Every Society is composed of people and characterized by various socio-cultural, economic & political attributes. Literacy is an indispensable means to acquire skills for improving socioeconomic development of well-being. The National Adult Education Programme launched countrywide during 1978 has viewed literacy as a means to bring about fundamental change in socio-economic development. Literacy and education attainment are the key variable influencing fertility, mortality and migration. Therefore, literacy is the decisive factor for development and population control as well Inequality in literacy rate tends to lead to a number of socio-economic problems, which in turn give rise to regional imbalance. Despite trying our efforts in bridging the gap between male female variation in literacy, women are still far behind and there exists a large gender bias in the area under study. Hence, in the present paper an attempt has been made to evaluate the gender disparity in the levels of literacy, and correlation between literacy and urbanization and between literacy and non-primary activities. To analyse the gender disparity of 25 blocks of Purba Medinipur, percentage of literacy to the total population has been considered. The gender disparity in the levels of literacy has been found with the help gender disparity index (after David Sopher 1980) for the year 2001 and 2011 census data. It has been observed that in 2011 female in Panskura-I, Kolaghat, Egra-I, Egra-II and other blocks possess a low literacy rate as a result of high gender disparity prevailing in these districts (range > 0.108). The female literacy in 2011 of Tamluk, Chandipur, Mahisadal, Nandigram-I, Nandigram-II, Sutahata, Haldia, Khejuri-I, Bhagawanpur-II, Deshapran, Contai-III recorded high proportion of literacy ( > 80%) and low gender disparity (range < 0.0943) is found in these blocks. It has been observed that the study region as a whole, rate of literacy both in male-female has increased from 2001 to 2011 and the gap in gender disparity reduced, however female literacy rate in few blocks is yet be to improved.
