Telangana: Inequalities persist across social divide

Hyderabad: In the business front in Telangana, inequalities still persist across districts, rural-urban areas, caste groups, gender groups and occupational groups. 

As the business-as-usual approach does not suit Telangana state, the state planning department on Friday released the Telangana Human Development Report 2017 at a function organised on the occasion of Telangana Formation Day. 

The report said that the impact of the continuation of the policies of the undivided state in the future had been assessed through the estimated Human Development Index (HDI) for 2015 across the districts, on the basis of the rates of improvement in the components of the HDI between 2004 and 2012.  

The report said that continuation of the undivided state’s policies would not bring any significant shift in the patterns of human development and therefore it would not enable the TS to address the concerns in this regard. 

Hence, significant changes were required in public policies and related programmes in relation to human development, it said. 

The report noted that there had been an improvement in the HDI across all the districts of TS during the period under consideration. 

Gender inequalities had declined across the districts. Gaps in human development across caste groups (SCs, STs, OBCs and OCs) had declined in Telangana. Similarly, inequalities across the occupational groups also declined in the rural as well as the urban areas of Telangana. 

The HDI of urban Muslims, which constituted 75 per cent of the total Muslim population, was lower than the state average of urban Telangana during all the timeframes, though the total HDI (urban + rural) as well as the rural HDI of Muslims was higher than the respective state averages.

In the higher economic growth context of TS, the relationship between economic growth and improvements in human development was found to have weakened. 

Further, in spite of the economic growth, corresponding improvements had not taken place in the educational and health status of households across the districts. 

The report said that it was also clear that the districts with lower economic growths had been able to achieve higher improvement in human development in the context where the growth in human development was closely connected with economic growth through growth in labour productivity. 

The report said that the available evidence showed that the allocation of funds had not been made on the basis of the level of demand for the allocation of funds under social services. Similarly, funds under economic services were inadequately allocated to increase the growth in labour productivity. The allocation of these funds had not been properly prioritized across the districts in Telangana. 

The allocation of funds to the districts for financing human development should have been based on a need-specific decentralised method in contrast to whatever method was followed earlier. 

 In the education sector, the report said that parents had responded positively to the policies of the government to enrol children in government schools.

The report said that the policy framework of the TS government had to be related to the concerns emerging from the analysis to have a greater impact.