Over the past three decades, district Pulwama has experienced steady growth in its population. In 1981, the population of the district was 4.04lakh and it increased to 5.6 lakh in 2011 ⁴. Compared with the growth of population, social amenities have not been developed and as a consequence demand for services and facilities increases, which may result into the greater majority of people perpetually struggling to get access to the public infrastructure. Before planning and futuristic development of public amenities, knowledge should be gained about the distributional pattern of existing social facilities in the study region. Henceforth present study seeks to analyze the spatial distribution of selected amenities i.e. two social amenities (educational and healthcare facilities) and one economic amenity (financial institutions) in different blocks of the Pulwama district. The outcome of the study manifested that there is an uneven distribution of educational, healthcare, and financial institutions in the district Pulwama.

Based on standard and quality, educational institutions have been grouped into various categories. The block-wise distributional pattern of educational facilities is presented in Table 1. From Figure 2, it is evident that in the context of educational institution services, block Pulwama has a higher concentration of primary and middle schools (110) followed by Tral (104), and Lassipora (83), while as minimum number are found in Achigoza (54). Similarly, for high and higher secondary schools, Awantipora has maximum number of (27) higher secondary schools, followed by Pulwama and Kakapora. On the other hand, least number is found in block Achigoza possessing 6 such institution. There are 19 higher education institutions in the district amongst which six are located in block Pulwama and four in Awantipora, while as block Dadasora, Achigoza, Aripal, and Lassipora are void of such amenities.

Likewise, the distributional pattern of financial institutions has also been taken into consideration in the present study and data exhibits that financial institutions are more concentrated in block Pulwama (23) followed by Awantipora (15) and Pampore (13). While two blocks (Aripal and Achigoza) have only one such facility. Similarly, in the case of health institutions, a large number of such facilities are concentrated in block Tral (23) followed by Pampore (18) and Pulwama (18) compared to Aripal (8) and Achigoza (5) which has the least number of such amenities.

It is evident from the above table that disparity exists in terms of the availability of basic services and amenities among different blocks of the district. The blocks located along the south of the Pulwama block are lagging in the availability of selected amenities, compared to those blocks located along the north of the Pulwama block.

The spatial concentration of amenities takes into consideration the distribution and density of various amenities and services (like schools, hospitals, etc.) within a specific geographic area. The spatial concentration of facilities is determined by employing the location quotient method. This technique is essential in urban and regional planning to ensure equitable access to basic services among the masses. Location quotient has been utilized extensively in several geographic research ^{24 25} in order to quantify the geographical distribution of regional facilities.

Using the formula a table of location quotients for the selected public facilities in different blocks of the district has been generated. If the value of the Location quotient for a particular facility in a particular block is greater than (1) it indicates a higher proportion of that facility, while a low value of the Location quotient less than (1) indicates a lower concentration. Table 2 represents the spatial concentration of primary and medium schools, high and higher secondary schools, higher educational institutions, hospitals and financial institutions within the different blocks of district Pulwama.

From the above table, it can be found that in the case of educational facilities, only six blocks have adequate primary and medium schools, while for high and higher secondary schools seven blocks have LQ greater than one indicating higher concentration. But in case of the distribution of higher educational institutions, four blocks have a higher concentration compared to the remaining seven blocks which have a low concentration of selected amenities with respect to its population.

Similarly, in the case of healthcare institutions, only three blocks (Dadsara, Tral and Shadimarg) have LQ greater than 1, while the other eight blocks possess LQ less than 1 indicating a lower concentration of selected amenities among the population of different blocks of the district. The distribution of financial institutions indicates that only four blocks (Pulwama, Awantipora, Lassipora, and Pampore) have LQ greater than 1, compared to seven blocks having a lower value of LQ i.e. less than 1.

Far carry out the future planning and development of the social-economic amenities in the concerned region, it is paramount to understand the existing level of spatial inequality in the number of social amenities distributed across various blocks of the district. In this study, utilization of the Z-score variate has been carried out to analyze the degree of regional disparity in the distribution of socio-economic amenities in the district pulwama. Z-score variate has been utilized in several geographic research ¹². The standardized scores collected from the regional distributional pattern of amenities in distinct blocks of the district Pulwama using educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and financial institutions as criteria have been given in Table 2. To ascertain the relative concentration of particular amenities throughout the various blocks, the standardized scores of the amenities have been categorized into many groups. The composite indicator of the amenities, which represents the overall degree of disparity in the supply of the chosen amenities, is obtained by adding the standard scores of each amenity (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Using the formula a table of Z-score variate for the selected public facilities in distinct blocks of the district has been generated. Table 3 represents the regional variation of primary and medium schools, high and higher secondary schools, higher educational institutions, hospitals, and financial institutions within the number of blocks of the Pulwama district. Table 3 shows that block Pulwama has a very high composite indicator (8.87) followed by Awantipora and Tral. While other blocks of the district have low composite indicators derived from their standardized score.

Figure 7 reveals that three blocks i.e. Pulwama, Awantipora, and Tral have a high concentration of selected amenities, followed by four blocks (Kakapora, Pampore, lassipora and shadimarg) which possess a medium concentration. While the remaining four blocks have a low concentration in connection with the selected amenities.

The spatial imbalance approach performed in the section above has exhibited 18 that there are considerable differences in the degree of concentration of different facilities among the blocks in the district Pulwama. This imbalance in the geographical distribution of provisions has resulted in the unequal distribution of selected facilities.

The extent of the difference among different blocks has been visually represented using the Lorenz Curve and is frequently used to measure income inequality, to provide information about the degree of spatial disparity concerning various public facilities. The Lorenz curve was first practised in 1905, to quantify income or wealth distribution inequalities 26.

The equitable distribution of the facilities is depicted by the line of equality. The proportion of deviation of the Lorenz curve from the line of equality gives the degree of spatial disparity in terms of a particular facility. The least amount of disparity is shown by a curve near the line of equality, the greater the deviation from the line of equality, the greater the disparity. In the current study, the proportion of a public amenity has been utilized in place of income, and the proportion of the block population has been employed in place of income receivers. The magnitude and extent of the difference are shown by the Lorenz curve for different public facilities located in the distinct blocks of Pulwama and are presented below.

Selected amenities under investigation were examined through a technique called the Gini coefficient— which is an indicator of inequality, and it can be computed using the Lorenz Curve. The Gini coefficient, a measure of aggregate inequality, ranges from perfect equality (0) to perfect inequality (1). The calculated Gini coefficients for the public facilities under evaluation are presented below.

From the Table 4, it can be observed that the extent of spatial inequality is maximum for higher educational institutions followed by financial institutions, while the Lowest level of imbalance is found in the provisions of schools and hospitals. Thus, it can be concluded from the present study that a high level of inter-block disparity is evident in terms of most of the selected public facilities.

Table 5

Number of Amenities					Total number of selected facilities in the study area	Weighted Score
Primary and middle schools	High and Higher Secondary schools	Higher educational institutions	Healthcare facilities	Financial institutions		Primary and middle schools	High and Higher Secondary schools	Higher educational institutions	Healthcare facilities	Financial institutions
830	165	19	148	92	1254	1.51	7.6	66	8.47	13.6

Source: “Constructing a weighted Matrix”, modified by Dr. Apichat Sopadang and Craig Borysowich- 1988.

Table 6

Block	Financial institutions	Healthcare facilities	Primary and middle schools	High and Higher Secondary schools	Higher educational institutions	Aggregate Weighted Score
Pulwama	23	18	110	23	6	1203
Lassipora	8	10	83	10	0	395.14
Achigoze	1	5	54	6	0	183.12
Shadimarg	7	14	71	17	1	516.4
Pampore	13	18	68	13	2	663.13
Tral	6	23	104	14	3	738.03
Aripal	1	8	70	9	0	255.49
Dadsara	4	14	60	11	0	347.3
Awantipora	15	15	75	27	4	913.95
Kakapora	9	14	79	21	2	573.14
Newa	5	9	56	14	1	401.34
Total	92	148	830	165	19

Source: compiled by authors.

Identifying the gaps in the existing distributional pattern of public amenities requires knowledge of the population and relative concentration of amenities in the concerned block. These knowledgeable Gaps play a key role in identifying and analyzing the adequacy or inadequacy of the services within each block of the complementary region.

To quantify the Weightage of each item of different Amenities, a “weighted matrix was constructed” to reflect the weight of individual facilities in the study region.

To quantify the disparity in the allocation of social amenities in the Pulwama district, weightage has been assigned to different facilities as per their standard and existing number of facilities. Firstly, the total number of facilities in each block was calculated. Then it was multiplied by the value obtained from dividing the aggregate number of all types of facilities by the total unit of each facility. Each block's total weighted score was quantified by adding the separate weighted scores of its various facilities.

After calculating the Aggregate Weighted Score of each block of the district, underserved blocks of the district Pulwama were identified. These underserved blocks have been highlighted on a map (Figure 11).

From Figure 11, it is evident that block Pulwama, Awantipora and Tral enjoy the highest share of selected amenities, followed by Pampore and Kakapora. While as minimum concentration of these facilities is found in Achigoze, Aripal, Dadsara and Lassipora.

The authors would like to acknowledge the district planning office, Pulwama for providing the digital image of the study region which was later georeferenced using QGIS 3.2 software.