Highlights

• 466 villages were surveyed in the 58th round of the NSS.
• By 2002,more than three-fourths of India’s villages had access to electricity.
• Non-conventional forms of energy were available in less than 12% of Indian villages.
• 55% of India’s villages got their drinking water mainly from tube-wells or hand-pumps.
• Tap water was used for drinking in about 18% of villages.
• Only 30% of Indian villages had any kind of drainage system; the major types were the open pucca and the open katcha systems.
• 76% of the villages had irrigation facilities, mostly in the form of tube-wells.
• Cooperative societies existed in 30% of Indian villages and self-help groups in 24%.
• Government development programmes for provision of drinking water and construction of approach reads were operative in 60% of villages.
• Literacy campaign/audit education programme was in force in 375 of the villages.
• Post offices did not exist in over 78% of India’s villages.
• Only one-third of all villages were within 2 km of a telegraph office/PCO/e-mail facility.
• Pre-primary school facilities were available in 66% of India’s villages in 2002 compared to only 39% in 1991.
• 72% of the villages had primary school facilities in 2002 compared to 67% in 1991.
• 54% of the villages were more than 5km away from the nearest Primary Health Centre and 27% were more than 10 km away from it.
• Only 10% of the villages had a medicine shop and only 20% had a private clinic or doctor.
• Facilities for the disabled such as schools for the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the mentally retarded were extremely rare, the situation in this respect being no better than it was 11 years ago.
• Only 24% of Jharkhands’s villages had electricity facilities.
• Less than 4% of the villages of U.P, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam had to cable TV.

Source: Report on village facilities, July-December 2002,NSS Report No.487