The Kalahandi Vikash Parishad (KVP), which was one of the very few Khadi organisations of Odisha providing employment to poor, dalits and tribals of Nuapada district by running a Khadi production unit in Komna block of Nuapada, has lost its glory after being surrounded by water of the Lower Indra Irrigation Project on three sides. The organisation had a workshop in Sanbaheli village in an area of 0.20 acres having hundreds of hand-run charkhas and weaving machines.
The spinners and weavers working here belonged to different villages of Komna block who earlier were migrant labourers regularly migrating to brick kilns in search of employment. Closure of the unit turned these workers jobless forcing them to migrate to cities again under distress conditions.
The State Water Resources Department did not agree to provide R&R assistance to the Khadi workers who lost their livelihood. Instead, it wanted to develop infrastructures for restarting the production unit. The KVP agreed to the proposal and requested the department to develop the infrastructures in a location in Komna block which would be nearer to the villages of the workers. The infrastructures here mean the buildings lost, i.e., the spinning and weaving workshops, dying room, staff quarters, drying yard and water supply system. "We also requested the authorities to provide support for buying weaving and spinning machines which have been totally destroyed in last ten years and lying unused inside the workshop," says Trilochan Kata, a member of KVP.
The LAO-cum-R&R, however, says it is not possible to provide land in Komna block. "The Tehsildar, Khariar has identified land (0.09 acres) in Dumerbahal village of Khariar block; you should agree to that. The land acquired by the project in Komna cannot be allotted to KVP as it has already been decided that those lands would be transferred to the IDCOL," said the LAO.
"Dumerbahal is 40 km far from the villages of our spinners and weavers; how can they go there every day to work," asks Trilochan. "When land can be provided to IDCOL for industrial development, why it is denied to KVP for revival of the Khadi industry,” poses he.
"KVP is an organisation of dalit and tribal spinners and weavers who follow Gandhian principles. The organisation has not taken a single rupee from Government for developing the production unit in Sanbaheli. If the Government is willing to revive the unit, it should develop everything the organisation has lost in Sanbaheli," said Tapan Das, a journalist.
