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India has been placed among the countries with medium human development index. It has human development index of 134. Kerala with the composite index value of 0.638 is placed at the top rank followed by Punjab (0.537), Tamil Nadu (0.531) Maharashtra (0.523) and Haryana (0.509). States like Bihar (0.367), Assam (0.386), Uttar Pradesh (0.388), Madhya Pradesh (0.394) and Odisha (0.404) are at the bottom among the 15 major states in India.
There are several socio-political, economic and historical reasons for such a state of affairs. Kerala is able to record the highest value in the HDI largely due to its impressive performance in achieving near hundred per cent literacy (90.92 per cent) in 2001. States like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Assam and Uttar Pradesh have very low literacy. States showing higher total literacy rates have less gaps between the male and female literacy rates.
Apart from the educational attainment, the levels of economic development too play significant impacts on HDI. Economically developed states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Punjab and Haryana have higher value of HDI as compared to states like Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, etc.
Regional distortions and social disparities continue to play an important role in the Indian economy, polity and society. In India, social divisions of caste, religion, sex plays an important role in the access of the particular social group to various life chances, hence alter their standing in the human development index. It is found that states with wider variations in social group like Uttar Pradesh tend to have lower Human development index due to communal tensions, differential resource distribution to people of different social groups.