Abstract
Human society has been utilising the natural resources from the dawn of its civilisation in varying intensity to improve their living standard. Over the course of time, the extraction of the amenities required for such developmental purpose, affects the resource use pattern and access. This has resulted in a change in the existing land use practices in the region. Thus, socio-economic setting of any region and the land use are interlinked and affect each other. This article presents a new socio-economic index (SEI) to quantify the socio-economic status of any river basin. UNDP’s Human Development Index of 1990 has been used and modified to compute the index, in which various aspects of human life are considered and collected from National Survey Samples to reflect on the basin’s land use scenario. Results of the analysis are presented on Narmada River basin as a case study.
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