The same district can have one of the country’s most developed sub-districts as well as one of the most backward, the first assessment of the level of development of India’s sub-districts has revealed.
Sanchita Bakshi, Young Professional with the former Planning Commission, Arunish Chawla, Joint Secretary (Expenditure) with the Ministry of Finance, and Mihir Shah Secretary, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, and a former member of the Planning Commission, analysed the levels of development of India’s 640 districts and 5955 sub-districts. To measure the extent of backwardness, they looked at five indicators – agricultural workers as a proportion of all workers, the female literacy rate, access to electricity, access to water and sanitation and access to banking. They published their findings in the first week of January in the Economic and Political Weekly.
Ms. Bakshi and her colleagues found that in 27 districts across the country, there were sub-districts that made it to both the top ten per cent of Indian sub-districts, as well as those that made it to the bottom ten per cent. Similarly, there were 92 districts that had sub-districts which made it to the top 20 per cent and bottom 20 per cent, and 166 which were in the top 30 per cent and bottom 30 per cent. They called these India’s “polarised districts”.
One factor systematically common to the least developed sub-districts across the country was the presence of Scheduled Tribes (STs). “As is well known, on all indicators of development it is the scheduled tribes who are the worst off. But when we look at where these STs live, we find that, outside the north-east, they tend to be concentrated in certain pockets of the country,” Ms. Bakshi explained. “If you look at the 100 most backward sub-districts of the country you find that almost three-quarters of the population in these areas is tribal..This trend of overwhelming tribal concentration in the most backward sub-districts of the country is very evident in our data set,” she explained.
The pockets of backwardness Ms. Bakshi and her colleagues found also suggest then that research and policy focussed on identifying backward districts may end up missing more than it finds. “We clearly need to go beyond districts if we want to capture backwardness in India,” Mr. Shah said. “The really interesting question on the development model is: is the very process of development in some areas creating these pockets of underdevelopment? Typically many of these tribal areas are mineral rich, with a lot of mining operations generating economic activity and development in a few pockets. Why then are the tribals living in these very districts so poor? Is this
co-existence of development and backwardness, two sides of the same coin?” he asked.
Which are India’s most developed sub-districts? A combination of some of its smallest ones, where services can presumably be delivered more easily, those in Kerala, and those located in its biggest cities, the data shows.
