The annual report of Reserve Bank of India published in 2013 (which took old criteria of poverty line) ranked Odisha as the 6th poor State. While it ranked Goa as the least poor State with 5.09 per cent of people living below poverty line, it ranked Bihar as the poorest having 40.69 per cent of poor people, followed by Chhattisgarh at 39.93 per cent and Jharkhand and Manipur at 37 per cent. It is not that poverty is not existing in high income or middle income States like Maharashtra or Gujarat or Karnataka or Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh where high poverty regions like Vidharbha ,Kutch or Gulgarba or Coimbatore or Telangana (which has become a State now), exit.
When people view Odisha poverty, they feel surprised in witnessing high poverty, juxtaposed with high natural resource base. This is a real paradox which many fails to comprehend. Natural resources are not mango trees which you can distribute amongst households and alleviate poverty. The two key natural resources of forest and major minerals belong to Union Government and are not State property but have occupied vast stretch (nearly 50 per cent) of State’s cultivable land. Another resource, sea, gifts the State with frequent devastating cyclones. Poverty in Odisha is attributed to historical negligence, geographical inaccessibility and natural disasters. Now, regional party Government in Odisha adds Central negligence as another factor of poverty. But blaming does not solve the issue. As a regional party rules Odisha, it can take steps to cut poverty to zero level.
The first intervention should be to bring reform in design and implementation of State’s welfare programmes to combat rural poverty with priority. The first step should be freezing the rural poverty population size. This can be done by identifying the poor using Union Government criteria from the already surveyed NAFSA and MGNREGS beneficiary list. As per 2011 census, Odisha has 4.2 crore population of which 3.50 crore are rural. Assuming the 0-18 population as 40 per cent, there are 2.1 crore rural adults in the State. If we calculate 30 per cent poverty, rural adult poverty comes to 70 lakh only. Considering Rs 32 as rural poverty line, the annual poverty line for a rural adult person comes to Rs 11,680. The Union and State Governments give a rural adult a subsidy of Rs 1,740 per year under NAFSA and if he is given 100 days of work under MNERGS, he will get at least Rs 15,000 per annum. These two schemes give a rural adult Rs 16,740/annum, helping him to escape rural poverty. If the State Government can implement these schemes properly and make direct benefit transfer after converging its welfare schemes, the adults will get more income to take care of the dependent family members. The State can easily achieve zero rural poverty in two years. If the State Government wants to fight poverty alone, it can do so by converging all welfare schemes and give direct benefit transfer to these 70 lakh persons at the rate of Rs 1,000/month, with an annual budget of Rs 8,400 crore. The State Government can convert Ministry of Rural Development to Ministry of RD and Poverty Mitigation.
The second strategy in rural poverty reduction should be reforms in agriculture and allied sector. In 2013-14,the State’s land comprised of 37.3 per cent forest area,34.8 per cent net area shown( which dropped from 40.5 per cent of 1990-91), 8.3 per cent non agricultural use area and 19.6 per cent area consisting of tree cover, groves, pastures, wasteland, barren land and fallow land. Odisha’s annual agriculture growth rate has declined from 3.12 per cent during the 11th plan period to 0.60 per cent in first three years of 12th plan period (2012-2017). There should to be a six-pronged strategy to change the scenario, consisting of utilization of the 19.6 per cent waster land for horticulture, increasing net sown area to 40.5 per cent and beyond, inviting private partnership in agri-marketing, expanding OMFED and private players to all Plain districts for encouraging milk-producers and introducing low cost individual aqua-culture of mud crabs, magur fish and small fish. ITI and skill development should be promoted for unemployed youths with SME promotion. The strategy should target Plan districts.
The third strategy aims at bringing reform in hilly forest covered TSP districts. This is basically forest economy. The economy revolves round NTFP, bamboo, Kendu leaf, fruits, turmeric and ginger. The State Government has already a pro-people NTFP trading policy of 2000.
Private players and the State should jointly promote marketing of these produce. The Agriculture Department should promote traditional crop here instead of pushing paddy. The State can offer MSP for 3 /4 non-paddy crops like maize, raggie, turmeric. Horticulture marketing organization has to be developed with inputs and buy-back mechanism. The OMFED or a similar organisation can help in procurement of sheep and goats from tribal
areas. The overall focus of tribal economy revival should be trade promotion. Forest land Right Act should be implemented.
(E-mail: lalitdemocrat@gmail.com, M-9439178588)