Rajasthan lags behind in women empowerment and economic measures | Data Premium

Rajasthan improved rankings in some social measures, lagging in others. It improved from 27th to 20th in HDI, 18th to 16th in share of stunted children, and 24th to 17th in Infant Mortality rate. However, it still lags in women empowerment, with 63.5% of female population aged 6+ attending school and 25% of women aged 20-24 married before 18. Economic performance is middling, with 10% of workforce employed in manufacturing and 7.5% of GVA from the sector. Mixed progress in educational and environment-related indicators.

The Rajasthan Assembly elections are scheduled to take place on November 25. A comparison of the economic, social, and environmental indicators of the poll-bound State with the indicators of other States shows that Rajasthan improved its rankings significantly between 2015-16 and 2019-21 in some social measures, while continuing to lag behind in many others.

Table 1 | The lists Rajasthan’s rank in social indicators and its actual score in an indicator in 2019-21, 2015-16, and 2005-06. It also shows the change in rank in 2019-21 from 2015-16. The performance of the top three States in the indicator are also given for comparison.

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For instance, Rajasthan had 16.8% wasted children (low weight-for-height) in 2019-21, and ranked 13 out of 30 States. The three best-performing States that year were Punjab (10.6%), Haryana (11.5%), and Uttarakhand (13.2%). In this indicator, Rajasthan’s ranking improved by eleven spots in 2019-21 from 2015-16, the year when the State was placed 24th out of the 30 States.

Across some social indicators, there has been notable improvement in rankings in the past few years. For instance, the share of households with any member covered under a health insurance/financing scheme improved from 18.7% in 2015-16 to 87.8% in 2019-21, pole-vaulting into the first rank from the 18th rank in the period. Rajasthan’s Infant Mortality rate rankings improved from 24th to 17th out of 30 States and its ranking in share of stunted children improved from 25th to 16th in the period.

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However, it still lags behind in many other measures such as the share of the female population aged 6 years and above who ever attended school is only 63.5% — ranked 28th of 30 States. And over 25% of women aged 20-24 years were married before 18 years of age — ranked 24th of the 40 States. So, more specifically, Rajasthan still lags behind in indicators that measure women empowerment.