Haryana is the worst on the education index. One-fourth of its primary school children drop out of school before Class 5, one of the worst in India. “The state has filled vacancies of 44,000 primary teachers this year in a bid to tackle the deficit in education,” said Krishna Kumar Khandelwal, who heads the directorate of elementary education in Haryana. 

“We are running a novel scheme called Saksham, wherein a student’s learning levels are recorded regularly and shortcomings are addressed in a targeted manner,” he added. 

While there is a teacher for 32 students in elementary schools in Mewat, the national average is a teacher for 24 students at elementary level. 

The first part appeared on December 21. Series concludes