Despite Odisha being labeled as a State with high incidence of manual scavenging, the State administration's conspicuous nonchalance in ensuring toilet in every home has come to fore.
A survey by the Centre found almost 97 per cent of houses built under Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) in Odisha having no sanitary latrines. This is so when IAY mandates compulsory provisioning of sanitary latrines in every house constructed under the scheme.
Besides, to check corruption in house allotments under the scheme, the IAY waitlists based on 2002 BPl lists needed to be well-publicized by writing on the walls of gram panchayat buildings, but the survey found such displays only in 42 per cent of surveyed villages. Moreover, the State has also failed in providing homestead land to those landless BPl households who wish to avail IAY assistance to own a home.
Such widespread discrepancies plaguing the IAY scheme in Odisha has been documented by the National level Monitoring (NlM) Committee's survey report 2014-15 conducted under the aegis of the Union Rural Development Ministry.
In a significant disclosure, NlM finds that only 2 per cent of total surveyed villages in Odisha were able to provide homestead land under IAY to such rural
BPl households, who neither have agricultural land or a house site during the period 2009-14.
It needs mentioning that the National Council for Applied Economics and Research (NCAER) has in its earlier report outlined this as one of the major reasons for the lackadaisical outcome of IAY in Odisha. It observed that the desired outcome of IAY scheme in Odisha couldn't be achieved as most BPl households do not possess 120 sq ft of minimum land to avail the assistance. More so with over 16 per cent of its population being landless, non-provisioning of homestead land is proving as a major impediment in successful implementation of the scheme, it outlined.
The NCAER has also identified financial constraints as the other impeding factor before IAY scheme in the State. It has categorically said that the assistance provided is not adequate to build a house. Though there is a provision of Rs 20, 000 as top-up loan under Differential Rate of Interest (DRI) scheme at 4 per cent rate of interest, banks are not forthcoming
as data shows non-achievement of the target set under the DRI scheme in the State for the fear of incurring higher NPA.
The NlM committee has observed that around 64 per cent of houses that remained incomplete, even after the mandatory 2-year period, are due to 'insufficient' fund sanctioned under IAY. It has also brought to fore inordinate delay in sanctioning of the assistance to beneficiaries that has affected the completion rate, especially in the districts of Nabarangpur and Nayagarh where delay was observed in as high as 30 per cent cases.
The NlM survey also noted complete violations of IAY guidelines in State in ensuring smokeless chulhas in every IAY house universally as it detected non-compliance of the norm in almost all completed houses it surveyed in as many 12 districts of the State. Moreover, in
quality terms NlM rated only 36 per cent IAY houses as 'excellent'.