The sustained impact of agrarian crisis in Odisha is different from region to region and also very specific to different social groups.
There are ST farmers in scheduled areas of the State those who are in need of special attention because of their continued vulnerable condition not just only because of drought but for a number of other related reasons. Natural calamities such as drought have been an additional burden to their misery.
The Odisha drought report 2015 by the Special Relief Commissioner, State Revenue and Disaster Management Department, has given a list of drought affected 173 blocks where farmers have sustained crop loss of 33 per cent and above for Kharif paddy during Kharif 2015.
It is found that many of the blocks identified as drought prone are scheduled areas inhabited by majority of ST farmers.
The drought affected areas such as 17 blocks in Maurbhanj, Nilagiri in Baleswar, R Udayagiri of Gajapati, Baliguda of Kandhamal, Telkoi and Champua of Keonjhar, Boriguma and Kotpada in Koraput, 10 blocks in Nabarangpur, four blocks in Rayagada, Kuchinda of Sambalpur, lanjigada in Kalahandi and five blocks in Sundargarh are scheduled areas having more than 50 per cent of its population belonging to the STs. As per 2011 census, the STs constitute 23.9 per cent of the State’s total population and 45 per cent of the total geographical areas of the State is scheduled area.
The scheduled areas are home to a majority of tribal population that includes some of the most vulnerable tribal communities. There are individual ethnic groups and their synonymy sub groups have been identified as scheduled tribes in the State with modifications.
The Census 2011 says Odisha is home to 20, 62,068 ST households out of which only 0.65 per cent are in salaried jobs that includes 0.48 per cent in Government jobs ,0.05 per cent in public sector and 0.12 per cent in private sector. In spite of provisions of reservation in education and jobs, and a host of schemes, the vast majority of ST households depend on agriculture and minor forest produce for livelihood. In the last census, it is reported that the percentage of cultivators for all social groups has declined and the percentage of agriculture labour has increased. This is proportionately higher in case of STs in comparison to other social groups. It shows that the dependency of STs on agriculture and forest has not changed much in spite of development of other sectors in the tribal areas and the State as a whole. But the agriculture sector has increasingly become more unfavorable for the ST farmers.
Many of the Government schemes such as irrigation, insurance, credit, compensation, input subsidy and MSP are disproportionately benefiting to the farmers because of its inherent gaps in formulation of criteria in identifying genuine beneficiaries which have not considered the local specific issues of a region and social groups in case of farmers.
Considering the situation in Odisha, the Government should have very specific package for the ST farmers in scheduled areas as the socio-economic background of the farmers and geographical condition as well as farming methodology are different from other areas of the State.
The State Government has to see the horizontal and vertical disparity among producing communities engaged in agriculture and ensure equity in allocation of State sponsored benefits in the protection of farmers and most vulnerable farmers of the State in a specific region for an inclusive growth.
The scheduled areas/tribal areas are also forest areas. During last few decades there have been huge ecological and environmental changes in the areas due to a number of reasons that include deforestation, industry and mining and such other related activities that have impacted in many ways over agriculture and forest based livelihood of the locals. Mining and industrial activities have been cause of huge displacement, deforestation, soil erosion, soil pollution and water scarcity impacting ST farmers for last few decades.
A major patch of Keonjhar , Sundergarh, Maurbhanj and Koraput became waste land and it is found that mostly the scheduled areas are bearing the brunt of industrial development without being a beneficiary of the ongoing development process. There has been no compensation to the farmers losing their crops due to mining and industrial pollution where mostly the ST farmers are getting affected.
Along with impact of climate change on agriculture, the ST farmers’ dependency on market for agricultural inputs has also increased. Many studies have established that the local varieties of paddy were replaced with high yielding verities and the genetic diversity has reduced with decrease of local species.
The dependency of ST farmers on Government and market has impacted agriculture production. There has been no major change in structural traditional issues such as land ownership, irrigation and credit system in tribal areas.
There has been no visible change in the credit delivery mechanism in tribal areas in the absence of adequate modern banking facilities. Majority of tribal households depend on informal credit system that includes traditional private money lenders and new micro credit groups for timely agricultural finance. The huge deforestation has drastically reduced the MFP collection which has been one of the important sources of livelihood.
Though there has been provision of minimum support price for 12 MFP, this has not been properly implemented to benefit the MFP collectors who are mostly STs. Many of the employment and income generating programmes such as NREGS have very minimal impact over the livelihood of STs.This has led to lack of food security, starvation death, distress migration and suicide by tribal farmers.
The ST farmers mostly do cultivation in up lands in traditional pattern and depend on rain water in the absence of irrigation facilities. Surveys and settlements are not complete in the scheduled areas. As a result, many of the ST farmers have no record of right over the land they cultivate.
They mostly cultivate community land collectively without formal right over the land. Many of them are small and marginal farmers having small holding with record of rights.
land ownership in tribal areas is still continuing as unfinished task. Vast majority of tribal farmers are illiterate and lack awareness on subsidy and other benefits. They are also not part of the formal institutional and organizational process for farmers and do not have direct access to Government offices. It has been depriving them of accessing Government support.
There are assured central funding from different sources for scheduled areas and STs with a dedicated ministry and department in the State both are headed by leaders from scheduled tribe communities.
The local governance in scheduled areas is also in the hands of representatives of STs as per provisions of PESA but why there has been no specific effort to address the vulnerability of ST farmers of the State.
The tribal sub plan (TSP) which speaks of a share in Budget for STs as per their population which means 23 per cent of the State Budget should be spent for STs, special grants under article 275(1) of constitution of India, Special Central assistance to TSP, special grants for VTGs and many others have not been properly implemented by the State Government.
The tribal advisory council headed by the Chief Minister as well as the tribal MlAs and MPs have very rarely discussed the specific issues of ST farmers in scheduled areas.
(Email-manasbbsr15@gamil.com Mob-09437060797)