Orissa, lying in the shadows of the Eastern Ghats is wafted by breeze from the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal. It is a beautiful land where 75% of the land is mountainous and 40% is covered by forests. Agriculture employs 80% of the working population. Orissa is rich in mineral wealth. Though Orissa is minerally a rich land, its people are among the poorest in India. Therefore, it is a land of contradictions.
India’s Orissa State, which has a shelter of 37 million people, is known for its poverty and backwardness. It has the country’s second-highest percentage of slum dwellers at 19 percent, or 6.9 million people. Orissa houses 5, 77,775 Muslims and 6, 20,000 Christians, 5.1 million Dalits from 93 caste groups, and over 7 million Adivasis from 62 tribes. Among the Muslim population, 70 per cent are poor in Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur and Puri districts, where they are concentrated. Around 87 percent of Orissa’s population lives in villages. Unemployment is on the rise in Orissa and abysmal daily wages prevail; 47.15 per cent of the total population lives in poverty while 57 per cent of the rural population is poor (87 per cent of the state’s population lives in villages currently and per the 2001 census, there are 51,352 villages in Orissa). Nearly half the population (47.15 percent) lives in poverty, with a very large mass of rural poor. The latest Economic Survey Report tabled by Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in Parliament ranked Orissa as India’s poorest state with the highest number of people living below poverty line (BPL). The situation is worse in rural areas where, according to the report, about 57 per cent people subsist on an average daily income of Rs. 12. Almost a quarter of the state’s population (24 percent) is Adivasi, of which 68.9 percent is impoverished, 66 percent illiterate and only 2 percent have completed a college education. 54.9 percent of the Dalits live in poverty. The female to male ratio is a problematic 972 per 1,000 in Orissa and the Human Rights Protection Committee and the Orissa Crime Branch reported that in the last decade (1990-1999) the state has recorded a 460 per cent increase in dowry related deaths relative to the previous decade.
Healthcare is virtually non-existent in rural as well as urban parts of Orissa, impoverished rural and slum dwellers face parasitic worms, skin diseases, malnutrition and tuberculosis TB. It also has the country’s highest infant mortality rate, with about 86,000 infants dying each year. As per the recent survey conducted by the State Labour Institute (SLI), Orissa has about 4 lakhs child labour. Poverty, illiteracy and social apathy are the primary reasons for the prevailing child labour system, as told to the International Labour Organisation.
No wonder Orissa became the poorest State in India to day economically. Compared to the scenario in 2000, the number of poor people in the state has increased by over 14 lakhs. People have no means of earning and hence have no access to food, healthcare and other facilities to survive. They encounter death daily. The situation can be attributed as rampant corruption in the administration. The rise in Maoist violence and lawlessness is a manifestation of the growing poverty. This is because the benefits of development are not reaching the common people. Nothing has been done for them instead the state is moving in a mindless direction giving a false hope on industrialization. The main root drawback is the lack of development in the agriculture and irrigation sectors. Development is remaining only in the files and ranks of the Govt.
In Orissa, about 2.5 hectares of irrigated agricultural land is required for a family of five to meet subsistence requirements while the average family owns about 1.29 hectares. Nearly 80 per cent of the people in the state are dependent on agriculture. Women seldom hold joint or individual title to land, which debilitates their ability to independently secure livelihood resources. Additionally, only 21 per cent of all land available for cultivation is irrigated. In Orissa, efforts at land redistribution and reforms have been insufficient and state and bilateral development, anti-poor and pro-corporatisation politics and practices and the privatisation of resources and development have systematically deprived the poor of rights to decision making over livelihood and survival resources, led to rampant displacement, police brutality and even deaths and denied them their customary rights to public resources such as forests and water.
Floods, cyclones and droughts are the regular natural calamities that Orissa has been suffering from for decades. The western region is affected by drought for more than a decade. In 1999 the most devastating cyclone caused unspeakable damage to the lives and properties of 12 coastal districts. Tens and thousands have lost their lives in the Super Cyclone. Flood is another natural calamity that repeats almost every year. While the state was slowly recovering to normalcy, the unprecedented floods in July 2001 have hit the State so severely that its economical backbone is almost broken again. Again in 2003 the severe floods have affected 30, 00,000 people in 18 districts. Natural calamities such as Cyclone, floods and drought have become regular feature of the State.
In August 2007 Cuttack city and the Coastal Orissa experienced devastating floods. Due to repeated floods in the major rivers caused by low pressure in the Bay of Bengal about 3, 00,000 of people had been affected in Cuttack city alone. About 40,000 people from 37 slums in Cuttack city had been shifted to safer places, as hundreds of houses collapsed. People in several low-lying areas, where roads were submerged and water gushed into houses, suffered enormous panic. Houses of about 50,000 were inundated. Cuttack city received 437 mm rainwater, breaking all records in the past. The cyclone of 1999 and the droughts of 2000 and 2003, the floods of 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007, have presented overwhelming challenges for the environmental and economic well being of the state.
Facts about Orissa:
Source Government of India (Census) |
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