Level of Socio-economic Development in the Mountain Watershed of Uttarakhand State (India)

Abstract

Mountains are most diverse in terrain conditions, slope features, altitudinal and climatic variations. Watersheds present a variety of landscape features to lend a good case for the disparities in the socio-economic development in the mountains. These watersheds are different in shape and size. According to altitudinal variations, watershed area can be divided into valleys, mid slopes and ridges. People are interacting with in a watershed from up to down and down to up. But their socio-economic conditions are different in each zones. Therefore, Bino, a marginally located watershed from Uttarakhand state has been taken for the present micro-level study. The main purpose of the present study was to identify the spatial structure of socio-economic development and disparities in the level of development of the Bino watershed. Indicators of development levels were chosen in the light of the ongoing development in the study area. Present study was based on primary and secondary data collected from various sources. The bulk of database comprises village-wise (198) information on wide variety of indicators. The composite level of development indicates that maximum 51.51% villages of the study area were under moderate level (40–60 index group) of development which covers maximum 48.94% population of the watershed. The second highest category of villages (27.78%) falls in the index group of 60–80 (high level) followed by 20–40 (low level) group i.e. 14.14%. Very low share of villages falls in the highest (4.04%) and lowest (2.53%) groups of development. It was noted that higher level of development covers lower share of villages (16.67%) but covers high share (27.11%) of population. Beside this low level of development covers high share of villages (31.82%) but it covers low share (32.94%) of population. Whole analysis is concluded that 73.23% villages are below average level of development while only 26.78% villages are above the average level of development in the Bino watershed.