Manav Vikas Award for Kottayam

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kottayam, the first town in the country to experiment with total literacy programme, the first to have a printing press in the state and the first to have a college in the state, is in the limelight again.
 The first-ever Manav Vikas India Human Development Award instituted by the Planning Commission and the UNDP zeroed in on the Kottayam District Human Development Report for its excellent quality of analysis.
The report was prepared by a team from the Centre for Development Studies, led by K Narayanan Nair and K Navaneetham. The team also included G Gopikuttan and C S Krishnakumar while P Rajasekharan, nodal officer, HDRC unit at the Planning Board, provided support.
  The report points out that the high levels of human development among women still do not provide comprehensive gender freedom. It identifies education as the cause of the relatively better human development in the district .
Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, Udupi in Karnataka and Malda in West Bengal. were the other winners.