Udupi Garners CM's Praise for high HDI

Udupi's growth accredited in the 'Human Development Report' II Photo Courtesy : Suraj C

Bangalore/Udupi: On Jan 12th, the Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa released 'Karnataka Human Development Reports 2008' of Gulbarga, Bijapur, Mysore and Udupi districts, making Karnataka the fourth state in line after West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan to prepare District Human Development Reports. The first State-level report was released in 1999 when J H Patel was the Chief Minister, and the second in 2006 under JD (S)-BJP coalition government headed by then chief Minister, H D Kumaraswamy.

The report praised in particular the performance of the Udupi district.  The district Human Development  Index (HDI) of Udupi for 2006 worked out to 0.762, which was 6.7 per cent higher than the 2001 reports. The annual average improvement in health index during the last five years (2001 to 2006) worked out to 2.38, as against 0.41 per cent average annual growth witnessed during the decade of 1990s. The education index stood at 0.880, health at 0.798 and income at 0.608 in 2006.

The district performed exceptionally in the field of education due to efforts of private initiatives, the report said. As per the 2001 census, the district’s literacy rate was 81 per cent against the state-average of 66 per cent. Suresh Jogi (42), a resident of Udupi and a businessman by profession said, "in the past few years Udupi's growth in particular can be accredited to better roads, infrastructure and a strong private education sector."

Karnataka is one of the states covered under the Centre and United Nations Developement Project (UNDP) assisted project of strengthening State Plans for Human Development. The project, which was initiated in 2005, concluded in December, 2009.

Cheif Minister B S Yeddyurappa said that a decision has been taken to include five more districts - Raichur, Davangere, Bidar, Chitradurga and Chamarajangara - for the preparation of reports. All these districts have low HDI. It was proposed to extend preparation of district human development reports to all the remaining districts during the XI plan.

Bijapur: The Bijapur District Human Development Report mentioned that all the five taluks of the district have remained backward in terms of income and human development. The HDI for the district, which was prepared in 2006, was 0.630, life expectancy index was 0.669, education was 0.702, gender was 0.619 and income index was 0.520, the report said.

Gulbarga: The Gulbarga district is at the bottom of the HDI, ranking 26th among districts of the State. Nine of the 10 districts included in the reports fell in the "most backward. category. The HDI for the district, which was prepared in 2006, has increased from 0.564 in 2001 to 0.590 in 2006, an increase of 4.6 per cent. The Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was being implemented successfully to provide secured livelihood.

Mysore: The Mysore district’s HDI was 0.681 in 2006 against 0.631 in 2001. The education index of the district was 0.713 in 2006, income and health indexes stood at 0.593 and .0737, respectively. It is stated in the 2001 report that the district ranking 7th in the income scale, slides down to the 14th place in the Karnataka HDI. The district has not been able to transform its increased income to better the lives of the people, the report said.

According to the HDI report (2006), the State now ranks seventh in the country in the Human Development and sixth in the Gender Development Index (GDI).

Sub-Edited by: Aditya Ramachandran