Vol. 2, Issue 2, Part D (2016)

Abstract
Indian society suffers from gender disparity in literacy, health care and employment. Higher illiteracy among scheduled tribes particularly among ST females resulted higher gender disparity in literacy. Their knowledge about ecology, community cleanliness, raising children, managing households under unstable circumstances etc. amounted to nothing mainly because of their lack of literacy and education. Lack of education among tribes stands in the way of their employability. Hence, we find the importance of the study of literacy and education in the tribal dominated district like Nandurbar. This paper analyses the levels of disparity in literacy of Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Nandurbar district, which is one of the tribal dominated districts of Maharashtra. Literacy plays a very crucial role in the social and economic development in a country. A low level of literacy in a population retards the progress along the path of social and economic development and political power. Illiteracy, particularly among female in a society, results in stagnation of technology, social and cultural lags weakness, national security and overall staginess of the economic progress. The present paper, intends to study Total, Male and Female literacy rates among the scheduled tribes and disparity occurred in it during the last decade in Nandurbar district. The literacy rates for both the sexes are low as compared to the State and disparity occurred in these rates are also low. The study analyses the results using Sophers’ disparity index. It is admirable that the literacy rates have shown considerable increase but the situation is not much satisfactory in tribal tehsils of the district.