Following is a report from the Pioneer:
It is unfortunate that such incidents are still happening even after the implementation RTE act.
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March 20, 2011 at 10:11 am sanjibkarmee
Following report is from the Pioneer:
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday directed the concerned officials to expedite the construction work of lower Suktel dam project which would provide irrigation facilities to 31, 830 hectares land of Balangir and Sonepur district. The Government would make expenditure lay out of Rs 1,041.81 crore for the project.
Reviewing a meeting on the progress of the said project at the State Secretariat, Patnaik issued this direction. It was known from the meeting that the project has already got state II forest clearances and land acquisition work has been going on in full swing.
It was decided in the meeting that two officers would be appointed to see that land acquisition work for main reservoir and dam should be completed by October end.
The project which would spread over 1230 square kilometre will have a 1410 meter-long earthen embankment (dam). Of the targeted lands to be irrigated by the project, while 29,850 hectares land belongs to Balangir district, 1, 980 hectares land of Sonepur district would be irrigated.
Among others, Planning and Coordination Minister AU Singh Deo, Chief Secretary Bijay Patnaik, Principal Secretary to CM Aditya Padhi, Water Resources Secretary Suresh Mohapatra, Revenue Secretary RK Sharma and Central RDC PK Mohapatra were present at the meeting.
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September 21, 2010 at 6:14 pm sanjibkarmee
Following is a report by IANS published in http://www.deccanherald.com:
Knowledge and telecommunication evangelist Sam Pitroda, currently advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, is on a new mission – to make India hunger-proof and food-reliant.
He is working on a draft to set a countrywide network of private food banks – resource pools he calls them – that will work as a parallel distribution system to disburse food and allied infrastructure to people living on the edge of the poverty line and below in the vast Indian heartland. Pitroda will put his project, India Food Bank, in place by the yearend with the help of a Chicago-based international organisation, Global Foodbanking Network, a Stanford University think-tank that provides food aid to 30 nations.
Statistics narrate a grim tale of hunger in India, a country of 1.2 billion that is home to 27 per cent of the world’s hungry populace with one of the largest populations of malnourished children. Rough estimates by the Action Aid, a global anti-poverty organisation, cite that nearly 212 million people suffer from chronic hunger and undernourishment in India.
The United Nations World Food Programme paints a more alarming picture saying nearly 350 million of India’s population – roughly 35 per cent – is considered food insecure, consuming less than 80 per cent of the total energy requirements. “I identify with the problem because I was born in a large family in Kalahandi in the Bolangir district of Orissa that is ravaged by hunger and is prone to drought,” he said at an interface on his new project in the capital hosted by Aspen Institute-India.
“Three years ago, I took up the issue with a group of food activists at the Global Foodbanking Network in Chicago, the global capital of commodity trading. I told them why can’t we go to India and explore the dimension of hunger and malnutrition that can affect the future of India. More than 212 million people face paucity of food (hunger) in India.”
“We have a friend in Chicago, John Kapoor, who has made a lot of money. He sponsored a fact-finding team to India that conducted a feasibility study of the project in four underdeveloped states to find out whether it was possible to engage local communities, ensure community participation and create a network of stake-holders who could source essential food and related infrastructure for voluntary donation and distribution under an alternative food chain like the sub-Saharan models.”
Pitroda, who left for the US on Saturday, said he would return in July to “socialise the idea in the country with necessary modification for implementation by the end of the year”. “The government has several food programmes but can we really organise these programmes effectively,” he argued in justification of his “food bank project”.
Commenting on the necessity of food banks to ensure “sustained food security in India”, he said “while populations grow, food resources are continuously shrinking”. “Coupled with natural phenomenon like climate change and global warming, the security of food and other resources is a worrying question. One answer is the concept of food bank,” he said.
The Global Foodbanking Network, founded by Red Argentina de Bancos de Alimentos (Argentina), Food Banks Canada, Asociación Mexicana de Bancos de Alimentos (Mexico) and Feeding America (United States), shares food banking concepts and helps partners evaluate the feasibility and most effective business model for implementation in their country.
The organisation was founded in 2006 by four of the world’s leading national food bank networks. Its objective “is to fulfil the vision of John Van Hengel, who founded the world’s first food bank in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1967 and worked to promote and establish food banking around the world”. The latest World Food Programme report warns that more than 1.5 million children in India may suffer from malnourishment because of spiralling global food prices and 43 per cent of children under five years of age are underweight.
The report says the proportion of anaemic children has increased by six percent in the last six years with 11 states reporting 80 percent child anaemia. Figures say one in five people – about 45 per cent of Indian children – in developing countries are chronically “undernourished”. Food prices have increased by 83 percent in the last two years and 22 countries have enshrined the right to food in their Constitutions.
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May 31, 2010 at 4:06 pm sanjibkarmee
Following report is from The Pioneer:
Balangir MP Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo has demanded early approval of the eight-year, 2009-10 to 2016-17, perspective plan of Rs 4,500 crore for Kalahandi, Balangir and Koraput (KBK) region, submitted to the Central Government by the State.
Participating in the Zero Hour discussion in the Parliament on Wednesday, MP Singh Deo raised the matter saying even today the region has many adverse human development indicators and is one of the most backward regions in the country.
A study by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation has listed the eight KBK districts at the bottom of 69 most backwards districts, Singh Deo further argued.
The implementation of the revised long term action plan since1998-99 has resulted in a whopping 24.65 per cent decline in poverty from 87.1 per cent in 1999-2000 to 62.5 per cent.
With a view to sustaining the development and consolidating the gains of previous efforts, the Centre should approve soon the State-submitted perspective plan, Singh Deo demanded.
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May 5, 2010 at 7:27 am sanjibkarmee
Here is the link to the article and comments on it:
Readers’ opinions (3)
shankar balangir 30/04/2010 at 11:00 pm
The politicians are solely responsible for this damn thing. these hell scoundrels hv done nothing except corrupting themslves. they dont fear God. and the hell political parties always work for own profit. people are lazy. go do some work instead eating the sand of the river.
Satyajit Balangir 30/04/2010 at 06:26 pm
Bloody Orissa govt. busy in developing only 60 miles corridor of cuttack to puri and criminally neglecting western orissa for last 7 decades..particularly Balangir..God will definitely punish these asshole politicians for deliberately killing these innocent people..Request NGO’s 2 plz help my people
Vighnesh Bhubaneswar 30/04/2010 at 06:23 pm
When will the administration do something….ironically the ruling party was busy organising a Bandh…??
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May 3, 2010 at 6:24 pm sanjibkarmee
BALANGIR: Enter any village under Belpada block of Balangir district and see how people battle for their existence. And how hunger can kill hundreds. Starving and emaciated, villagers often succumb to their circumstances.
The scenes in these villages will leave anyone speechless. Barring a few who own land, most villagers depend on nature. They collect forest produce for their sustenance.
TOI visited Bileimara village, 17 km from the block headquarters and met Bhaktaram Bariha, who is 65. For the past 10 years he has been bed-ridden. His spouse had died of some mysterious disease years ago. What is most pitiable is that he was forced to marry off his two daughters to the same man.
His son-in-law had promised to look after him and so Bariha gave away his second daughter, too, in marriage to this man. Today, all four stay together, the daughters look after the father and husband. Bariha does not get old age pension. Neither does he hold any entitlement card which can buy him subsidized rice at Rs two a kg.
Early morning all of them, barring Bariha, go to the forest to collect char, seeds and mahua flowers. They return home by evening. During their absence, Bariha’s granddaughter Srimati, who is five, looks after him. “I can’t remember any government official visiting this village. I was just a kid when someone came here and talked to some villagers and then vanished. We are fed up requesting the sarpanch to give us a BPL card or an IAY house. Every time he tells us that some procedure has to be followed and then the matter is forgotten,” said his daughter.
Sometime back, he developed a swelling on his neck. He sent his son to the nearby PHC to call a doctor, but he did not come. Finally, his son-in-law called a quack, whose medicines worsened his condition.
The life of Khatra Bariha, 65, of Rengtasil village, mirrors the despondency of his village. He lost his wife after two months of their marriage. A few years later, he lost his two sisters. He had lost his parents when he was young. A stark example of peripatetic life, Khatra constructed a thatched house on the outskirts of the village.
The house is closed from all sides. Every time he goes to the village to fetch water and other essential items, he breaks the thatched wall and then reshapes it. His only possessions are perhaps two bowls and some clothes. Khatra said he asked the sarpanch to get him a BPL card, but the sarpanch asked to him to prove his identity. He collects forest produce and exchanges them in village shops for rice and other items!
Bariha and Khatra are just metaphors of a larger canvas. For these 800-odd poverty-stricken villagers, the forest is a source of sustenance. Adhikar, a voluntary organization, has submitted a list to the government giving names of villagers who are living in this pathetic condition. But there has been no action yet. Jatin Patra, who surveyed the areas and prepared the list, said there’s been no development in the villages in the past 20 years. “Except improving the condition of some roads, there’s been no visible development,” he said.
Five of a family recently died of hunger in Chabripali village under Khaprakhol block. But even this painful incident failed to move the administration.
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May 1, 2010 at 4:52 pm sanjibkarmee
