What is more worrisome is that among persons of age 15-29 years only about 2 percent are reported to have received formal vocational training and another 8 percent are reported to have received non-formal vocational training. Eleventh Five Year Plan Draft says that the proportion of trained youth is one of the lowest in the world.

SPATIAL/REGIONAL VARIATIONS

There are very significant regional variations in development. They manifest in the form of differences in demographic and economic characteristics of populations of different states. For example, while the state of Kerala as female literacy rate of 87.7 percent, Bihar has a female literacy rate of 33.1 only (Census of India, 2001). And while the states of Andhra Pradesh and Goa have as low a total fertility rate as 1.8 (i.e., below the replacement level), Bihar has a total fertility rate of 4.0 (IIPS and MI, 2008). We will come back to this issue in the third lecture of this module.

MAJOR SOCIAL GROUPS

ocial groups can be defined in many ways. In India they are customarily defined in terms of gender, caste and religious community. The Planning Commission recognizes that the economic growth in the post-independece period has not been sufficiently inclusive. Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and minorities have not benefited from development as much as others. SCs and STs are disadvantaged in terms of education, employment and income. Minorities also have lower level of income, lower participation in high quality jobs, and are more alienated, sometimes more alienated than SCs. Gender inequality also remains a pervasive problem. As a matter of fact certain types of developments have been had an adverse effect on women. In the patriarchal and patrifocal society of India women suffer discrimination both at home and outside. At home they suffer from domestic violence – sexual, emotional and physical – and outside they suffer from discrimination in employment and wages. Illiterate, rural women, from minority groups in backward regions of the country suffer from multiple disadvantages.