District- level deprivation in the new millennium

District-Level Deprivation In The New Millennium Increasing inter-State disparities across India have received some attention. To ensure that trickle down benefits of growth per colate to all regions and some backward areas are not bypassed,policy intervention is needed to tackle problems of poverty and deprivation. Identification of backward regions needs to go beyond State boundaries. The attempt in this volume is to take this identification down to the level of the districts which is peggedto the Millennium Development Goals and is based on six indicators-income, poverty (poverty ratios), hunger, infant mortality rate, immunisation, literacy rate and enrolmentratios.Bibek Debroy is an economist and Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS), Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi. His special interests are international trade (in particular the WTO), law reform and the political economy of liberalisation in India.