Abstract
Chapter 2 Review of Literature
2.2 Study on Rural-Urban Divide
(Provision of Urban amenities in Rural Areas) etc. have been introduced on experimental basis for better rural-urban linkages. According to the former President APJ Abdul Kalam (in his address on National Technology Day, 2003), four critical connectivity can bridge the gap between rural and urban areas and can create a rural-urban continuum in India: physical connectivity, by providing good roads, transport services and quality power; electronic connectivity, by providing reliable communication networks; knowledge connectivity, by establishing more professional institutions and vocational training centers, schools with high quality infrastructure, devoted teachers, production centers for rural artisans, primary health centers, recreation centers etc. and market connectivity, that will help realise the best value for the products and services of rural people, and constantly expand and enrich employment opportunities for them.
In Meghalaya, the linkage of the urban areas can be seen as being of two types: (i) with the neighbouring villages having a dominating effect and (ii) with the rest of the national economy with dependence (Chakravarty, 1991). Borah (1985) and Barthakur (1988) studied the rural-urban interactions/linkages in Assam from spatial point of view. According to Barthakur (1988) one of the major dimensions for the immediate socio-economic uplift of the rural masses is to use agricultural land intensively and diversification of agricultural activities with minimum use of land. Another study worth mentioning in this regard is by Saikia (1995) who studied the impact of urban centre on rural economy in Assam. He found that the nearby villages of the urban centre are comparatively more benefitted.
interactions in China. Hirasuna and Stinson (2005) examined rural-urban differences in welfare policies in the state of Minnestoa, USA. The methodology included constructing descriptive statistics, calculating Kaplan-Meier estimates, and performing a Cox Regression analysis. The ratio of per capita disposable income of urban households to rural households in China was recorded at 3.23:1 in 2010 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2011). In a study done in Korea, it is suggested that multiple issues along with the rural-urban divide can be addressed by bringing together different levels of government-local, regional, municipal, and rural (UNDP, 2000). Choubey and Choubey (1998) estimated the rural-urban disparity in literacy in India. According to Datta (2004), there is sharp increase in rural-urban disparities in India after decades of planned development. Sharma and Das (2005) examined rural-urban divide in India during 90’s in poverty and deprivation and found that the living standards in rural areas lag far behind those in urban areas. Economic reforms could not benefit rural and urban economies uniformly; rather it has deepened the gulf between the two (Smith, 2003; Thakur, 2006; Patnaik, 2006; Kurian, 2007). According to Patnaik (2006), the gap between rural and urban areas which was substantial prior to the introduction of economic reforms in India has increased in post-reform period. However, the report of National Institute of Urban Affairs (2011) says that although not enough effort has been put in to build synergies between the urban and the rural parts of the economy, there is evidence that rising standards of living in India’s urban areas in the post-reform period have had significant distributional effects favouring the country’s rural poor. Suryanarayan (2009) has estimated intra-state economic disparities in Karnataka and Maharashtra by using some order-based measures like coefficient of income distribution, inclusive coefficient and mean elasticity of median. The issue is examined in five states of India, namely, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Orissa and Punjab by Dubey (2009) with the help of three indicators, viz., consumption, income inequality and incidence of poverty.
There are various literatures regarding rural-urban disparity in different aspects of development like health, education, employment etc. According to ICRIER Report (2003), availability of health care services in rural India is much lower than that in urban India. Since more than 70 per cent of the Indian population live in rural areas, variations in the performances of rural health
systems in different states get reflected in the overall health outcomes of the country. Higher public health expenditure is clearly and unequivocally associated with better health outcomes, and thus productivity, especially in a poor country.
Therefore, challenge for equal accessibility of health care services raises serious questions for the policy-makers. A study carried out by Duggal and Amin (1989) shows that although more than 70 per cent people live in rural areas, 70 per cent of government expenditure on health is spent in urban areas and remaining 30 per cent is spent in rural areas. They found that only Rs. 16 was annual per capita expenditure for rural areas against Rs. 111 annual per capita expenditure for urban areas. In addition to this, municipal bodies spend about Rs. 50 per city person per annum. Therefore the total government expenditure is Rs. 161 per city person per year against only Rs.16 per village person per year. The government expenditure per person in rural areas was only one tenth of the same person in urban areas showing urban bias in government expenditure on health in the country (Sarma, 2004). As reported in the Assam Human Development Report, 2003, with 87.1 per cent people living in rural area (as stated by the Census of 2001), there is vast rural-urban divide in accessing the health care services in the state. In 2009, the infant mortality was 55 for rural India and 64 for rural Assam as compared to 34 in urban India and 37 for urban Assam (Registrar General of India, 2011).
Education is considered as the most important instrument of beneficent social change and development in any country. Aicha Bah-Diallo, Deputy Assistant Director General of UNESCO’s Education Sector, said “In many cases, legislators don’t assess rightfully the importance of education for rural people in the development of their countries”. This indifference towards rural people is the result of a strong urban bias on the part of politicians and policy makers (UNESCO, 2003). In developing countries like India there is critical gap in educational attainments across regions, and population segments (Copal Partners, 2007; Panwar, 2011). The largest disparity in educational attainment in India is by rural-urban location (Bajpai and Goyal, 2004). According to Census data, only 46 per cent of females in rural areas were literate as opposed to nearly 73 per cent in urban areas in 2001, a gap of around 27 percentage points. For males, the gap is lower at around 15 percentage points with 71.1 per cent of males in the rural areas and 86.4 per cent in the urban areas being literate in 2001.
Equity in education by gender, caste and socio-economic groups has been the major objectives of educational planning in India (Tilak, 2006). The under investment in education and inter and intra-sectoral pattern of allocation of resources is found to be a source of imbalances in the development of education in the country (Tilak, 2006). Moreover, there is disparity in the allocation of scarce resources between the rural and urban areas (Tilak, 2006). As noticed by Mazumdar (2007), “the most revealing aspect of the various school- related statistics presented here (in a survey) is the stark reality of inequality in public spending….For example, …a clear difference in the provision of teachers in rural and urban areas”. It is not only the financial resources, but a strong political will that is lacking in this regard (Dreze and Sen, 1995). ‘Elementary Education in India, 2005-06-An Analytical Report’ included a unique Education Development Index (EDI) which ranks the states of India according to elementary provision (the variables asserted to compute EDI are: access, infrastructure, teachers and learning outcomes) and Assam occupied 17th position among the 21 major states. The rural- urban difference in annual average expenditure per student pursuing general education, which was Rs. 506 in rural areas and Rs. 1380 in urban areas in 1995-96 in Assam (NSSO, 1998), has increased as the annual average expenditure per student becomes Rs. 1639 in rural areas and Rs. 4657 in 2007-08 in the state (NSSO, 2010).
Economic development has been redefined in terms of reduction in poverty, inequality and unemployment (Sharma, 2004; Radhakrishna and Rao, 2006). The critics of economic reforms described the process of economic liberalisation as that of ‘jobless growth’ (Datt, 2002). It has not only slowed down of the employment generation and raised inequality that causes serious concern but also the rural-urban disparity within the country that raises questions for sustainability of the high growth of the country. Employment growth rate nearly halved between the two periods 1983-93 and 1993-99 in India and much of the employment expansion occurred in urban areas in the latter period from 1993 to 1999 - employment grew at 0.67 per cent in rural areas and 2.40 per cent in urban areas (Radhakrishna and Rao, 2006). Occupational diversification of the workforce has been taking place during the last few decades: the shifts were more from low productive primary sector to high productive services and manufacturing.
It is therefore clear that in this competitive regime and scarce job market, only highly qualified people are getting jobs. The people of the rural sector are lagging far behind in this competitive world. Policy-makers invested huge resources to create advanced institutes of education and research. However, these institutions are all located in urban areas and are likely to benefit the urban population more. The rural population is at a disadvantage due to the growing need for English language skills in many service sector jobs as well as the emergence of highly skill-intensive employment opportunities (Banik and Bhaumik, 2006).
The unemployment problem in the state continued to be a matter of serious concern. As per result of 60th Round of NSS during the year 2004 the number of unemployed per 1000 persons by broad usual activity in Assam were 18 persons in rural areas and 24 persons in urban areas against 9 persons and 19 persons in rural and urban areas respectively at national level. This clearly shows the greater dimension of unemployment in the state in comparison with the country as a whole (Government of Assam, 2006-07).