THE three districts together form one of the most economically backward regions of India that makes headlines for starvation deaths and sale of children.

Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput first came into focus after a severe drought in 1965-66 that led to a famine and claimed about 1,000 lives.

  • In 1985-86, the Kashipur region of Koraput hit the headlines following an admission by a district official that 200 people had died of starvation.
  • In 1988-89,300 people died of hunger in Orissa but the government did not acknowledge that the deaths were from starvation.
  • Last year there were reports of about 200 starvation deaths and over a dozen cases of hungry parents selling their children for a pittance.
  • Nearly 190 people reportedly died of starvation in the three districts between 2000 and 2003. But the government denies these were hunger deaths and attributes them to diseases.

Chief Minister Navin Patnaik asserted that the tribal people of the State were dying not because of starvation, but because of their ignorant and backward habit of eating poisonous mango kernels; that it was not the lack of food, but ignorance that was killing them. Thanks to the glory of democracy!! This attitude of Patnaik and his ministerial colleagues brings into sharp focus the callousness of the rulers. Time and again the government is involved only in some short-term measures owing to public pressure. The deep-rooted problems that are created in the process of the so-called development are not addressed at all. There may be a direct KBK Cell functioning under the Prime Minister of India, but it makes no difference for the exploited and starving tribals of this region.

Ironically Kalahandi is one of the rice surplus districts in Orissa and also has the highest infant mortality rate of 140 per thousand. But why so many of them starve to death?

Structural changes in adivasi society and economy in the last 50 years have destroyed the food and livelihood security of these regions.

Famines have plagued the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput (KBK) belt since the late colonial and early post-colonial period. The first scarcity conditions were seen as early as 1954-55 and thereafter there was hardly any decade without a scarcity, the worst one being in 1965-66. But despite these conditions a report on paddy production in Orissa recorded that Kalahandi had 118,731 tonnes and Bolangir 66,036 tonnes of surplus paddy. Between this period and the 1990s, rice production in the KBK area suffered while the production of oilseeds, along with pulses, reached a new high.

Bob Currie’s study “The Politics of Hunger in India” shows that paddy may have been replaced by ragi, a subsistence crop of the adivasis and other small farmers.

The place of subsistence and food crops is taken over by commercial crops, thanks to the liberalization process.

These phenomena are not merely a result of the liberalisation process, but also an impact of the Green Revolution on the adivasi areas. Because these areas provided cheap land and labour, the shift to cash crops also implied that big farmers came from outside, bought tribal land and made the adivasis work on their farms as cheap labour. For instance, when a dam across Indravati river in Kalahandi district was built, rich farmers from coastal Andhara have leased in all the irrigated lands as the poor tribals did not have the means to invest in commercial crops. There is a law prohibiting land transfers from tribals. But the lands are leased in by outsiders based on oral contract paying very low rent. In reality, those tribals who lease out their land become landless labourers working in their own land but leased out.

In the KBK area there was a sharp increase in the number of landless labourers and small and marginal farmers. Between 1971 and 1991 the number of marginal farmers with landholdings of less than one acre increased from approximately 17 per cent to 39 per cent of the total agricultural workforce.

The pauperisation of adivasi peasants has had a detrimental impact on caste and scheduled tribe development, women and child development, rural development and water resources in Orissa. But all of them have under­utilised the funds.

The Planning Commission sanctioned Rs.2 billion for the current year for the development the three districts.

But the sum was reduced to Rs.1 billion because of the state's inability to spend the money.

However, even full utilization of these development funds is not going to bring any change because any long-term remedy for the situation would require the reversal of the policies impacting on natural resource management and agriculture, particularly the policies initiated since the liberalisation process. Farmers suicides and starvation deaths are systemically linked.