About Uttar Pradesh

Introduction of Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in the country accounting for 16.4 per cent of the country's population. It is also the fourth largest state in geographical area covering 9.0 per cent of the country's geographical area, encompassing 2, 94,411 square kilometres and comprising of 83 districts, 901 development blocks and 112,804 inhabited villages. The density of population in the state is 473 people per square kilometres as against 274 for the country.

Population

The total population of the state was 8.8 crores in 1971. It increased to 11.1 crores in 1981 and then reported to be 13.9 crores in 1991. The increase, in population in these two decades was almost identical at 25 per cent. As against this, the national population shows a declining trend from 25 per cent in 1971-81 to 23.8 per cent in 1981-91. Since 1971-81 the decadal variation of U.P. population in percentage forms has remained higher than that of the national.

Urbanisation

The pace of urbanisation has been lower in the state. The level of urbanisation has also been lower than most other states. The numbers of urban centres with more than one lakh population have grown slowly over last thirty years. The growth of urban centres with population less than five thousand have, on the other hand, have grown more significantly and these centres have grown in larger numbers in the western part of the state.

The increasing trend of growth in income in the period following 1974 is likely to be replaced by an average annual growth of even less than 3 percent which is much lower that the country's growth rate of almost six per cent. This means that the shortfall in the states per capita income, which was 35 percent in 1994-95, is unlikely to change in recent time.

The structure of state income shows that the contribution of primary sector has declined to 41 percent of the state income though the sector still sustain 73 percent of the total working force. This shows the continued pressure of working population in the primary sector. The share of secondary sector, on the other hand, has gone up to 20 percent of the total state income which now employ 9 percent of the total workers in the state. This percentage is the lowest among all the major Indian states except Bihar (4.6 percent in 1991 census), Madhya Pradesh (8.4 percent in 1991) and Orissa (7.5 percent in 1991). The share of tertiary sector has been more impressive from 25 percent in 1970-71 to 37 percent in 1994-95 and the percentage share of workers employed by this sector has risen from 15 percent to 18 percent in 1991. It thus shows that the U.P.'s growth has been more capital intensive than labour intensive, more urban based than rural based and the shift income from primary to other sectors is not accompanied by corresponding change in employment pattern.

Distinguishing feature of Uttar Pradesh economy is its regional imbalances. In terms of economic indicators like agricultural productivity, infrastructural facilities, industrial growth, the Uttar Pradesh economy can be categorise into five regions; Western, Eastern, Central, Ruhelkhand and Hill. The Western Uttar Pradesh is agriculturally prosperous. It is relatirely industrialised and has seen greater degree of urbanisation. At the other end is Bundelkhand. Low agricultural growth, less number of industrial units, lesser gross value of industrial products marks touts his region as the least developed in the state.

Poverty

Poverty estimation in India is based on (a) the concept of poverty time which is the prescribed minimum calorie intake necessary for a normal human being to survive and (b) size and distribution of population by expenditure obtained from the household consumption surveys conducted by national sample survey. Evidently, the incidence of poverty in the state has fallen from about 57 percent in 1973-74 to 42 percent in 1987-88. The fall in the incidence of poverty is slightly more in the rural areas. However, the numbers of population below the poverty line have increased by 31 take between 1977-78 and 1987-88. This increase is more in the urban area than in the rural area i.e. there has been urbanisation in the root of poverty in Uttar Pradesh during the last two decades. Further, there has been increase in the intensity of poverty in the state over all these years .

Social indicators of Uttar Pradesh

Almost all social indicators of the state show that the state stands on 13th or 14th position among the sixteen major States. Bihar and in some cases Orissa, are the only two states which lag behind U.P. in terms of social development indicators like medical facilities, teacher-pupil ratio in primary schools, birth rate, death rate, infant mortality rate, literacy, per capita income, electrification of villages, per capita power consumption etc. Uttar Pradesh is often seen as a case study of development in a region of India that currently lag behind other parts of the country in terms of a number of important aspects of well being and social progress. Their region consists of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. There are important differences between these four states. But the cause of social backwardness in these four different States, never the less, appear to have much in common and recent comparative research have pointed to many similarities in the social, cultural and even political makeup of these states which have contributed to their backwardness.

Health

Life in Uttar Pradesh is short and uncertain. Female expects to less than 55 years and the under-fire mortality rate is as high as 141 per thousands. In these respects Uttar Pradesh. Resembles Saharan Africa for with 53 years of life expectancy and 160 under five mortality rates. Among all major Indian states, Uttar Pradesh has the highest under five mortality rate, the second highest crude death rate and the third lowest life expectancy figure. The number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the state estimated to be 931 in the mid 1980s. If a girl is born in Kerala she can expect to live 20 years longer than if she is born in Uttar Pradesh. The probability that she will die before the age of one is more than six times as high in Uttar Pradesh as in Kerala. According to the recent National Family Health survey, Uttar Pradesh comes second to Bihar among the major Indian states in terms of the incidence of under nutrition among children below the age of five. This corroborates as well as explains to a large extent the lower possibility of child survival in Uttar Pradesh.

Further, the demographic transition of U.P. has been slow. Among all the major Indian states, Uttar Pradesh has the highest birth rate and the highest fertility rate.

Education

Four states identified as lagging behind other major states in terms of democratic transition turn out to be the four states with the lowest literacy level. The 1991 census indicates that the age literacy rate in these four states in the age group between 7 years and above ranges from 38 percent in Bihar to 44 percent in Madhya Pradesh.

Female literacy situation in Uttar Pradesh is dismal. Only one out of four in the 7+ age group was able to read and write in 1991. This figure go down to 19 per cent for rural areas, 11 per cent for the scheduled castes, 8 per cent for scheduled castes in rural areas, and 8 per cent for the entire rural population in the most educationally backward districts. The 1981 census figures suggest that in Uttar Pradesh the crude female literacy rate among scheduled castes in rural Uttar Pradesh in 1981 was below 18 per cent in 18 out of Uttar Pradesh 56 districts and below 2.5 per cent in a majority of districts.

In terms of more demanding criteria of educational attainment on the completion of primary or secondary education, in Uttar Pradesh, in 1992-93 only 50 percent of literate males and 40 per cent of literate females could complete the cycle of eight years of schooling involved in the primary and middle stages. One other distinguishing feature of Uttar Pradesh education system is the persistence of high level of illiteracy in the younger age group. Within the younger age group, the illiteracy was endemic in rural. In the late 1980s, the incidence of illiteracy in the 10-14 age groups was as high as 32 percent for rural males and 61 per cent for rural females, and more than two-thirds of all rural girls in the 12-14 age groups never went to school.

The problems of Education system is exacting, Due to public apathy the school are in disarray, privately run school are functional, but beyond the reach of ordinary people. The State government has taken programmes to make the population totally literate. There are special programmes like World Bank aided DPEP. Steps are being taken with the help of NGOs and other organizations to raise popular participation. At the level of higher education and technical education Uttar Pradesh has 16 general universities, 3 technical universities, one Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), one Indian Institute of Management (Lucknow), one Indian Institute of Information Technology and large number polytechnics, engineering institutes and industrial training institutes. This provides the State with firm basis for providing opportunities for higher education to its youth.