Some Aspects of Inter District Disparities in Tamil Nadu.

7Dharmapuri, Dindigul and Perambalur, which have a per capita incomeslightly higher than Rs. 10, 000 also fall in this category.We have also utilized the literacy rates for 2001 published recentlyby the Director of Census Operation, Tamil Nadu and recalculated thehuman development indices and named them as HDI-1 (see Column 11in Table 3). The computed value for the state is 0.643 (the earlier HDIis 0.636). We have found a high positive correlation between the HDIand HDI-1 (0.94). The rankings of the districts are more or less thesame in both measures. However, the ranks of a few districts changedrastically due to wide variations in the literacy rates. For instances,Cuddalore obtains 17 th rank in HDI–1 instead of 25 th rank (in HDI),while Ramanathapuram obtains 24 th instead of 15 th rank. Nagapattinamhas the 11 th rank instead of 17 th while Theni has the 25 th rank instead of18 th rank. Since the components of HDI–1 refer to different years, theHDI-1 is not comparable. Hence, we use the HDI for our comparisonsbelow.Linkages between Economic and Human Development:While it has been argued that better human development could leadto more healthy and qualified labor force and hence to higherproductivity (e.g. Anand and Sen, 2000), it is common experience thatgood economic performance has not always led to a good HDI. Infact, India has done much better in terms of income growth than interms of human development. In respect of the districts of Tamil Nadu,we find a rather close association between low income and poor humandevelopment performance, though it is not clear which is the cause andwhich is the effect.As pointed out earlier, all the low-income districts (in the thirdcategory) except Sivagangai have low HDI value (below 0.6). EvenSivaganagai has an HDI value only 0.61. However, Dindigul,Dharmapuri and Perambalur that are in the middle group in terms of