The Bihar government carried out an economic survey for the year 2008 - 09. The report of this survey was published in Feb 2009. It provides some interesting highlights of the economy in Bihar.
Out of the many interesting highlights, I am listing some 1. Out of the entire Bihar population 89.5% stay in the rural areas 2. Population density is 880 3. Sex ratio is 919 girls to 1000 boys with Siwan having the best ratio of 1031 girls to every 1000 boys and Munger having the worst ratio of 872 girls per 1000 boys. Patna follows close behind with 873 girls to 1000 boys. (However the high ratios in Siwan is most likely due to emigration of the male population to other states in India in search of work) 4. Gross enrollment of students from Bihar in higher education is 6.7% compared to the India average of 9.2%. While the male enrollment is better the female enrollment is only 3.5% against India average of 7.7% 5. Bihar has a very low density of higher education institutions. For e.g. Bihar has only 7 engineering colleges (with no new applications for engineering colleges pending). Compare this with 292 engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh (with applications for 113 new colleges pending) and 286 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu (with applications for 53 new colleges pending). Even UP has 125 engineering colleges with 43 new applications pending. 5. Reduced crime rate: As per the report there were 117.9 crimes per lakh of population for the year 2007 which is below the national average of 175.10. This placed Bihar at the 28th rank for crime with Pondicherry having the highest crime rate of 475.4 crimes per lakh population and Nagaland having the lowest crime rate of 54.4 crimes per lakh population. Details of various states are present in the table below. There are many more details in the report. I have uploaded this report on my companion site "sites.google.com/site/progressivebihar" for anyone who wants to download the report. -- Posted By Prashant to Bihar's - Change in Destiny and Progress at 6/04/2009 02:32:00 AM
