SPATIO-TEMPORAL PATTERN OF LITERACY RATE IN KATHUA DISTRICT OF JAMMU AND KASHMIR, INDIA

Literacy plays an important role to study the demographic, socio-cultural and economic status of any region. According to Indian Census 2011, Literacy has been defined as "A person aged seven and above, who can both read and write with understanding in any language, is treated as literate". Lack of literacy breaks the economic, political and all development process of that society or a region. Therefore, the present study focuses on identifying the spatio-temporal pattern of literacy in Kathua District. This study is to examine the block-wise decadal literacy rate of Kathua District from 2001 to 2011. It has attained a relatively good position in literacy as compared to other districts of J&K in 2011. The paper uses the data of two consecutive census reports, 2001 and 2011 ‘District Census Handbook (DCH) of Kathua' and calculates the disparity index between male-female literacy rates of the study area. The study has observed that in Kathua district the literacy was recorded only 63 percent in 2001 and it reached up to 70.8 percent in 2011. It showed 7.8 percent notable positive growth during the last decade due to the development of educational facilities, transportation, agricultural and economic development. In 2001, the female and the male literacy rate was 51.4 percent and 73.8 percent respectively, whereas in 2011, the female literacy rate was 60.8 percent and the male was 80 percent. It is noticed here that in each block of Kathua district the male literacy was higher than that of the females.