Levels of Education among General and Scheduled Caste Population: A Comparative Analysis

The present study aims to analyse the spatial patterns of literacy rate of general population and scheduled caste population, variations in the level of education and relationship of literacy rate of general population and scheduled caste population (dependent variables) with the selected variables of education (independent variables) among the districts of the state of West Bengal. The entire research work is based on secondary sources of data, collected from Census of India publications (2001), New Delhi and Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics, West Bengal state Govt. publications (2002-03), Kolkata. The boundary of the district has been taken as the smallest unit of the study. The spatial analysis reveals the facts that the majority of the districts of the state have medium and high level of literacy rate of general population and these districts are concentrated in the whole southern part and northern tip of the state of West Bengal, and more or less same pattern is followed by literacy rate of scheduled caste population, while, levels of education in the state are characterised by gradual increase from north-central part of the state towards north and towards the south, and from western to eastern directions, but the cap districts of the state, namely, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Koch Behar and Dakshin Dinajpur, a little distort this pattern of educational levels.