The rice bowl has been snatched away

The Indian Express editorial on starvation deaths in Orissa (IE, December 16) seems to have ignored the socio-economic dimension of starvation in western Orissa. It is true that the drought of 2000 has contributed to massive crop failure and subsequent food shortage. However, starvation in the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput are not entirely due to lack of rain.

It is also a misconception that poor villagers migrate from the belt to escape from drought. They do so to escape from poverty which is always present. For instance, 1999 was not a drought year, still tens of thousands migrated from here in search of casual labour. The following year’s drought has only exacerbated the problem. The poor people here desperately exchange their land, household items and labour for a pittance in times of crisis. It happens even when Kalahandi district contributes enviable shares to the government kitty.

A large percentage of people have no land; and they have nothing to fall back on. The market in many local towns are controlled by migrants and their cartels who buy cheap and sell dear. The access to the forests is strictly controlled. And the forest trade remained in the hands of monopolies. Often the daily wage paid is a meagre Rs 25 a day. "It’s a hangover of feudalism," as academics would note. That is why, even in the best of times, poor people here are among the most malnourished in the country.

Several academic studies and NGO reports have highlighted the skewed land distribution pattern in the region. A survey by aid agency Actionaid notes that in Bolangir over 90 per cent of the rural households are very poor. The top one-tenth of the landed families own 37 per cent of all cultivable land. At the same time, the bottom 44 percent families own only 13 per cent of the land. Much of the land owned by the poor are uplands that cannot retain water. There is no irrigation worth its name in the area. The productivity of the land depends on the whims of the monsoon. There is no job worth its name.

The land alienation is due to the prevalence of land hoarding and the practice mortgaging land for private loans at cut-throat interest rates. Money-lenders actually control many holdings of the poor. An example is Amlapali in Nuapada district. This village shot into infamy during the 1985 drought after Phanas Punji, a starving woman “sold” her sister-in-law for Rs 40. Rajiv Gandhi, the then prime minister, had rushed here and the PMO started monitoring drought relief. Phanas and her neighbours still live in abject poverty. Over half the land here is under mortgage to moneylenders.

If any region needs a free market it is western Orissa. Traders from Kantabanji, the trade and labour migration hub of Bolangir are notorious for buying onions grown by villagers at less than Rs 2 a kg and selling it back to them over double the price. The villagers largely do not have the facility to store their produce or the capacity to fight the trade cartels.

The market of the forest produce is another piece of black humour. A few state-government approved monopolies have been buying produce like forest flowers and seeds at about one third the market price till an amendment this year somewhat liberalised the trade.

Historians note that the local tribal people have been marginalised since the 19th century when the British controlled the forests and introduced the market economy. Strangely, however, the process of marginalisation continues.Deforestation, the loss of traditional water storage measures and the whims of the monsoon have pushed this region over the edge. Drought relief measures never address the root causes.