Soliciting regional disparity in levels of development: A block level study on Birbhum district, West Bengal

Varying unbalanced regional development from one region to other due to dissimilar socio-cultural, economic and demographic characteristics, escorts to regional disparity. Birbhum district is a well-set example of such nuisance in West Bengal, ranking 14 in terms of H.D.I (2004). The paper aims to elucidate the spatial pattern of levels of developments along with the inter-block disparity using twenty four indicators under four broad categories. For an effective study the Z-Score technique has been used to compute block level scores and their respective ranks with the data achieved from the District Statistical Handbook, 2008. The computed results show inter-block disparity in both different categories and composite scores.