Hi All:

This is all the information I could collect on the Orissa drought
situation including two articles by Srimoy Kar in the Indian Express.
--- Priyadarsan

[News brief from the Hindu]
The release of the CRF to the States is based on the memorandum of demand.
 Andhra Pradesh, for instance, has put its loss in the Nov. 6 cyclone at Rs. 5,400
 crores. Orissa, on the other hand, has sought Rs. 585 crores for the drought
 situation in the Bolangir and Kalahandi districts. The standard procedure is that
 after the receipt of the memorandum, the Centre sends its team for a spot
 assessment. The team gives its recommendation to an Inter-Ministerial Group
 headed by the Union Agriculture Minister. 
 The NFCR is also headed by the Union Agriculture Minister with the Deputy
 Chairman of Planning Commission as its member. Two Central Ministers _
 now the Ministers of Finance and Defence _ are nominated to it. Five Chief
 Ministers are also nominated on this body by annual rotation. This year, they
 are the Chief Ministers of Orissa, Assam, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and
 Karnataka. 

------------------------Articles by Srimoy Kar ------------

  BOLANGIR, November 7: The plight of a six-year-old child,
  Gundhar Nayak, whose mother died of starvation at Barlabahali
  village, in the Bangamunda block of this district, has left the authorities
  unmoved. Even 20 days after the newspapers highlighted his case, no
  help has reached him.

  In Orissa these days, starvation deaths and the misery that follows,
  cause no concern in the administration. In fact, they are promptly
  attributed to ``mischief'' by the Opposition. And like the proverbial
  ostrich, the officials go back to bury their heads in the sand.

  Gundhar's village was in the news recently when a team of Janata
  Dal legislators stumbled on the case of his widowed mother,
  35-year-old Balmati Nayak, who had died of hunger. The boy was
  suffering from acute malnutrition and fever. Orphaned, he had only an
  indifferent step-brother, Sushil, to turn to.

  The JD leaders brought him to Bolangir and got him admitted to a
  hospital. He was given treatment for 10 days and then discharged. The
  boy was left to fend for himself at a time when the district is in the grip
  of a severe drought which has forced many to migrate to other places.

  Gundhar's rickety frame is wracked by his incessant coughing and he
  is quite sick. But no official has visited him so far. He survives on the
  food that he gets occasionally from the local school under the mid-day
  meal programme.

  This, too, he has to share with his idle brother. The villagers, who are
  fighting for their own survival, can only sympathise with him.

  Bangamunda's block development officer (BDO) concedes that
  Gundhar has not been given any help but is quick to rationalise. ``It is
  not possible to attend to individual cases,'' he argues, pointing out that
  ``the boy gets food under the mid-day meal scheme.''

  He is very candid about his inability and passes the buck fast. ``Frankly
  speaking, I can do very little about it,'' he says. ``If you are suggesting
  that the boy be shifted to a rehabilitation centre or an orphanage, it is
  only the Collector who can do it, not me.''

  ollector Vinod Kumar agrees that his administration has been unable
  to do anything for the boy so far and assures that he would be looked
  after.

  Not all officials are indifferent to the misery of the villagers. The BDO
  of Muribahal has taken charge of eight-year-old Samir Dharua, son
  of another woman, Sapur Dharua, who died of starvation in Gudighat
  village, on October 26. 

-------    

     

     

       (Nov 10, 1996. The Indian Express)       


Orissa has been in the news for starvation deaths in Kalahandi. This
  time, even Bolangir was not spared, reports Srimoy Kar.

  This is a region that knows drought like the back of its hand, coming as
  it does in the rain shadow zone. If one were to map it, it would be the
  Padampur block in Bargarh district and the Khaprakhol, Muribahal,
  Bangamunda and Tureikela blocks of Bolangir district and the Khariar
  block of Nuapada district in western Orissa.

  Today, while the whole state is reeling under the tragedy of drought,
  Bolangir district is clearly the worst affected. The fact that the rains
  have failed seems to have cast a pall of gloom in all the 14 blocks of
  the district. Even in those regions that have access to irrigation, crop
  loss is expected to be over 40 per cent.

  Unfortunately, it is not just nature that has proved unkind. The
  administration, according to people here, has been particularly
  insensitive to the problem. So enormous is the popular disquiet that
  over two lakh people, facing both starvation and disease, had migrated
  to other regions in search of a livelihood.

  Again, starvation, disease and migration is not uncommon in this part
  of the state. Every year people die of hunger and thousands flee in the
  absence of employment. But this year the situation is totally different.
  Going by the reports of hunger deaths pouring in, the final toll would
  easily reach a few thousand. Adding to the general misery of the
  people is the acute shortage of drinking water throughout the district,
  resulting in many, already malnourished people, being forced to
  consume contaminated water.

  An eloquent pointer to the extent of drought is the paddy yield this
  time. The average yield in the kharif season is around 2.75 lakh tonnes.
  This time it is expected to be a paltry 70,000 tonnes. The situation
  worsened considerably thanks to the fact that in September the
  district received no rainfall at all.

  Incidentally, only 30,000 ha out of the total 1.9 lakh ha of paddy land in
  the district has access to irrigation facilities. In reality, however, not
  more than six per cent of the land gets irrigated. Although the
  command area of two medium irrigation projects in the area -- Aung
  and Suktel -- is supposed to be around 8,000 ha, not more than 500
  ha were provided with water this year. Similarly, the 219 minor
  irrigation projects in the district hardly irrigated 3,000 ha this time
  since the reservoirs were almost empty.

  Bolangir's tragedy is that the State Government did precious little to
  create facilities for irrigation as a priority programme in view of the
  drought being a chronic problem. This is a crucial omission given the
  fact that the people here depend solely on agriculture for their
  subsistence.

  Somewhere there is a lack of political will to resolve the drought
  problem in this region. Successive state governments seem to have
  accepted that drought and the impoverished condition of the people
  are a fact of life. The State's inability to cope gets reflected in public
  opinion. There is the overwhelming feeling here that no governmental
  measure can reverse the situation.

  It's not as if there is a shortage of drought contingency plans. There
  have been numerous recommendations on how the State Government
  should fight drought in the region. But rather like Humpty Dumpty, all
  the king's horses and all the king's men can do little to put this region
  back on its feet.

  What comes through is the lack of governmental will to put into action
  long term programmes designed to ward off these recurring crises.
  The moot question here is: why does this zone fall in a rain shadow
  area, and why is drought spreading to previously unaffected regions?
  The most obvious cause is the drastic reduction in forest cover in
  western Orissa.

  According to some estimates, not even 10 per cent of the original
  forest cover of the area remains. Even the most casual visitor to
  Bolangir today can notice the indiscriminate and unchecked felling of
  trees that is going on here. Once famous for its teak and saal trees,
  today there are hardly any forest patches in the Bolangir, Nuapada,
  Bargarh and Kalahandi districts.

  The rapacious timber smugglers, who have constantly enjoyed the
  patronage of ruling politicians, continue to destroy forests with blatant
  disregard for the law. They go unpunished even as the once fertile
  land is rendered barren. Sadly, although the State Government admits
  that the mindless felling of timber has contributed to the present
  situation, precious little has been done to stop it.

  As former legislator of Kantabanji, Prasanna Kumar Pal, points out,
  Kantabanji, Kesinga and Titlagarh -- the three urban centres in
  Bolangir -- is ridden with timber smugglers. Ironically, since this
  region has rich deposits of precious stones and Kantabanji is the gem
  capital of eastern India, it has also attracted gem smugglers.

  With drought being endemic in the region and the economic backbone
  of the poor tribals shattered by years of exploitation at the hands of
  non-Oriya businessmen and officials, thousands of the unemployed
  prefer to migrate to Raipur, Hyderabad and other cities. This has, in
  turn, resulted in a thriving business in ``labour export''.

  The large-scale migration that took place this year, for instance, has
  come as a boon to contractors in the neighbouring cities. Sinu Bagarti,
  of Balpadar village, however, points out that many out of the over two
  lakh that migrated have since returned, as the labour market outside
  seems to have reached saturation point.

  All these developments are indications that something is terribly
  wrong in the drought-ridden regions of western Orissa. Yet a callous
  administration is still to wake up to its implications and seems more
  intent on shirking responsibility rather than tackling it on a war footing.
  The flow of drought relief funds is too meagre to make much of a
  difference. The J.B. Patnaik government, on its part, does not appear
  too concerned.

  The revenue department is yet to fully assess the losses and present a
  case to the Centre for extra assistance. The public distribution system
  is in a shambles. There are just no funds for undertaking labour
  intensive work to prevent mass migration.

  The old, indigent and widows have not been paid their monthly dole of
  Rs 100 per month because of the lack of money. It seems that there is
  no prospect of Bolangir's misery ending. If things are bad now, they
  will be nightmarish in the months to come. 

