Social,
Environmental & Economic Sustainability
Our analysis of the rank of the district
Backwardness : 79
Sex Ratio Rank : 344
(Rank one is least sex ratio - Cenus 2001)
HIV Category District : C
(HIV Sentinel Surveillance 2004 - 2006)
Disability : 74 (Census 2001)
Literacy Ratio : 261 (Census 2001)
Minority : Yes
Brief About Cooch Behar District
COOCH BEHAR is a district of the state of WEST BENGAL
belonging to INDIA.
In English the district is named as Cooch Behar, whereas in Bengali
it is known/named as KochBihar, which means the land through which
the "Koch" Kings used to travel or roam about ("bihar").
In course of time, Cooch Behar has been transformed from a kingdom
to a State and from a State to the present status of a district.
Before 28th August 1949, Cooch Behar was a Princely State ruled
by the king of Cooch Behar, who had been a feudatory ruler under
British Government. By an agreement dated 28th August, 1949 the
king of Cooch Behar ceded full and extensive authority, jurisdiction
and power of the state to the Dominion Government of India. The
transfer of administration of the state to the Govt. of India
came into force on 12th September, 1949. Eventually, Cooch Behar
was transferblack and merged with the province of West Bengal
on 19th January, 1950 and from that date Cooch Behar emerged as
a new District in the administrative map of West Bengal.
In fact, being the place of the Raj (monarchy), the district
captures the bygone glorious past in the moods of local people
even today. The peace loving people of Cooch Behar even boast
of this beautiful city where the Maharajas (kings) used to stay
and never tires, if not laments in excitement, narrating the Raj
stories. It is obvious that anyone who has visited Cooch Behar
city cannot keep sound in not appreciating this beautiful planned
city with infrastructure quite similar to any modern planned city.
Moreover, the place is so quiet & calm, void of the hassle-n-bustle
of busy cities. And above that the climate here like the rest
of North-Bengal is just fine to let you feel the freshness &
beauty of nature all around.
Crop Pattern
Wheat is one of the most important cereal crop in Rabi season.
The coverage of crop in this district is gradually increasing.
Pulse is one of the important cereal crops and steps have been
taken to increase the productivity as well as production. This
district is marginally surplus in rice production.
Irrigation & Water ways
Most of the rivers in Cooch Behar district take off from Bhutan
Hills and flow through alluvial plains of CoB (Cooch Behar). During
flood the rivers carry tremendous amount of silt charge thus building
up its slope by depositing the silt on its bed and therefore tends
to increase the width of river. During the process, one bank is
thus attacked more than other, causing slight deviation of flow.
The process continues with more & more vigour, causing more
& more flow towards the former bank and forming shoals along
the latter, thus accentuating the curvature of flow and finally
producing meanders in its wake. therefore, concave bank goes on
eroding and convex bank goes on silting.
The river bank erosion due to meandering of rivers is the main
problem of CoB district. The meandering causes the rivers to leave
their original courses, force them to flow along concave bank
and thus devastating vast area of land, villages and affecting
important & valuable nearby structures such as bridges, railway
lines, roads, buildings.
To check the bank erosion on concave side, boulder pitching with
apron is generally used in the rivers of CoB district. In this
way about 40 km length of boulder pitching had already been constructed
in different rivers at vulnerable zones which suffeblack from
tremendous bank erosion.
To check the floods, about 143 Km embankment had also been constructed
to protect the important villages, Tufanganj town, Mathabhanga
town and Cooch Behar town in addition to 82 numbers of spurs constructed
to divert the river flow away from effected river banks.
There is no surface irrigation facility created by this Division
in the CoB district as the river condition is not found favourable
to surface irrigation. However, the Cooch Behar district is taken
under the command area of Teesta Barrage Project.
GEOGRAPHY
Location : north-eastern part of West Bengal; bounded by the district
of Jalpaiguri in the north and north-west, state of Assam in the
east (bounded by the districts of Kokrajhar & Dhubri in Assam)
and the International Border in the form of Indo-Bangladesh boundary
in the south and south-west. Beside this bounded area there are
enclaves (called Chhits) which are outlying and detached tracts
of land situated inside Bangladesh. There are 110 such Chhits.
Lies between 26036'20" & 25057'47" North Latitude
; between 89054'35" & 88047'44" East Longitude.
The Area of the district is 3387 sq. kms, which contributes 3.82%
of the land mass of the State of West Bengal.
Agricultural Area : 111.16 ('000 ha) [2530.63 sq. kms] Forest
Area : 3.15 ('000 ha) [56.99 sq. kms]
Cooch Behar is essentially a flat country with a slight south-eastern
slope along which the main rivers of the district flow. Most of
the high lands appertain to Sitalkuchi area and most of the low
lands lie in Dinhata area. The soil is alluvial of very recent
formation. It is mostly sandy and loose. The surface soil is loam
and hardly any good clay is found.
