Inter-district disparities in socio-economic development in Kerala

Abstract

The level of socio-economic development of different districts of Kerala was estimated with the help of composite index of development based on forty two socio-economic variables combined in an optimum manner. All the fourteen districts of the State were included in the study. The study utilised data for the year 1991-92 on forty two socio-economic indicators out of which seventeen indicators were directly concerned with agricultural development, five indicators depicted the progress of development in the industrial sector and the rest twenty indicators presented the level of development in infrastructural service sector. The district of Thrissur was found to rank fIrst and that of Wayanad was the last in the overall socio-economic development. The level of development was examined separately for agricultural, industrial and infrastructural service sectors. The variation in the level of development in industrial sector was observed to be of higher order as compared to the variation in agricultural and infrastructural service sectors. Positive significant association was found between the levels of development in agricultural and industrial sectors indicating that the growth and progress of agriculture and industry had been going hand in hand in the State. The better developed seven districts covered about 43 per cent area and 58 per cent population where as poorly developed five districts covered about 44 per cent area and 29 per cent population. For bringing about uniform regional development in the State, model districts for the poorly developed districts had been identified and the potential targets for various indicators had been estimated. The study revealed that the low developed districts required improvements of various dimensions in almost all the indicators for enhancing their level of overall socio-economic development.