Spatial and Social Inequalities in Human Development: India in the ...

with that of other Hindus or total population. Importantly, ST-SC gap in urban areas has goneup significantly particularly in metro cities, while the gap in rural areas has remained the same.SCs have done better than other Hindus and Muslims in metro cities but much worse than themin small urban areas.Muslims are at a slightly higher level of consumption compared to SC population in rural areasas also in small and large urban centres, in both the years. In rural areas, their consumptionexpenditure is 95 per cent of the rural average figure in 1993-94 and remains stable over theyears. Muslim-non Muslim gap in rural areas work out as low but go up in urban centres,particularly in metro cities. The low gap in rural areas could be attributed to their being outsideagriculture - into small manufacturing and service activities - where earnings are higher.Unfortunately, Muslims seem to be benefiting the least by shifting to smaller or larger urbancentres relative to the other communities (Table 10), as may be inferred from the low metro torural and urban to rural ratios in Table 10. Importantly, the growth rates in consumption forMuslims are less than the average for other religious groups in all settlement types (Table 11).Furthermore, the divergence between the two is the highest in metro cities, wherein theMuslims saw the lowest growth in consumption during 1993-2009 in relative terms.The non SC/ST Hindus are better off than all other groups except the other religious groups(ORG) that include Christians, Parsis, Buddhists etc., in all settlement categories at both thetime points. The growth in consumption expenditure in case of the former, however, issignificantly below that of the ORG in rural areas and small towns. In metro cities, however, theopposite is the case. On the whole, the upper caste Hindus and non Muslim minority groupshave reported higher levels of consumption in the base year and have also improved theirexpenditure figures over the years much more than the other groups. It is only in metropolitancities that the STs and SCs have been able to benefit relatively more than the generalpopulation. Furthermore, urbanisation improves economic wellbeing of all but the impactvaries across social groups. The maximum benefit comes to STs and upper caste Hindusfollowed by ORG, as one would infer from the ratio of the urban to rural figures (Table 10).Muslims come at the bottom in the context of improvement through movement to urbanareas.Education and HealthIn the context of educational attainment for persons in 25-59 age group, information from thetwo NSS rounds pertaining to 2004-05 and 2009-10 show (Table 12) that there is a high level ofdeprivation for the ST, SC and OBC population, in this order. This is inferred from the high levelof illiteracy among them, two and a half times compared to the general category. Nevertheless,there have been progressive improvements over time in the education level for all socialgroups. Persons in the general category can still be noted as having significantly higher levels ofattainment, compared to ST and SC population in 2009-10. Over 26 percent of the former haveeducation level of higher secondary and above while this percentage figure is only 7 for ST andSC and 12 for the other backward castes. The improvement for the ST during 2004-09 can be31