REGIONAL SPREAD OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN ORISSA: AN INTER-DISTRICT ANALYSIS

The above trend in IMR in different districts vis-à-vis other demographic parameters suggest that IMR of different districts are either not computed properly or there is some problem in data collection related to birth and mortality data of infants. The Government of Orissa published the Human Development Report of Orissa in 2005. In this Report, Human Development indices of 30 districts are computed. Different components of Human Development Index are computed in Orissa Human Development Report (HDR Orissa). The National Human Development Report prepared by the Planning commission has taken life expectancy at age one, and infant mortality rate , with the weight 0.65 and 0.35 respectively to arrive at the health indices of different states of India. In the case of Orissa HDR the health indices are computed taking Infant Mortality Rate of different districts. One important and genuine contribution of Orissa HDR is the Reproductive Health Index (RHI). For all the districts RHI have been computed taking six reproductive health parameter of the women as discussed in the beginning of the essay. Further empirically it has also been verified the strong influence of female literacy on IMR. If we look into the relationship in the table below for many of the district’s the established relationship between the variables is not there. The basic purpose of preparation of Human Development Report is to know whether the benefit of economic progress is getting translated in to better quality of life or not. In the second category of the districts female literacy is more than 50 percent. Here CBR ranges in between 18.8 (Jagatsingpur) and 24.8 (Bhadrak), and TFR in between 2.3 (Jagatsingpur) and 2.9 (Bhadrak and Angul). In eight districts IMR is more than 90.