Whether you prefer to be a master over a prosperous area called Koshal or continue to be a slave of coastal regionIJ Choice is yours. If the Koshal region is bifurcated from Odisha, benefits both in short and long terms will come handy,” said working president of Koshal Kranti Dal (KKD) Baidyanath Mishra to the media here.
He recently led a campaign in the Narla Assembly constituency in Kalahandi district to create awareness among the people on the KKD’s demand for a separate State of Koshal. Mishra said that when Sardar Ballabhbhai Patel merged the Gadjat (ex-Princely) areas with the State of Odisha in 1948, he had expressed his hope that people of the developed area, obviously meaning the State’s coastal region, would extend their helping hand to bring the underdeveloped backward area at par with their own.
More than 65 years have gone by, but the Koshal area has been subjected to all kinds of social evils including child selling, farmers’ suicide and distressed sale of paddy besides migrant labour and starvation deaths, Mishra said.
A deficit in the State’s governance is looming large with increasing dissatisfaction. Once free from the bondage of the coastal administration, people of western Odisha would taste what freedom is, he said and presented a ten-point proposal for solution.
The proposal includes a State capital nearer to you and a High Court which comes as dowry; adequate numbers of universities and hospitals; employment to all jobless; free water and electricity; empowerment and not doles and freebies; liberation from economic bondage and an ideal Ram Rajya which Mahatma Gandhi dreamed.
“A Koshal State is like a temple to be built over the years. What we need to do now is lay the foundation with whatever little we contribute. Sending a KKD candidate as MlA to the Odisha
Assembly will be part of that contribution. Time will come when this dream of ours will come true,” said Mishra in a speech at a village before leaving for another village.