District Zero: She folds the Indian flag and unfolds her dream

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“I dream that I get to work as a teacher, I want to teach history to children in my village,” says Deepti, daughter of a Dalit paddy farmer from southern Odisha.

Teaching history to shape the future may be one young woman’s dream but, in a way, it’s also the dream of her Dhodra village, of her entire district: Nabarangpur, a 5,291-sq-km drop of ink on the map of India, and its poorest district with 12.2 lakh people, nearly 56 per cent tribals, 10 blocks and two municipalities.

Nabarangpur is also India in a test tube, on the cusp of tomorrow, with new office buildings coming up in its headquarters, roads under construction, new shops springing up on State Highway 39 that cuts the district laterally, a young administrative team of a first-time District Collector and a first-time SP, and a first-time MP in Delhi.

Deepti Baidya (centre) with other students of the Biju Patnaik Junior College for Women in Umerkote municipality, Nabarangpur.

But Nabarangpur is also District Zero. On all key indicators, it sits at the bottom of the development barrel with a literacy rate of 46.43 per cent (the national average is 74.04 per cent); approximately one government doctor for 27,000 people; 1,667 hamlets without electricity (only 12.6 per cent households use electricity as the source of lighting, against the national average of 67.2 per cent); no government college; and, not one railway line.

What really matters here is not the Parliament washout or the Pakistani terrorist but what most of the rest of India take for granted every day — a doctor, electricity, Internet connectivity.

And in a district ruled and dominated by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which has three out of four MLAs from Nabarangpur, the disconnect with Delhi is visible. If 11,000 toilets have been built this year under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, there’s the locked one that no one uses in remote Lakatipakana because the villagers “always use the fields”. If Skill India is dominating policy conversations in the national capital, there’s an ITI college principal in Umerkote who warns of a crucial, missing step.

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“Things are changing,” said Dr Taradatt, an IAS veteran who started his career in this region in the 1980s and is now the Chief Administrator of Koraput Bolangir Kalahandi (KBK) region, including Nabarangpur which was carved out on October 2, 1992. “There were gaps until the fifth five-year-plan (1974-79), because the government policy earlier was to preserve the way of life of tribals. This affected certain development aspects, particularly in health and education. But now, the people themselves are demanding change,” he said.

It’s an opinion that’s echoed by Collector Rashmita Panda, a 2010 batch officer and a mechanical engineer from the government college in Bhubaneswar; SP B Jugal Kishore, from the 2011 batch and an electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur; and MP Balabhadra Majhi, a civil engineer from the then REC Rourkela in 1985 who resigned as a chief engineer in the Railways to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on a BJD ticket.

“It’s always better to light a candle than to blame the darkness,” said Panda. “Nabarangpur is already in the mode of transition and rolling on the path of progress…This is possible and achievable with active community participation and the concerted efforts of all,” she added.

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“It’s a peaceful district,” said Kishore. “There was some trouble with Maoists, which reached a peak with the shooting of a BJD MLA in 2011 in Raighar block, bordering Chhattisgarh. But two BSF battalions have been posted in the area since then. Today, most of the crimes reported are petty disputes related to alcoholism.”

However, behind their impressive qualifications, idealistic zeal and the visible signs of development, one haunting image showed why there’s still a long way to go. As The Indian Express travelled through the district, beginning its one-year journey in villages around Umerkote municipality, about 60 km north of the district headquarters, it came across 62-year-old Jinu Majhi, a maize farmer from Chichinaguda in Sunabeda Gram Panchayat.

After explaining how life was miserable without electricity, he walked up to the jeep to say goodbye, then stretched out his right hand, palm open, as if he was seeking alms. His eyes filling up, he said, “Humein current de do, hum aapka naam har din yaad karenge (Please give us electricity, we will remember you every day).”

Seeking a connection

If Jinu needs electricity, Tularam Majhi, a school teacher, wants a doctor at the health centre near his village, Deepti Baidya wants better facilities for higher education, Simanchal Bisoyi, a paddy farmer, hopes for a “strong” Internet signal for his BSNL connection, and U C Mishra, the ITI college principal, demands jobs for his students.

The search for an answer to Jinu’s question starts at the Nabarangpur office of the Southern Electricity Supply Co of Odisha Ltd. According to Susanta Kumar Khatea, the sub divisional officer, Nabarangpur requires 45 MW of power which is supplied by three grids, two of which came up in June.

But electricity reaches only 65 per cent of the district, he admitted, with complete coverage expected to be achieved under two Central government schemes — the UPA’s Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) Phase II and the NDA’s flagship Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) — and a state project named after the former CM and the late father of Odisha’s current CM Naveen Patnaik.

“Out of the 1,667 non-electrified hamlets, 1,205 will be electrified under the RGGVY Phase II and 201 under the Biju Gram Jyoti Yojana. This is expected to be complete by 2016-17. We have proposed that the remaining 271 be covered under the DDUGJY, which has a target year of 2021-22,” Khatea said.

Until then? “You have to be patient and wait. You see, these are government policy matters, they take time,” Khatea said.

And now, the teacher who wants a doctor. Dr Niranjan Nayak, Chief District Medical Officer, is tired of that question. “What can I do, we are government servants, we can post doctors only when we get them,” said Dr Nayak.

According to statistics provided by his office, Nabarangpur has 159 sanctioned posts for doctors but only 45 are on duty. Of the 23 appointed this year, three joined, two of whom went on leave almost immediately.

Why should an MBBS doctor come here?

“The state government grants grace marks in the PG entrance exam and special monetary allowances to encourage MBBS graduates to work in villages. But basically, it boils down to the lack of electricity and Internet connectivity in the peripheral areas. The nearest railway station is in Jeypore, in neighbouring Koraput, which is 40 km away from the district headquarters. How do you expect youngsters educated in colleges in big cities to stick on?” Dr Nayak asked.

As for the lack of teachers, Dr Kulamani Nathsharma, District Education Officer, said the answer was simple. “We do not get local candidates with the required basic qualification, which is a BEd. The students are financially weak and, with no government college, can’t afford higher studies. The situation is now improving,” said Dr Nathsharma.

Bisoyi’s dream of an uninterrupted BSNL signal may be one of the first among the lot to be fulfilled. Dr K K Mishra, Deputy General Manager, BSNL, said they are working on various solutions including “providing wireless mini linking from one tower to another” and “linking up with the neighbouring state” of Chhattisgarh to effectively reach the border areas. “The mini linking is expected to be complete within two months,” Mishra said.

Strangely enough, what’s driving Nabarangpur forward in one direction appears to be pushing it back in another. “The rapid pace of construction and road work has disrupted our optic fibre cables at many places,” Mishra said.

In Umerkote, meanwhile, U C Mishra, the college principal, says what’s missing at his ITI is that final step to bridge the distance between a certificate-holder and a job.

“We have around 140 girls and boys of which a majority of the girls opt for sewing technology with which they generate income from their homes. The boys opt for technical courses but find it tough because they come from remote tribal homes with little exposure,” Mishra said.

“The first issue is the poor marks they get. But more importantly, they have very poor communication skills which push them back in interviews. Some of them don’t even appear for job interviews because they are scared. In one interview, one of them was asked what 100 divided by 10 is. The student didn’t know the answer,” he added.

The wishlist: industry, railway, college and dam

In search of these answers, The Indian Express also spoke to Subash Gond, the BJD MLA from Umerkote, and Congressman Bhujbal Majhi, the district’s lone non-BJD MLA. But while Gond blamed the Congress, which held sway in Nabarangpur till 2000, for all its ills, Majhi accused the BJD of letting down the district.

In the end though, SP Kishore, warned that there were some larger issues that the district may have to confront, apart from electricity, education, health and connectivity. “There is some simmering tension regarding availability of jungle land for tribals, particularly after the Forest Rights Act of 2005. The tribals believe they are entitled to more land. This has the potential to blow up. We are keeping an eye on the situation,” he said.

In Delhi, MP Balabhadra Majhi, a Gond tribal, said the other larger issue is the lack of any major industrial venture in the district.

At present, the only big industrial unit here is Mangalam Timber Production Ltd, a B K Birla group company, an automated plant that can employ up to 800 people.

“But with the annual production of fibre boards down to around 12,000 metric tonnes last year from a peak of 30,000, we employ only 240 permanent staff currently. We have been hit by a dip in demand, shortage of raw material and lack of uninterrupted power supply. There was also a fire in 2010 that destroyed our hydraulic equipment,” said P Ravi Kumar, Senior Manager (Accounts).

“Apart from Mangalam, there are also some rice mills and cashew units but they can at best employ about 50-60 people each,” Majhi said. “The other major source of income is agriculture, mainly paddy and maize. But our farmers are in trouble with the rains not up to the mark this time,” he added.

Asked to make a wishlist, Majhi said: “We need industries, a railway project, an engineering college, a dam on the Tel river up north for which a survey report has been completed. I can go on and on.”

Until then, there is “no doubt in my mind that Nabarangpur will remain the poorest district in India”.

Back at the Biju Patnaik (ST) College for Women in Umerkote, Deepti carefully places the national flag inside the cupboard. She has a wishlist, too: “I want tap water in my home so that I don’t have walk all the way to the tubewell every day, I want a pucca road in my village, I want a good job.”

But for now, it’s back to the classroom.