Definition of Human Development Index (HDI)
HDI is a statistic composite index of life expectancy for health, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling for education and Gross National Income per capita for the standard of living. It is a better score for overall development than the poverty rate. Every year, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) ranks countries based on the HDI report. The ideal score is 1.
In Dec, 2020, according to UNDP, out of 189 countries, India was ranked 131, with a HDI of 0.645. Norway topped the list with a HDI of 0.957. China was ranked 85.
We do not have a ranking for Odisha for 2020, but as per SBI report on HDI (2017), among the Indian States,Odisha ranked 22 among 25 bigger States. Odisha scored 0.600(HDI was 0.400 in 1990), against the Indian average of 0.647 and 0.779 for the State of Kerala, the best in India.
Odisha Economic Survey 2020-21(Feb 21)
Published by Planning and Convergence Department Government of Odisha.
Disclaimer: This Report does not necessarily reflect the views of the Government of Odisha.
Odisha Economic Survey 2020-21 was released in February 2021. The survey is 447 pages long. Here are some excerpts selected by me.
Rural poverty: The rural poverty in Odisha reduced by 25 percentage points between 2004-05 and 2011-12 (i.e. from 60.8% to 35.69%).
Human Development and Quality of Life: The Life expectancy at birth in Odisha is comparable at the national level 69.3 years. As per SRS Bulletin 2018, the IMR (Infant Mortality Rate) of Odisha is 40 whereas the rate for India is 32.
Children under Five Stunted Growth Rate: (low height for age) is 34.2%. That means 34.2% percent of children under age of five have chronic malnutrition.
Looking Forward – Development Approach for Odisha
- The state needs to make a long stride in economic growth with much faster pace than the national average over a long period of time.
- There is need for substantial increase in financial allocation in the health sector through public and private investment.
- Agriculture and allied sector is the main stay of the economy since more than 60 % of people depend on it for livelihood. In order to make it a vibrant sector the thrust should be on augmentation of irrigation facilities, crop diversification, integrated farming and development of animal husbandry and fisheries.
- KBK areas and marginalised classes including SC, ST and women need special attention in order to substantially reduce regional, social and gender disparities and to promote human development”.
Inter–Districts Disparities in Development
We can divide 30 districts of Odisha based on Human Development Index in to three groups.
- 10 Districts doing relatively well in descending order are: Khurdha, Jharsuguda, Cuttack, Sundergarh, Deogarh, Angul, Puri, Bhadrak, Mayurbhanj and Kendrapara.
- 10 Districts doing so-so in descending order are: Kalahandi, Dhenkanal, Sambalpur, Nuapada, Nayagarh, Sonepur, Bargarh, Balasore, Jagatsinghpur and Ganjam.
- 10 Districts doing badly in descending order are:Balangir, Jajpur, Boudh, Keonjhar, Rayagada, Nabarangpur, Koraput, Gajapati, Kandhamal and Malkangiri.
The last eight underdeveloped districts of Odisha are among the 50 most underdeveloped districts in India. Think about it!
What can be done for Odisha’s endemic poverty?
There is no single or easy solution to poverty eradication. Governments have come and gone but status of Odisha, as one of the poorest states in India has not changed. Do not get me wrong. Things have improved a lot from the time I left Odisha in 1970. But like Odisha, the developmental status of other states has also got better, at a faster rate than that of Odisha.
If one reads the Government of Odisha’s Economic Survey Report 2021, (one is produced every year) it looks like the government has diagnosed the problem but the treatments prescribed are vague and had not worked in the past. Government of Odisha has multiple yojanas- one for every problem, named after either a Gandhi or Biju Babu but the lives of our tribal and rural poor have not improved that much. While Bhubaneswar is thriving, the other towns farther away from the state capital are not doing so great. Not even Cuttack! Odisha is still at the bottom on HDI ranking in India.
I am a physician and not an economist. I have grown in a small scale farmer family in non –irrigated part of Bargarh district. Fortunately for us our parents had the foresight to educate all three of their children. With education our family escaped grinding rural poverty. I have been interested in developmental economic since 1995. I have written one book, two booklets and few articles on the topic of Odisha’s poverty. I have kept up with developmental literature. Based on my present knowledge, following are five of my recommendations to make Odisha one of the middle-rank developed states in India.
1- Direct Cash Transfer
The government of Odisha should plan to transfer Rs 20,000 to Rs25, 000 to each poor family in Odisha for next 5-10 years. The money should be deposited directly to their bank accounts or postal accounts or to their debit cards, preferably in the name of the women as the heads of the households. This will empower women and give them voice in decision making which is important for many other reasons. This one measure will drop Odisha’s poverty rate relatively quickly. Based on 2011 census Odisha has about 3.5 million poor families. It will cost the government about 13% of 2021-22 budget amounts. The money can be found by stopping many of the poverty eradications schemes (Yojanas) which have not worked so far. Some of the money which is now coming from the center for various poverty schemes can be part of this direct cash transfer. It will be easy to do because of the existing Adhar account system already in place in India and is being used for distributing cash for other programs.
The direct cash transfer will eliminate all the middle men who siphon off a percentage at various stages of implementation of any scheme. According to many studies only 10-15% developmental money reaches the poor. Think of old KBK districts, how much money has been spent there since Rajiv Gandhi’s time (He visited the area) with so little to show for.
The direct cash grant concept is not a new or radical idea. It has been implemented in Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Iran and many other countries under various names. The Brazilian program Bolsa Familia benefited 12 million families and reduced the poverty rate by 28% in six years (Wikipedia.org/bolsafamilia). Six years ago the BJP government at the center was floating the idea of direct cash grant but never implemented it. Rahul Gandhi, during the last general election was advocating the program as a part of Congress manifesto. Andrew Yang campaigned on it during the US Presidential election of 2020. Many of the developmental economists including Indian Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee are in favor of it with some stipulations.
2-Facilitate Migration
Migration and education are two of the oldest actions against poverty. Late Harvard Economist John Galbraith wrote many years ago: “There is nothing great about blue sky and clean air when you are starving.”
Poverty is mainly a rural, phenomenon. Odisha is predominantly a rural state. The educational opportunities, the quality of education and job opportunities in rural areas are not very good. When people migrate to a town, city or to another state or country, they make a better living (even as a domestic worker) than if they would have stayed in their villages with minimal or no work.
In 1930s to 1960s people from coastal districts migrated to Kolkata mostly as domestic help. But there children got an education and moved up to middle class. People from Northern Odisha and Western Odisha migrated to Jamshedpur for work. In 1960s when I was at AIIMS, almost all the plumbers in Delhi were from Odisha. Now a days Oriya laborers from Southern and Western Odisha are migrating to Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Chhattisgarh. In one study from Bargarh district, out of total population of 87,000 in 12 villages 47,000 people were seasonal migrants. Educated Oriyas are working in large number in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Delhi.
Odisha should follow the example of Kerala. One person from every three household is working in Middle East countries. Instead of denying or minimizing the issue, the government of Odisha should take the following steps to facilitate migration out of Odisha.
- Government should open recruitment centers for migrant workers
- It should give one time grant for transportation and food so that the migrants are not at the mercy of the middle men
- Provide hostels for their children and provide them BPL health insurance and other benefits.
3- Education (especially girl’s education)
No country has succeeded in reducing poverty if it has not educated its people. That was one of the main advantage China had over India. China emphasized primary education. India emphasized higher education (IITs) and neglected primary education. In retrospect it was a big mistake. Educating girls is even more important than educating boys. The benefits of girls’ education are many: decrease pregnancy rate, increase productivity, reduction of under-5 mortality, gender equality and many more.
The government of Odisha should take the following steps to improve education:
- Compulsory education for all children up to 10th grade.
- Improve school infrastructures-class rooms, toilets, safe drinking water, computer etc. I have visited many schools and colleges in Western Odisha and many have no toilets.
- Make sure that teachers attend schools. Teacher absentee rate is 30 to 40 percent in rural government schools.
- .More than 35% students are under nourished. Provide free nutritious breakfast and lunch to all students at school.
- Give deworming medicine, vitamin-A (Vitamin A deficiency is main cause of preventable child blindness) and iron tablet (iron deficiency anemia rate is 40 percent or more) at school to all students.
- Provide vocational education (plumber, electrician, carpenter) for students who cannot attend college.
4-Provision of Basic Healthcare
The relationship between health and poverty is well established. There is also a strong correlation between nutrition, health and learning. Right to education and right to healthcare should be fundamental rights. The government of Odisha should increase its health care budget significantly (it is around 3% now) and not transfer its obligation to private sector. It should take the following steps to provide basic health care to its entire people.
- Provide safe drinking water and toilets to all households
- Immunize all children and eligible adults with recommended vaccines
- With the help from the central government provide health insurance to all, not just the PPL families. Many states are already doing it.
5- Develop other towns in Odisha besides Bhubaneswar
All the ministers, all the senior bureaucrats and the cultural and commercial elites of Odisha reside in Bhubaneswar, not even in Cuttack. They have access to good education, healthcare, transportation, sports and cultural events. I know it because I was there for four years. During my tenure as Managing Director of Kalinga Hospital (2004-05 and 2008-11) and as an appointed expert member of Western Odisha Development Council (2009-2015) I had the opportunities to visit at least 22 of the 30 districts in Odisha. I also learned how the percentage game works. Most of the district headquarter towns have shops both sides of the street and except for few private colleges here and there, there are no institution of importance located in them. There is no good rail or air –transportation connecting them to major cities in India. In January, 2020, for the first time in 50 years, we were able to fly directly from Delhi to Jharsuguda. It was a thrill.
Based on a quick google search I found that 57 out of 192 engineering colleges, 4 out of 13 Medical colleges, 15 out of 20 National Institutions (like IIT, AIIMS, and Physics institute) of Odisha are in Bhubaneswar. All the major tertiary care hospitals including AIIMS and private universities are in Bhubaneswar. I wonder why AIIMS could not have been located in Balangir or Kalahandi district. People from other parts of Odisha are already resenting this Bhubaneswar centric development.
Bhubaneswar is a very livable place. But, unless other towns and cities are developed as well, no industry except the one in extracting business like coal or iron ore will like to start a new business there. Without new enterprises there will be no job creation in those districts. Without a job you stay poor from one generation to the next.
My simple recommendation is to move all the ministries with their secretariat staff to different districts. It will force the babus to move there. If the official and the ministers move with their families, the schools, hospitals and transportation in those towns will improve. I know they will resist but they will not resign.
Conclusion
“Indeed, there is no such thing as freedom for a man who is starving or for a country who is poor”.-Jawaharlal Nehru, 1950
Odisha has rich natural resources-minerals and forest, long coast- line, fertile river valley and low population density (270 per sq. km compare to 860 for Kerala). In spite of more than 40 years of stable governments , both under the Congress and BJD, Odisha’s low ranking (22 out of 25) in the Human Development Index has not changed much. There is also quite a bit of developmental disparities among various districts. While coastal districts are doing relatively well, the former KBK districts are doing badly. Things have improved no doubt, but the pace of change is too slow. Most Oriyas are ashamed of Odisha’s low developmental status. In this article, I have suggested five steps; direct cash grant to the poor, facilitating migration, improving education, health care and decentralizing development outside the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack corridor. The direct cash grant to the poor will take Odisha out of the bottom rank to one of the middle rank state in just few years.
Without power you cannot bring about change. Odisha politics and bureaucracy has been dominated by the coastal elites even before Odisha got its independence. All the Chief Ministers have been from Cuttack – Bhubaneswar belt except for R. N. Singh Deo for 4 years, Hemanada Biswal twice for a total of 269 days and Giridhar Gamang for 291 days. People who have not been poor or not grown up in a village have no real idea how hard it is to make a living as farmer or as a laborer in a village. There are no good schools or colleges in rural areas. Teacher’s absentee rate is high. There are no coaching facilities to give a bright student any chance of competing in all the national tests. Think about the fate of our SC and ST Brothers and sisters. They are even worse off.
To bring about change, people must organize, get political power and make the necessary changes. Nobody gives off power voluntarily, almost nobody! Without power you cannot make change.
Source- Odisha Economic Survey 2020-21. www.desorissa.nic.in/economic_ survey (2020-21)
PS Dr Sahu grew up in village Mulbar in Bargarh district. He graduated from Kamgaon Middle School, C.S. Zila School, G.M. College (Sambalpur) and AIIMS (New Delhi). He migrated to US in 1970. He is a retired pediatrician. He has been promoting education (especially girls’ education), healthcare, and tree planting in areas surrounding his birth village in Bargarh district since 1989 through his family trust (Shakuntala- Bidydhar Trust).
