National Human Development Report: 2001 - Indira Gandhi Institute ...

NATIONAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2001 ECONOMIC ATTAINMENTS AND WELL-BEING 45In terms of population segments, about 28 per cent of Scheduled Castehouseholds and over 45 per cent of Scheduled Tribe households as againstnearly 21 per cent of other households had no access to these services. AtState level, nearly half the households of Orissa and Meghalaya and aroundone-third of the households in Assam, Bihar, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh,Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh had no access to any of these facility. In case ofPunjab and some smaller States, the corresponding proportion was between2 to 5 per cent. On the other hand, less than one-sixth of the households inthe country had access to all the three amenities within their premises. Theproportion was 4 per cent in case of rural areas and 50 per cent in case ofurban areas. Even in case of urban Punjab, only two-thirds of the householdshad accessibility to all three amenities at their premises.Road ConnectivityA good road connectivity of habitations, particularly of rural areas,with sub-divisional towns and district headquarters, is often the primarymeans of supplementing the public effort directed at providing basic healthand educational services, as well as infrastructural support for production,trade and commerce at the local village level. In many cases, particularly insparsely populated areas and towns with large hinterland, good roadconnectivity may altogether obviate the need for public provisioning of someof these services in each and every village and, at the same time, help forgedurable economic linkages of such habitations with rest of the economy.Road connectivity is, therefore, a useful indicator of ‘inclusionary’ aspect ofdevelopment process and, perhaps, reach of the market as well. It isparticularly relevant in the Indian context where over 70 per cent of thepopulation continues to live in rural areas and where over 50 per cent ofvillages with population of less than 1000 are yet to be connected by roads.The Planning Commission has been tabulating data on State levelcoverage of roads. The coverage of all categories of roads, both surfaced andnon-surfaced including, National Highways, State Highways, District andrural roads has been improving in terms of area as well as population serviced,at a faster pace in the nineties than in the eighties. The road length perhundred square kilometres has increased at the national level from about 45kilometres in 1981 and 61 kilometres in 1991 to about 75 kilometres in 1997.During the same period, road length per million population has increasedfrom 21.68 kilometres to 25.82 kilometres. There are wide differences in thecoverage of roads at State level. Among the major States, Kerala had thehighest road length per hundred square kilometres. It was nearly 268kilometres in 1981 and 375 kilometres in 1997. Tamil Nadu closely followedby Punjab with about 35 per cent of Kerala’s road coverage were the next bestStates it terms of road coverage per hundred square kilometres. Kerala’s roadcoverage has created a rural-urban continuum that has been often cited as afactor behind its unique attainments on human and other indicators ofdevelopment. Orissa and Maharashtra have significantly improved theirrespective coverage of roads during the nineties. In case of road coverage permillion population, Orissa had the highest coverage at 45 kilometres in 1981followed by Kerala at about 41 kilometres. It increased considerably in Orissa