Trends and Levels of Female Literacy in Belagavi District

Women education plays a very important role in the overall growth of the country. It does not only help in the development of half of the human capital but also improves the standard of living. The progress of the nation or region is shown by the level of education and literacy of its population. Education, particularly among women has been considered as one of the major aspects for socio-economic development of the people of a region. Belagavi district is among the rapidly developing districts in Karnataka with respect to socio-economic and agricultural development. According to 2011 census, average literacy rate of Belagavi district (73.48%) is lower than the average literacy rate of Karnataka state (75.60%).(Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, 2011) This can be attributed to greater regional disparities throughout Belagavi district in literacy. In this paper, we present Provisional Population Totals of census 2001 and 2011 and examine the extent of literacy disparities at the taluk level. Here, we found that literacy rate in the study area was 64.21 % in 2001 which has increased to 73.48% in 2011. We also found that the urban literacy (85.56%) is significantly greater than the rural literacy (69.28%) which is concurrent to the wider gender disparities from the rural to the urban population.


INTRODUCTION
Educate a man and he will leave his home to find work. Educate a woman and she will have fewer children, introduce better health practices to her family and village, run her household more efficiently, and most important, advocate for the education of her children. (Marstaller, 2000)The female education which influences on fertility and mortality rates and age at the time of marriage of women, in turn, helps control population number. As a matter of fact, literacy attainment is a part of larger societal changes and it needs to be placed in proper perspective, without which the regional distortions as well as gender discriminations will not disappear even as general literacy rises. (Raju, 1993) Belagavi district, the second largest of Karnataka state was the part of Presidency of Bombay(Census of India 2011 Karnataka, 2011). It is situated at foothills of Western Ghats (Sahyadri hills) in the north-western part of the state. The Belagavi district is between 450to900 meters above mean sea level and the geographical area of Belagavi district is 13,379 Sq. km. which is 6.99% of the total geographical area of the state. It extends about 160 km from north to south and 80-130 km from east to west and forms a large plane scattered with solitary peaks broken here and there by low range of hills. The Belagavi district is crossed from west to east by two great spurs, the Ghataprabha and the Malaprabha spurs. This region consists of long sandstone ridges with grass cover on steep slopes. The black soils predominates the Deccan trap terrain and the red soils are formed in the south western and south eastern part of the district in the Gneissic terrain (Raychaudhari, 1963). Belagavi district has a total of 1, 90,424 hectares; of land under forest cover and has the fifth place in forest area.
International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470 @ IJTSRD | Available Online @ www.ijtsrd.com | Volume -1 | Issue -5 | July-Aug 2017 Page: 1004 Belagavi district is one of the socio-economically developed districts in Karnataka. Present study is focused on the trends and levels of female literacy in Belagavi District. The average literacy rate of Belagavi district (73.48%) is lower than the average literacy rate of Karnataka state (75.60%) according to 2011 census. As elsewhere in the country, in Belagavi district, the level of female literacy is not only lower than that of the males but also varied in spatial and social terms.

II. OBJECTIVES
The foremost purpose of this study is to examine the trends and levels of female literacy of Belagavi district during 2001 to 2011.

III. STUDY AREA
The study area of this paper is a part of Karnataka.          in table 4 and trend analysis, we are concluding that the taluks where the overall literacy rate is low, they continue to have large gap in malefemale literacy rates even after considerable development in female literacy.

A. Male-Female Differential in Literacy rate in the Belagavi District
The Gender gap in literacy rate in the Belagavi District has declined from 23.4% in 2001 to17.62% in 2011 due to faster increase in literacy among females than male. Subsequently, thegender gap in literacy declined in all the taluks of Belagavidistricts during this period.

X. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Among 10 taluks of Belagavi district the Ramdurg taluk is having medium level female literacy band of low level of economic development of (40-55%) and desires special attention for improvement in literacy among female. Among 8 taluks of district; Athani, Bailhongal, Chikkodi, Gokak, Hukkeri, Khanapur, Raibag, Savadatti fall under high level of literacy development band (55-70%), even though, The National literacy mission and the Sarvasiksha abhiyan both could not achieve target of 75% literacy among females from census year 2001 to census year 2011.The cumulative results shows that from 2001 to 2011 there is marginal increase in female literacy rate in various taluks of Belagavi district which confirms that Government programmes show results but need to be applied efficiently for superior results.