WHAT IS DISCRIMINATION

Discrimination is treating, or proposing to treat, someone unfavourably or bullying them because of a personal characteristic protected by the law, such as sex, race, age or disability. Discrimination is against the law when it happens in an area of public life, like employment. Sexual harassment is also against the law. This includes comments or emails of a sexual nature, unwanted touching or being hassled for sex, and inappropriate displays of sexual material. For a full list of protected characteristics and areas of public life, see humanrightscommission.vic.gov.au/discrimination. While all 18 characteristics protected under Victorias equal opportunity laws can apply to women, some forms of discrimination tend to affect women more than men, or specifically apply to women. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY The project has tried to evaluate how much gender inequalities have been created and reproduced in the households, markets and societies in the state. The factors that underlie gender inequality have been tried to examine. The research project has tried to investigate the opportunities and constraints that women face in and outside the home. This work has tried to study how far the problem of gender inequality has been solved by the expansion of education of women in West Bengal. The rate of infancy marriage in Kerala is only 7%. In comparison in this state the rate is higher. 53.3% women are illiterate among the women secretly removed. The age of 40% of them is less than 18 years. The secretly removal of women has increased 45% in last few years. 65% of the women less than 18 years have attained early marriage. Oppression on women, dowry system, still exist in

the society. Early motherhood, ill health due to malnutrition, concept of male and female child in obtaining higher education have worried the government, administration and social scientists. According to census, 2001 the gender development index in West Bengal is 0.549. Districts like Howrah, North 24 Parganas, Burdwan and CoochBehar obtain gender inequality as an alarming situation. The reservation for women has already been put in place in Panchayats and local bodies and experience of its working can only be described as encouraging.

GENDER DISCRIMINATION
Gender discrimination refers to the practice of granting or denying rights or privileges to a person based on their gender. In some societies, this practice is longstanding and acceptable to both genders. Certain religious groups embrace gender discrimination as part of their dogma. However, in most industrialized nations, it is either illegal or generally considered inappropriate. Attitudes toward gender discrimination can normally be traced back to the roots of certain segments of society. Much of the discrimination is attributed to stories such as a woman being made from mans rib and societal practices such as dowries paid to fathers by prospective husbands to purchase their daughters to be wives. Countless literary fiction references are made to females being the fairer, weaker sex and males being the strong, invincible hunters of the world. The combined power of these societal and religious beliefs left little room for equitable thinking for centuries. Although gender discrimination is traditionally viewed as a problem normally encountered by females, it has significantly affected males as well. Jobs customarily and historically held mainly by women were often denied to men

based on social stigmas. Some of the more common jobs that fell into this category were nurses, childcare providers and flight attendants. GENDER INEQUALITY & DISCRIMINATION IN EDUCATION SECTOR There is a perception in society even urban also that girls are more homely and are better at taking care of things. That is why arts, fashion, designing and drama are generally fields reserved for women. Engineering and other related fields are considered hardcore; so more men than women enroll in these programmes. This perception is however, gradually changing. Women students have family affairs to attend to. Some students say they are better at attending to these jobs. Studying social sciences gives them this kind of freedom and flexibility. For instance, the teaching profession, which appears to have been completely taken over by women. Even today, we find more women than men in this profession both at the school and college level, as they find it relatively easy to juggle home and career. A majority of women are still being pushed into disciplines, which have traditionally been called soft. It is just the reverse for male students. The so called soft disciplines are Education and Social Sciences, while the core male disciplines are Engineering and IT. A few womens college do offer science course, the majority do not and this pushes more women into taking softer options. That is how we have scores of all womens colleges running Social Sciences, Humanities and Mass Media progreammes. Again, while Business/commerce and Science disciplines are (to an extend) skewed in favour of men, Medicine and Social Sciences are singularly dominated by women.

GENDER ISSUES AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Perception about women seem to be one of the few things constant in this fast changing world. Or so it appears from a study conducted by researchers at the School of Womens Studies (SWS), Jadavpur University, which analyzed the representation of women in the media and how it is changing with time. The Director, SWS Samita Sen said We discovered that although there is an apparent change, the basic roles and presumptions about womens worlds remain the same. According to Prof Sen, the depiction of women in television serials showed a distinct binary between the good woman and the vamp. The regional channels and the Bengali serials, however, had greater diversity while the so called K-soaps mainly concentrated on interiorzed, Hindu upper caste women. A narrowing down of diversity in womens representation has also noticed in some of the newspapers analyzed during the information gathering process. It is evident that though some of the newspapers have done away with pages devoted exclusively for women. There is a tendency of increasing preoccupation with celebrities and glamorous women.

EXPANSION OF EDUCATION AND WOMEN IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE

In West Bengal, in the decades of fifties, sixties and mid-seventies the question emerged gradually was why women should join the mahila mandal or attend the functional literacy session. Almost three decades later, concrete and tangible achievements have paved the path of womens participation, giving them their right to association and opportunity to exercise their choices due to expansion of education in West Bengal. The articulate presentations by women on their real life experiences as elected representatives in Panchayat and other local bodies or forums are really encouraging. In the light of education the shyness of a woman gradually disappears and there is a tendency of pervasive boldness and enthusiasm in queuing up to speak from the podium. The directness of communication is astounding. It is equally amazing that the spontaneous interventions from the floor from women without distinction of class, location, religion, caste or literacy.

In the rural Bengal a woman is able to identify the levels and locus of her needs and objectives. She clearly explains why girls schools should have lavatories. Is that not women empowerment? The women representatives plead for direct dispensation of funds to the gram panchayat without intermediaries. Is that not a visible milestone for devolution of power? Due to the gradual expansion of basic or primary education, women representatives express their desired role in rural development planning and agree to assume responsibility for pure water facilities, set up village school and the anganwadi. So, there is no scope of disillusionment about the capacity of rural women to assert their rights for equal participation in local governance. When and how did this change happen? The womens political activism, the strength of their intellectual analysis and discourse,

their boldness to break barriers of male dominated institutions and the solidarity of their network made irreversible dents in the policy and administrative fabric of the state. The openness of the few but influential male allies to join the struggle and steer the change from within the system is a major support and cannot go unrecognized. The facilitating factors have been the increasing participation of women in public and private spheres, the equalizing of salary for equal work, targeted credit and economic assistance and incentive linked girls education.

STEREOTYPE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN MEDIA

There is no better metaphor for how tragically trapped in polarizations the modern gender debate has become. If we go through the mainstream media apparently we see there only two kinds of women in India. Type A is draped in gold and gaudiness, she is devoted to Duty. She is selfless and servile. And she is usually fat. Type B is draped in barely anything. She has a perfectly toned body and slithers like a snake to the beat of her own sensuality. And she usually does not eat.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND LEGAL PROVISIONS

Violence against women remains a constant practice across societies. Crawling under the umbrella of violence is an array of horrifying acts female foeticide, trafficking, workplace harassment, domestic torture and rape. When women defy societal norms and prejudices to report criminal action they are confronted by unequal laws that refuse to give them redressal. The UN says that violence against women is a major cause of death and disability for women 16 to 44 years of age. Crimes against women are committed with impunity in the absence of any

meaningful punishment or deterrent for their perpetrators legal luminaries and citizens groups engage in lofty debates on the merits of current punishment patterns, yet verdicts that may qualify as justice done are few and far between. Whether it is female foeticide or trafficking of girl children, domestic rape or harassment at workplace, there seems to be an unhappy acceptance that these wrongs will continue. Little progress can be made if the roots of such violence are not needed out. Expressions of violence against women reflect a societys values, law and order responses act only as deterrents. Yet, the scale of the challenge should not deter us from pressing on in this battle, on all fronts community education, better law enforcement and deterrent punishment.

EQUALITY AND EFFICIENCY DIMENSIONS OF GENDER BUDGETING

Gender budgeting means the entire budge via a gender lens to identity differential gender impacts and translate gender commitments into budgetary ones. The real challenge lies in the analysis of mainstream, non-rival, public expenditure whose benefits all get to enjoy, irrespective of caste, creed or sex. Gender budgeting enhance the transparency of and accountability for public expenditure and revenue and examines the gender disaggregated incidence of benefits of budgetary policies for effective public expenditure targeting. It stresses reprioritization. A key thrust is to lift the veil of statistical invisibility of the unpaid care economy and incorporate it in fiscal policy. It is also a people-centred initiative can redress capability deprivation across genders and accords with the last decades UN conferences. It has yet to percolate to state and local governments. Tax benefits extended to women workers are expected to reduce the double burden that they

face at home and the work place the gains, for example, can be utilized to appoint domestic help. But cant the working husbands of working women pay for them too? If the husbands are dependents, this move would be seen as a positive one for womens welfare. Women continue to bear the double burden and the state ends up paying for the domestic help. Isnt that a subsidy to the married working male? Gender sensitive budget is a gender sensitive approach if a chunk of development outlay is specifically spent on womens health, education and employment generation. This can help them overcome household inequalities and negative development outcomer (like environmental degradation) that affect women more. An important and better way of empowering the women in West Bengal would be to upgrade their skills and spread education inexpensively; that can yield them better access to earning opportunities. That holds also for the enforcement of equal wages in the unorganized sector; that is urgently needed and the requisite incentive structures should be speedily devised. Finally, the nutritional status, education and overall well-being of the girl child depends largely on her mothers earning and particularly so within low-income households. Despite that, a gender differential in wages in the unorganized sector cannot be treated as an excuse to artificially like womens net incomes in the organized sector. Real legal reform in West Bengal can only follow vital social reform. The idea of gender equality needs to be implemented first within the deep recesses of our society through liberal education, increased cultural socialization between the minority and the majority communities.

WHY IS IT STILL SO BAD

GIRLS: HOUSEHOLD SERVANTS When a boy is born in most developing countries, friends and relatives exclaim congratulations. A son means insurance. He will inherit his father's property and get a job to help support the family. When a girl is born, the reaction is very different. Some women weep when they find out their baby is a girl because, to them, a daughter is just another expense. Her place is in the home, not in the world of men. In some parts of India, it's traditional to greet a family with a newborn girl by saying, "The servant of your household has been born." A girl can't help but feel inferior when everything around her tells her that she is worth less than a boy. Her identity is forged as soon as her family and society limit her opportunities and declare her to be second-rate. A combination of extreme poverty and deep biases against women creates a remorseless cycle of discrimination that keeps girls in developing countries from living up to their full potential. It also leaves them vulnerable to severe physical and emotional abuse. These "servants of the household" come to accept that life will never be any different GREATEST OBSTACLES AFFECTING GIRLS Discrimination against girls and women in the developing world is a devastating reality. It results in millions of individual tragedies, which add up to lost potential for entire countries. Studies show there is a direct link between a country's attitude toward women and its progress socially and economically. The status of women is central to the health of a society. If one part suffers, so does the whole.

Tragically, female children are most defenseless against the trauma of gender discrimination. The following obstacles are stark examples of what girls worldwide face. But the good news is that new generations of girls represent the most promising source of change for womenand menin the developing world today. DOWRY In developing countries, the birth of a girl causes great upheaval for poor families. When there is barely enough food to survive, any child puts a strain on a family's resources. But the monetary drain of a daughter feels even more severe, especially in regions where dowry is practiced. Dowry is goods and money a bride's family pays to the husband's family. Originally intended to help with marriage expenses, dowry came to be seen as payment to the groom's family for taking on the burden of another woman. In some countries, dowries are extravagant, costing years' worth of wages, and often throwing a woman's family into debt. The dowry practice makes the prospect of having a girl even more distasteful to poor families. It also puts young women in danger: A new bride is at the mercy of her in-laws should they decide her dowry is too small. UNICEF estimates that around 5,000 Indian women are killed in dowryrelated incidents each year

NEGLECT
The developing world is full of poverty-stricken families who see their daughters as an economic predicament. That attitude has resulted in the widespread neglect of baby girls in Africa, Asia, and South America. In many communities, it's a regular practice to breastfeed girls for a shorter time than boys so that women can try to get pregnant again with a boy as soon as possible. As a result, girls miss out

on life-giving nutrition during a crucial window of their development, which stunts their growth and weakens their resistance to disease. Statistics show that the neglect continues as they grow up. Young girls receive less food, healthcare and fewer vaccinations overall than boys. Not much changes as they become women. Tradition calls for women to eat last, often reduced to picking over the leftovers from the men and boys.

INFANTICIDE AND SEX-SELECTIVE ABORTION

In extreme cases, parents make the horrific choice to end their baby girl's life. One woman named Lakshmi from Tamil Nadu, an impoverished region of India, fed her baby sap from an oleander bush mixed with castor oil until the girl bled from the nose and died. "A daughter is always liabilities. How can I bring up a second?" said Lakshmi to explain why she chose to end her baby's life. "Instead of her suffering the way I do, I thought it was better to get rid of her." Sex-selective abortions are even more common than infanticides in India. They are growing ever more frequent as technology makes it simple and cheap to determine a fetus' gender. In Jaipur, a Western Indian city of 2 million people, 3,500 sexdetermined abortions are carried out every year. The gender ratio across India has dropped to an unnatural low of 927 females to 1,000 males due to infanticide and sex-based abortions. China has its own long legacy of female infanticide. In the last two decades, the government's infamous one-child policy has weakened the country's track record even more. By restricting household size to limit the population, the policy gives parents just one chance to produce a coveted son before being forced to pay heavy fines for additional children. In 1997, the World Health Organization declared, " more than 50 million women were estimated to be 'missing' in China because of

the institutionalized killing and neglect of girls due to Beijing's population control program." The Chinese government says that sex-selective abortion is one major explanation for the staggering number of Chinese girls who have simply vanished from the population in the last 20 years. ABUSE Even after infancy, the threat of physical harm follows girls throughout their lives. Women in every society are vulnerable to abuse. But the threat is more severe for girls and women who live in societies where women's rights mean practically nothing. Mothers who lack their own rights have little protection to offer their daughters, much less themselves, from male relatives and other authority figures. The frequency of rape and violent attacks against women in the developing world is alarming. Forty-five percent of Ethiopian women say that they have been assaulted in their lifetimes. In 1998, 48 percent of Palestinian women admitted to being abused by an intimate partner within the past year. In some cultures, the physical and psychological trauma of rape is compounded by an additional stigma. In cultures that maintain strict sexual codes for women, if a woman steps out of boundsby choosing her own husband, flirting in public, or seeking divorce from an abusive partnershe has brought dishonor to her family and must be disciplined. Often, discipline means execution. Families commit "honor killings" to salvage their reputation tainted by disobedient women. Appallingly, this "disobedience" includes rape. In 1999, a 16-year-old mentally handicapped girl in Pakistan who had been raped was brought before her tribe's judicial counsel. Although she was the victim and her attacker had been arrested, the counsel decided she had brought shame to the tribe and ordered her public execution. This case, which received a lot of publicity at the time, is not unusual.

Three women fall victim to honor killings in Pakistan every dayincluding victims of rape. In areas of Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe, all responsibility for sexual misconduct falls, by default, to women

LABOUR
For the young girls who escape these pitfalls and grow up relatively safely, daily life is still incredibly hard. School might be an option for a few years, but most girls are pulled out at age 9 or 10 when they're useful enough to work all day at home. Nine million more girls than boys miss out on school every year, according to UNICEF. While their brothers continue to go to classes or pursue their hobbies and play, they join the women to do the bulk of the housework Housework in developing countries consists of continuous, difficult physical labor. A girl is likely to work from before daybreak until the light drains away. She walks barefoot long distances several times a day carrying heavy buckets of water, most likely polluted, just to keep her family alive. She cleans, grinds corn, gathers fuel, tends to the fields, bathes her younger siblings, and prepares meals until she sits down to her own after all the men in the family have eaten. Most families can't afford modern appliances, so her tasks must be done by handcrushing corn into meal with heavy rocks, scrubbing laundry against rough stones, kneading bread and cooking gruel over a blistering open fire. There is no time left in the day to learn to read and write or to play with friends. She collapses exhausted each night, ready to wake up the next morning to start another long workday Most of this labor is performed without recognition or reward. UN statistics show that although women produce half the world's food, they own only 1 percent of its farmland. In most African and Asian countries, women's work isn't even considered real labor.

SEX TRAFFICKING
Some families decide it's more lucrative to send their daughters to a nearby town or city to get jobs that usually involve hard labor and little pay. That desperate need for income leaves girls easy prey to sex traffickers, particularly in Southeast Asia, where international tourism gorges the illegal industry. In Thailand, the sex trade has swelled without check into a main sector of the national economy. Families in small villages along the Chinese border are regularly approached by recruiters called "aunties" who ask for their daughters in exchange for six years' wages. Most Thai farmers earn only $150 a year. The offer can be too tempting to refuse. The girls who are forced into prostitution to support their families often feel their burden deeply. "When I was at work, 50 percent of me hated what I was doing," said one 14-year-old girl, who felt conflicted about being taken out of a brothel in Chiang Mai, Thailand. "But the other 50 percent wanted to stay so that I could earn money for my parents. My father cannot work. He is very old and I must support the family. It is my job." It's estimated that 1 million children around the world are involved in the sex trade; a third of all sex workers in Southeast Asia are between the ages of 12 and 17

GIRLS' EDUCATION: BREAKING THE PATTERN OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

Education is the tool that can help break the pattern of gender discrimination and bring lasting change for women in developing countries. Educated women are essential to ending gender bias, starting by reducing the poverty that makes discrimination even worse in the developing world. The most basic skills in literacy and arithmetic open up opportunities for better-paying jobs for women. Uneducated women in rural areas of Zambia, for instance, are twice as likely to live in poverty as those who have had eight or more years of education. The longer a girl is able to stay in school, the greater her chances to pursue worthwhile employment, higher education, and a life without the hazards of extreme poverty. Women who have had some schooling are more likely to get married later, survive childbirth, have fewer and healthier children, and make sure their own children complete school. They also understand hygiene and nutrition better and are more likely to prevent disease by visiting health care facilities. The UN estimates that for every year a woman spends in primary school, the risk of her child dying prematurely is reduced by 8 percent. Girls' education also means comprehensive change for a society. As women get the opportunity to go to school and obtain higher-level jobs, they gain status in their communities. Status translates into the power to influence their families and societies.

Even bigger changes become possible as girls' education becomes the cultural norm. Women can't defend themselves against physical and sexual abuse until they have the authority to speak against it without fear. Knowledge gives that authority. Women who have been educated are half as likely to undergo harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and four times as likely to protect their daughters from it. The Global Campaign for Education also states that a primary education defends women against HIV/AIDS infection disproportionately high for women in developing countriesby giving "the most marginalized groups in societynotably young womenthe status and confidence needed to act on information and refuse unsafe sex."

Teachers lead the combat against gender discrimination in India

Womens Worldwide Web welcomes back 2011 Teach for India Fellow and guest blogger Devanik Saha, who recounts his experience teaching bright, ambitious girls at a government-run, low-income girls school in New Delhi.

Devanik is, along with many other admirable, passionate teachers, working to break the gender barriers in education across India, and to promote equal opportunities for female students. As a Teach for India Fellow at an all-girls school, I battle, first-hand and on a daily basis, with the magnitude of discrimination against my female students discrimination that I had, before now, only read about in books, articles and blogs.

UNICEFs Working for an Equal Future 2010 policy report on gender equality and theempowerment of girls and women describes one of its primary goals: to work for and envision the day when respectful relationships among girls and boys are understood to lie at the heart of a healthy and secure national future; a day when girls and boys are educated and encouraged to know and to speak their own truths; a day when all girls and boys have the specific knowledge and services they need to ensure a future of healthy reproduction and freedom from HIV and AIDS: a day when being a girl or a boy is no bar to quality education, or to high achievement in any sphere.

But, while international development agencies like UNICEF are committed to promoting gender equality and have implemented valuable gender mainstreaming strategies, the situation of girls and women remains particularly devastating in India, where they continue to face deeply-entrenched discrimination which hinders their individual progress and stymies the progress of Indian society at large.

As a result of gender discrimination, the child male-female ratio in India has dropped to a low of 914 females for every 1,000 males the lowest since Independence.This national ratio is even more imbalanced in certain districts across the country.[2] The district of Daman Diu, for example, counts a mere 533.44 females per 1000 males. An article entitled Indias Missing Women, published in the Guardian in July 2011, draws attention to the widespread occurrence of female foeticide in India, which is contributing to the grossly imbalanced ratio of male to female children: Half a million girls a year are being aborted in India, equal to the total number of girls born in the UK.

Indian newspapers constantly feature reports of sex-selective abortion and infanticide. It is a cause for concern for the Indian government. And yet, despite countless campaigns and the governments implementation of stricter policies against this tragic phenomenon, people continue to abort their female foetuses or abandon or murder their female newbornsand these practices cut across boundaries of class and caste.

As a teacher in a school in the marginalized neighborhood of Sangam Vihar, New Delhi, I witness the effects of gender discrimination every day in the lives and attitudes of the children and families with whom I work. Some of the girls in my class, for example, have several sisters and a single brother. In these families, the brother is sent to an expensive private school for his studies while the sisters are sent to an underfunded and overcrowded government school.

Moreover, most families force their daughters to drop out of school once they have completed the 10th grade (sometimes even earlier), in order to assume the responsibilities of maintaining the household and caring for siblings, in the hope that this will render the girls eligible for marriage within two or three years of their 18thbirthday. This is a common pattern throughout India. It diminishes the lives of individual girls and the general status of Indian women, while also stunting Indias social evolution. (Not surprisingly, India ranks 112 out of 134 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index for 2010.)

What can teachers do to help change this pattern? Lobbying campaigns and government regulations alone will not, in my opinion, bring about meaningful and lasting change. Rather, our society needs to be transformed from within: change will happen only when the hearts and minds of all individuals are opened and everyone is brought to recognize the incredible value of girls and their inherent potential as active members of our society and economy.

As a teacher of 27 underprivileged girlsgirls who now feel to me like my own adopted daughtersI strive to create methods of reversing sexist trends and upending the cultural norms that limit girls opportunities and diminish womens status. My teaching is not only about quizzing my students on their multiplication tables but also about educating them on their right to build worthwhile and meaningful lives for themselves. I am here to assist the girls in building their selfesteem and to encourage respect for girls human rights throughout the local impoverished communitiescommunities in which gender-based discrimination is at its most widespread.

I have always been an advocate of gender mainstreaming in all development actions and, now that I am teaching, I want to be a source of inspiration for my pupils. I want to help them realize that they can be empowered individuals. As Ghandi said: you must be the change you wish to see in the world. Girls should not be confined to doing household chores, but should instead be encouraged to pursue an education and to be free to earn a living. My objective is to help my pupils achieve their full potential and thereby demonstrate to their familiesand to other families across Indiathat girls can be just as successful in their schooling as their male counterpartsand perhaps even better

How to Reduce Gender Discrimination

In most countries, women receive second class status, with their rights severely restricted in many cases. Even in more advanced countries with laws to prevent gender discrimination, women still earn less than men and receive less respect. Reducing gender discrimination is a lofty goal with many obstacles. Though government regulations certainly help the situation, the real method to reduce gender discrimination is through education and changing the ways that people think about gender roles.

INTRODUCTION
Pay attention to the ways that you form gender in your children's upbringing. Children learn gender at an early age from the people around them--little girls learn to play with dolls, while little boys play with trucks. Often, parents unwittingly encourage this type of gendered play, even going so far as to discourage their child from playing with a toy that is for the "other gender." Additionally, you may encourage a boy to be more active and a girl to play quietly. Watch your own actions and encourage your child to try all of the things that he may like. Reduce gender discrimination in the classroom. Without realizing it, many teachers favor male students. This may come in the form of asking boys more difficult questions or interrupting girl students while they are speaking. Teachers should learn about gender discrimination, how they may be discriminating and what they can do to stop it. Provide adequate health care to all people. Without health care, women are at a higher risk for death due to complications from pregnancy. This is especially true in developing countries. Encourage critical thinking when it comes to the media. The media often represent negative images of both genders--women are stupid, weak and should be sexually available at all times; men should avoid their emotions and are animals that cannot control their sexual desires. As these types of images repeat, they become so enmeshed in the psyche of society that some people accuse a woman who's been sexually assaulted of deserving the assault. Through education on how to interpret the media, people can come to see that it doesn't represent real life.

Recruit men in the fight against gender discrimination. Gender discrimination happens because people think that men are better than women. It seems obvious that women would want to change the system, but men are less likely to want to give up their positions of power. However, when men take part in resisting gender discrimination--by treating women with respect, by paying female employees the same rates as men and by encouraging their sons to express feelings, for example--the movement towards gender equality is strengthened.

REFERENCES & BIBLIOGRAPHY:Background papers

1. Basabi Bhattacharya, Survey of literature and assessment of human development indicators database in West Bengal. 2. V. Nagi Reddy, Spread and quality of primary education in West Bengal: Emerging issues.

Books and Articles consulted

1. Bandopadhyay, Nripen (1995) ; Agrarian Reforms in West Bengal An Enquiry into its Impact and Some Problems, Paper presented at Workshop on Agricultural Growth and Agrarian Structure in Contemporary West Bengal and Bangladesh, Calcutta, January, 1995. 2. Bose Buddhadeb (1981) ; Agrarian Programme of the Left Front Government in West Bengal, Economic and Political Weekly, XVI, 50, 2053-60.