Economic backwardness of Uttar Dinajpur : a block level analysis

Economic prosperity of a state depends upon the numbers of economic opportunities like, geographical advantages and location-specific conveniences. It also requires an entrepreneurial approach both from the ends of public and private sectors. Historical evidences witnessed that districts of North-Bengal in India have long been deprived from providing adequate support and security in successive planning. Uttar Dinajpur shares the same kind of misfortunes along with other districts of North-Bengal. It came into existence on 1992, after the bifurcation of erstwhile West-Dinajpur District and is one of the most backward districts in West Bengal where the degrees of backwardness grossly vary even across the blocks. This paper has portrayed the economic situations of the districts reflecting the economic potentials and addressed few multidimensional development issues across different blocks of the district and thereby expressing need of few specific policies to restructure the development process. There lie certain factors of hindrances for which development efforts fail to convert into desirable output. As the input-output conversion factor is low and varied across sub-district level, even major efforts to escalate the district development rate ultimately turn out a failure. Therefore a meaningful exploration has been attempted in the concluding section of this paper.