Spatio - Temporal Variation in Gender Related Educational Development Index: South Bihar

Illiteracy continues to be a social problem in Bihar and South Bihar plain. It hinders the efforts made for the development of any region, and plays a negative role in the human development. Literacy removes the inequality from the society. Bihar is a state of higher gender disparity in terms of educational achievement. Bihar is the third most populous state and ranked lowest among all the Indian states. The literacy rate of Bihar has increased from 47 percent in 2001 to 61.80 percent in 2011. According to 2011 census report male literacy rate in Bihar was 71.20 percent and female literacy rate was 51.50 percent, which shows a wider gap in terms of gender wise educational achievement. Present paper deals with the variation in male and female literacy in 2001 and 2011 in South Bihar plain. Apart from this main aim of this paper is to find out the spatio - temporal variation in Gender Related Educational Development Index (GEDI) and their changes from 2001 to 2011 in South Bihar. The gender gap in the level of education can be easily understood by means of GEDI. United Nation Development programme, Human Development reports, stated that Gender Development Index measures the difference in male and female achievement in terms of health, education and command over economic resources. On the basis of GEDI value of two successive decade 2001 and 2011, as well as changesin GEDI value during this period, we can say that there is a wider gap among all the districts, except few of them. But the improvement in GEDI value in 2011, indicates that the gender wise educational achievement seems to be spreading across all the districts in South Bihar, but at very show pace. The changes in GEDI values during this period are not appreciable and lag far behind the optimum gender - wise educational achievement.