Impact of Changing Administrative Boundaries on Development of Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur Districts, West Bengal

Generally, new districts are formed to facilitate administrative expediency or ease of administrative connectivity in a much better way. Often it reduces the distance between the district headquarters and remote areas resulting in easy access to the district headquarters with investing less time and strain. Apparently, it becomes helpful to interact with the beneficiaries in implementing and monitoring the government schemes and programmes in the areas near the district headquarters and remote areas, which is essential for the overall development of a region. In the present study, a meso-level specific comparative analysis has been done at inter and intra district level on the basis of some selected socio-economic indicators (based on Census of India data sources) to understand the impact of reorganisation of the administrative boundaries on the development of Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur, West Bengal, India.


Introduction
In recent years, various countries' central and local authorities have been involved in reorganisation or reconstitution of the local administrative boundaries for providing better civic amenities and public services, such as communication, healthcare, education, public administration, justice, etc. India is not an exception to this trend. In the last 28 years, most of the states of India have also gone through local government administrative reforms and districts reorganisation process. Out of the total 731 districts, 259districts were formed between 1991 and 2019. Earlier, there were only nine districts in Manipur state, but after the final declaration of seven new districts by the state, the total number of districts in the state now has become 16. There were only ten districts in Telangana state when it was bifurcated from the state of Andhra Pradesh; later on, 17 new districts were formed in 2016. As of now, this state has 31 districts in total. During the time of Independence, West Bengal was divided into 14 districts. After that, in each census decade (except 1961-71 and 1971-81) one or more new districts were created, and in the last census, the total number of districts came to 19. From 2011 to 2017, the State Government of West Bengal has formed five new districts (Aliporeduar, Jhargram, Kalimpong, Purba Barddhaman, Paschim Bardhaman) by editing and altering the former ones. Hence the number of districts in West Bengal has increased from 19 in 2011 to 23 in 2017.
Generally, new districts are formed for administrative expediency or ease of administration so that the distance between the district headquarters and remote areas are shortened, which, in turn, helps with better implementation and monitoring of government schemes and programmes and also maintaining law and order in remote areas as well as for overall development of the region. However, sometimes some political motives, various sociocultural factors, jurisdictional area and population size of the district also work behind it.
In general, the main reason behind district reorganisation is to improve the level of development in every corner of the district for its being shorter in area. Hence, the principal objective of this study is to analyse the progress of development after the reorganisation of the districts in the state of West Bengal. At the same time, it also tries to examine the pattern of interdistrict disparity before and after the reorganisation. In this context, both Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur districts have been selected for the study. Though many districts were bifurcated and new districts were created from1980 to 2017, such as bifurcation of 24 Parganas district into North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas (1986), Purba Mednipore and Paschim Mednipore were created bifurcating the Mednipore district (2002). On the other hand, Aliporeduar, Purba Barddhaman, Paschim Barddhaman, Kalimpong, Jhargram districts were created from 2011 to 2017.
This study has purposefully avoided the newly created districts as the development scale could not be examined appropriately within a very short span of time. Both Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur districts were separated just after the 1991 Census to easily access the census data from the 1991 Census to evaluate the blockwise development level before the district reorganisation. To study the post reorganisation scenario, block-wise secondary data could be accessed from the 2011 Census. So one can easily examine the changes in development level after reorganisation of the district in the last 20 years. Thus, in the present study, a meso-level spatial comparative analysis has been done based on some selected socio-economic parameters before and after reorganisations of the West Dinajpur district to understand its impact on socio-economic development in the last two decades.
The present study begins with a detailed review of the existing literature to identify the lacuna of the previous research, followed by the geographical and administrative description of the study area. The study then discusses the objectives of the present study and the methodology adopted for this research. The concluding remarks have been drawn after the thorough analysis of the results obtained from the examination of different sets of data. Afterwards, some suggestive measures have also been specified for the lagging areas.

Literature Review
Several countries have gone in for the reform of their administrative map under unstable conditions. Spatial patterns of administrative reorganisation at the international level have been identified by reviewing relevant literature on the subject matter. The turbulent history since World War-I necessitated extensive reforms in most European countries because of unprecedented population distribution, economic activity and transport technology (Blacksell, 1974).The administrative map of Roumania has been reformed almost twelve times since World WarI (Helin, 1967). Since the communist attainment to power in 1949, China's political map has undergone a series of fundamental changes (Ginsburg, 1952). New arrangements were designed specifically to concentrate power at the intermediate level.
This had the dual advantage of being more local and at the same time, less distant from the centre.
Among the developing countries, India recast its administrative map on 1 November 1965. It was a grand reorganisation of the states on a linguistic basis; units smaller than the states were only marginally affected. However, it was indicated that some of the new administrations must review the number and territorial extent of the existing districts (Government of India, 1955). The Planning Commission had also suggested that even during the First Plan , it might be useful for the state governments to review the size of the districts to achieve efficient implementation of development programmes. Hirst(1973) has examined the locational efficiency of nine proposed Provincial headquarters of Uganda and suggested a more efficient solution for administrative reorganisation. Administrative area reform thus displays an apparent spatial pattern. Most First World countries, belonging to the 'old realm', redesigned their administrative structures by consolidating the lowest administrative units into bigger ones. The Third World countries have generally continued with their structures, with some occasional ad hoc modifications, mostly in the nature subdivision of larger units into smaller ones (Krishan,1988).
Since independence, several researchers have already conducted many studies on the reorganisation of state and district boundaries in India. Parmeshwarn and Chattopadhyay (2014) stated the methodical perspective to form a new state. They also focused on the shortcomings of the 1956 Reorganization Commission's Report at the time of Indian state reorganisation post independence. According to them, the size of the state should have a limit-a maximum population size of 40 million for a state. This is because human development is inversely related to the population size of the state. They suggest that creating a new state needs to be looked at physiographic region, natural resources distribution, agro-climate and river basins, and population distributions and cultural characteristics of the proposed new state. Rao (2017) has assessed the district reorganisation of Telangana. He described that the Government of Telengana had formed 21 new districts to take the administration closer to the people. But the formation of the small district does not automatically lead to good and effective governance and quality services. Therefore, he had suggested some recommendations-the location of the district Headquarter has to be more accessible to the majority of its residents; delegation of decision making power to lowerlevel officials; merger of different departments which are involved in similar and integrated functions; and transfer of certain functions to the Panchayati Raj institutions and urban local bodies for effective administrations. Singh (2008) studied the process of federalisation of India. It is argued that any further reorganisation of states should be based on a "cosmopolitan model of democracy" and should be anchored in theories of constitutionalism, consociationalism and multiculturalism. Kudaisya (2015) critically analysed the State Reorganisation Commission's Report (1956). In his book, he described why Jawaharlal Nehru's government forced to set up the State Reorganisation Commission (SRC). This book also discusses that language and culture plays a major role for the reorganisation of Indian states. In another chapter of the same book focuses on the advantages or disadvantages of smaller vs larger states. The author summarised the major proposals and problem faced by the Reorganisation Commission when reorganising different states in India. Biswas (1999) has documented the momentous changes in the administrative boundaries of West Bengal since the battle of Plassey. The period of 1757 to 1793 named by the author was 'The Transitional Stage'. In this phase, the author described that after the Plassey battle, how East India Company came into power in Bengal province and how revenue generation, criminal and civil changes occur. The phase, 1793-1916, has been described as 'Period of Development and consolidation'. In this phase, the author wrote about the jurisdiction changes under the East India Company.
After reviewing the available literature, it has been found that enormous work has been done on regional disparities and concentration of development parameters. But how the reorganisation process does affect the development of a region or district in West Bengal has not been systematically explored before.
West Bengal emerged as a new state after the partition of Bengal province during the independence of India. As a result of this, the district of Dinajpur was divided into two parts following the partition of the province of Bengal, one part being named West Dinajpur was included in the state of West Bengal in India (Vide Notification No.-u/of Crpc1898, Act V), and the other part remained as Dinajpur in East Bengal of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Approximately two-thirds of the total geographical area of the Dinajpur district was included in East Pakistan, and one third was within India. West Dinajpur district became one of the 14 constituent districts of the province of  (Biswas, 1999).
After the formation of the states by way of merging smaller units into adjoining areas, it was observed that the states were unequal regarding population, resources, linguistic, ethnic and other factors. So, the Government of India had formed a State Reorganization Commission in 1956 (Kudaisya, 2015) to re-appropriate the States. The State Reorganization Commission with the provision of merger Act 1954, Chopra police station was formed with the entire local areas of the police station of Thakurganj and Chopra in Kishanganj subdivision of the Purnea district in the state of Bihar and included in the district of Darjeeling. Further, Islampur and Goalpokhar police station in the Kishanganj subdivision and Karandighi police station in the Kathiar subdivision of the Purnea district in the state of Bihar were also included in the district of Darjeeling. Later, these areas were transferred to West Dinajpur district and again transferred to Darjeeling district. Finally, 12 villages of Thakurganj Police station, which lie in the north of Mahananda River retained in Darjeeling district and remaining portions comprising of Goalpokhar, Chopra, Islampur, and Karandighi police stations were inducted into the newly formed subdivision Islampur under West Dinajpur District (Biswas,1999 According to the Census of India, 2011, Uttar Dinajpur district stands at 15th position, and Dakshin Dinajpur is the least populated district in West Bengal. The percentage of the urban population of Uttar Dinajpur district has almost remained the same in the last decade (12.1%) whereas a 1% increase in urban population has been found in the case of Dakshin Dinajpur district. Literacy rates in both districts are less than the state average (76.3%).

The Objective of the Study
The objective of the present study is to analyse the impact of changes in administrative boundaries on the development of the Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur districts of West Bengal, India.

Materials and Methods
To understand the overall development scenario before and after the reorganisation of the West Dinajpur district, the block-wise aggregate index has been calculated with some selected socioeconomic indicatorsfrom two census years, 1991 and 2011. We have used both the social and economic indicators of development depending on the availability of the census data. Overall, 23 indicators have been selected from different sectors (demographic condition, work participation rate, education facilities, health care service facilities, and basic amenities), and a composite index (Narain et al., 2011)has been prepared. To compare the situation before and after reorganisation, an aggregate index has been calculated for 1991 and 2011 separately for all the blocks of Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur districts and ranked them accordingly. To understand the level of disparity in terms of the overall development of 17 blocks, quadrant positional analysis has been done from PC1 and PC2. The PC1 axis is the first principal direction along which the samples show the largest variation in the principal component analysis (PCA). The PC2 axis is the second most important direction, and it is orthogonal to the PC1 axis. Arc GIS (Version-10.2.1) software has been used for mapping purposes.
Composite Index has been calculated as follows: Let [X ij] be the data matrix.

Pij= (Zij -Zoj) 2
The pattern of development Ci is given as : The smaller value of the Aggregate Index will indicate a high level of development, and a higher value will indicate a lower level of development.

Results and Discussion
From Tables1 and 2, it has been found that among all the C.D. ( (table 2). Low sex ratio, low literacy rate, lower working population percentage, the higher gender gap in literacy, and poor infrastructure facilities compelled these C.D. blocks to remain in the bottom position.
From the above analysis, it has been observed that after the bifurcation of the West Dinajpur district, most of the C.D. blocks of Dakshin Dinajpur district have relatively improved in comparison to the C.D. Blocks of Uttar Dinajpur district. The aggregate index shows that there are huge differences between the 1st ranking C.D. block and last ranking C.D. block, which indicates a high level of disparity between these blocks (Figures 2, 3).    It has also been observed from the quadrant analysis in 1991 that Itahar, Islampur, Goalpokhar-II, Gangarampur, and Kushmundi C.D. blocks were categorised under the low developed (-, -) zone. However, in 2011 Goalpokhar-II, Gangarampur and Kushmundi upgraded their positions, only the Islampur C.D. block remained unchanged due to a lower female-male ratio (941), lower literacy rate (61.13%), the higher gender gap in both literacy rate(15.72%) and work participation rate (33.20%) and prolonged improvement in other infrastructural development categories.  to connect all unconnected habitations in the rural areas through the construction of all-weather roads with necessary culverts and cross-drainage structures in a manner that will provide the most economical and efficient connectivity, thus promoting access to economic and social infrastructure. Though some remote villages in Tapan, Hili, Islampur, and Chopra C.D. blocks continue to face road network problems. Thus, the road network in the districts will have to be upgraded and expanded for a better inter-connectivity amongst the villages and intra-connectivity from villages to block headquarters, district headquarters,and vice-versa.
Sustainable public health care requires sufficient staffing and additional Health Care and Clinic infrastructure. With the increasing population and proportionate increase in the number of patients, the primary health care systems in Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur are currently unable to provide adequate health care coverage. The available bed strength in many Block Primary Health Centres (BPHCs) is highly insufficient, and the existing strength of doctors and nursing staff is not at all compatible with providing service to the growing numbers of patients. This compels many indoor patients to shift to nearby private hospitals or subdivisional and district hospitals far away from their residences. Institutional deliveries are still relatively rare, leading to a high percentage of pre-natal, neo-natal and post-natal mortality among mothers and infants in Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur districts. Besides these, the district hospital of Raiganj, which has been upgraded in name only, continues to function within the infrastructure of a subdivisional hospital. Hence, upgraded and compatible healthcare infrastructure, both in human power and in devices and equipment in Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur districts, will have to be made to provide better health care facilities to the people.