Sudhanshu Ranade

Chennai , June 4

TWO out of five households in the country dwell in homes that have only one room. While only about one in 10 households in Kerala has to adjust itself to these cramped conditions, the proportion of households that have to somehow manage is around 50 per cent in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and, surprisingly, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Even Bihar is better off in this respect. Only 42 per cent of households there live in one room dwelling units. Once again it comes as a surprise that Tamil Nadu is not very much better off than Bihar.

The total number of households having an electricity connection is more than 107 million. Almost 56 per cent of all households in the country have an electricity connection. But there is a great deal of variation between States. About 90 per cent of households in Goa and Punjab have an electricity connection, while, in Bihar, at the very bottom of the list, the percentage is 10.3. Adjacent Jharkhand is very much better off. Almost one in every four households there has electricity.

There are a number of States in which the proportion of households having an electricity connection is above 70 per cent, well above the national average. Apart from those already mentioned above, these States include Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.

A little less than one in five households uses LPG for cooking; total LPG using households add up to almost 34 million. While the position is fairly comfortable in Goa, Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra and Gujarat, things are not too good in Jharkhand, Orissa and Bihar.

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