Chances are that the optic fibre cable to be laid along with Mission Bhagiratha pipeline will have internet within the reach of the poor much before poverty and its ills are eradicated from their habitations in the four districts which had constituted undivided Adilabad until a few months ago. Decades of neglect has left Kumram Bheem Asifabad, Adilabad, Nirmal and Mancherial districts at the bottom of the human development index brought out by the Telangana government’s Planning Department.
According to a brief note by the Department, the indicators would be refined in the coming days and more would be added. It is certainly the need of the hour to understand the challenges posed by poverty and take the long overdue corrective steps.
Against the State’s average of 0.47 on a scale of 0.00 to 1.00, KB Asifabad logged a pathetic 0.13 ranking last among the 31 districts in terms of human development while Adilabad, Nirmal and Mancherial are not far behind registering 0.23, 0.25 and 0.27 respectively. Only Nagarkurnool with 0.21 is worst than the latter three.
The HDI is a summary measure of average achievement, the indicators being life expectancy, education and per capita income of a given place. It was initiated by the United Nations Development Programme in 1990 to cause human-centric development.
The government calculated the indices based on the 2011 Census, data from Rural Health Statistics bulletin 2012 and National Family Health Survey- 4. Interestingly, the government seems to have ignored the data generated by the Samagra Kutumba Survey or Integrated Household Survey of 2014.
In terms of health and life expectancy, the four districts stand at the bottom with KA Asifabad recording 0.13, Nirmal and Adilabad recording 0.14 and Mancherial 0.14 against the State’s 0.39. In the case of living standards, KB Asifabad recorded a miserable 0.4 with Adilabad placed 30th recording 0.16, Nirmal 0.30 and Mancherial 0.34 against the State’s 0.45.
Thanks to the untiring efforts of some of the officers heading Utnoor’s Integrated Tribal Development Agency, the situation in these districts in terms of education is not as bad. Against the State’s 0.60 in the District Knowledge Dimension Index, Adilabad stands 8th logging 0.57, KB Asifabad stands at 13 with 0.46, Nirmal at 18 with 0.39 and Mancherial at 20 recording 0.38 on the index.
