| The western border areas of India fall in diverse geographic landscape such as salt marsh (Rann), hot desert, plain and fragile mountains. The settlement system ranges from high degree of concentration in plain areas to very dispersed isolated hamlets in the Himalaya. The border areas are strategically important. Development of these areas is not only important for population living there but is also important for security and integrity of the nation. Understanding the strategic importance of these areas the government of India introduced Border Area Development Programme (BADP) to promote development in border areas adjoining Pakistan during seventh Five Year Plan. In this backdrop present paper attempts to measure the levels of socio-economic development in western border areas of India and tries to understand the regional variation in it, if any. The study is based on secondary data collected from the Census of India 2011. |