POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY TN

In order to focus on the deficient districts in respect of critical indicators of
achievement, we need to focus on relative deficiencies. For this purpose, an index of
relative deficiency can be used to highlight the spatial dimensions of needed priorities in
designing a suitable strategy for MDGs based poverty reduction.
Table 4.2 converts the data of Table 4.1 in terms of an index of deficiency for
highlighting those districts which are the lowest in terms of the selected indicators as well
as the extent by which they fall below the average value of the concerned indicators.
This index is defined as follows:
Index of Deficiency = (maximum - actual for a district) / average for Tamil Nadu
Thus, for any indicator, I, the index is given by (I max - I i) / Ia
where, I max = maximum index value among all districts, I i = the index value of the
concerned district, and I a = average value for all districts.
An index of deficiency is useful for augmenting allocation efficiency in various
expenditures under different programmes where district-wise allocation is in the hands of
the state government. It is expected that for efficiency gains, inter-district allocation of
resources should bear a high positive correlation with the index of deficiency. The higher
the deficiency the higher the index of deficiency for a district, the higher should be its
allocation. Two general points are: efficiency gains are larger, if the spread in an index of
deficiency around the average is larger when allocation of expenditures are aligned to the
index of inter-district deficiency for specific indicators, and two, higher efficiency gains
will result when different programmes addressing different needs (in respect of
education, health, income, and gender) use specific indices of deficiency rather than
using composite indices which have been weighted in some arbitrary manner. This is so
because the order of districts with different indicators of deficiencies varies considerably
across indicators.
These indices are prepared for four indicators, life expectancy at birth, literacy
rate, gross enrolment ratio, and real per capita gross district domestic product. Table 4.2
gives the ten most deficient districts in respect of each of the four indicators. Appendix
Table 4.1 provides similar information for all the districts. It can be observed that the
range of variation relative to the average for the selected indicators is quite different. For
example, in the case of PCGDDP the range varies from 0-110. In the case of GER, the
range varies from 0-19. As such, the inter-district differences relative to the average are
lowest for GER, LEB, followed by literacy rate. This indicates that while the government
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