(a) whether the Union Government has not conducted any survey in regard to the
backwardness of areas of Backward districts in the country;
(b) if so, the reasons therefor; and
(c) the criteria laid down by the Union Government to remove backwardness of the
said areas?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF PLANNING (SHRI M.V. RAJASEKHARAN)
(a) to (c) : No separate survey has been conducted. However, the 250 backward districts covered
under the Backward Regions Grant Fund(BRGF), approved in the current year, includes all the
200 districts covered in the first phase under the National Rural Employment Guarantee
Programme(NREGP) identified on the basis of an index of backwardness comprising three
parameters with equal weights to each, namely, value of output per agricultural worker,
agriculture wage rate, and percentage of SC/ST population of the districts and all the 170
backward districts identified by the Inter-Ministry Task Group(IMTG) on Redressing Growing
Regional Imbalance on the basis of 17 parameters, namely, percentage of SC population,
percentage of ST population, female literacy rate, ratio of secondary schools to population of
specific age group, gross enrolment ratio for class I-VIII( age 6-13), per capita credit, per capita deposits, percentage of agriculture labourers, agriculture wages, output per agricultural worker, crude death rate, infant mortality rate, institutional delivery, full immunization, percentage of households without electricity, percentage of households with bank services and percentage of households with drinking water source beyond 500 metres.