Orissa

The work is an attempt to map the population of Bhubaneswar urban agglomeration and its out-growths which is growing exponentially after topping the potential list of smart cities. The city is a major hub of IT and education sector attracting a chunk of migrants from other districts of the state as well as the neighbouring states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. The potential area for expansion and increasing credibility to facilitate a growing population is an unique characteristic of the district with the capital city as its heart. Work is based on Walter Isard's methods in a simplistic manner.
1. ARITHMATICAL INCREASE METHOD OF PROJECTION
2. GEOMETRIC INCREASE METHOD
3. INCREMENTAL INCREASE METHOD

In comparison to other linguistic movements in India, Orissa is the single instance of a pan-regional linguistic identity that made a successful negotiation with the colonial state by using constitutional means. Subsequently, like many other linguistic movements that culminated in statehood in postcolonial India, its appeal waxed and waned. It gradually declined in the second half of the twentieth century, as language came to be displaced by issues of development as the prime movers of identity politics. At the Margins addresses these broader questions of poverty, marginality, ethnicity, and identity in Orissa in the twentieth century.
The work challenges the idea of 1947 as a watershed and seeks to grapple with the themes of regionalism, language-based ethnicity, centre-state relations, and the interrelationships between development and democracy across this divide. It will be a significant addition to studies in the politics of cultural identity and of democracy and development in the global South.

Book review by Sonali Gupta in History Today, Delhi, No. 3, 2002:

Francesco Brighenti, Sakti Cult in Orissa, D.K. Printworld, New Delhi, 2001, pp. xx +510, plates (b/w & col.) 66+33. Price: Rs. 2400.

“The word Sakti is powerful. It is the primordial energy of the universe and so represents cosmic energy. The author has confined his area of study to Orissa on account of its deep-rooted tribal influence and the continuity that the region represents in the evolution of the cult. According to the author the rise and spread of the Sakti cult brought within its folds, both non-Aryan and Aryan trends. These influences enabled the cult to reach out to all castes, creeds and sects, assuring wider acceptability and popularity. The author traces the roots of the Sakti cult in Orissa to the worship of the female principle. He then traces the migration and emigration of Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian and Aryan groups. Coupled with this, the author juxtaposes the developments in Orissa with developments in such cults elsewhere in the world. The inter relationships of the Sakti cult with Naga, Yaksa cults as well as tribal Shamanism are brought forth. In the historical period the growth of the cult from the Gupta period to the late medieval period is highlighted. There are instances of the fusion of the Sakti cult with the Shaiva cult and also Vaishnava. From the 5th to the 6th century A.D. the Sakta goddesses increase manifold. The subordination of the goddesses to the male gods in the past witnesses a reversal and the goddesses are seen in equal footing to the male gods. In his view this aspect is clearly an influence of tribal and matriarchal societies where equality between the sexes was the order, which is a moot point. Chapter 3 takes the readers to the important Sakta centres of eminence in Orissa, which are even today centres of Sakti worship. The manifestations of Sakti in different forms and iconographic representations are dealt with in detail. Further, the festivals and rituals associated with the cult show the undercurrents of the powerful Sakti cult, which are still in vogue. It is a 'must' read for historians and those interested in region specific studies of the cult. It has been a very well produced book.”

Developing economies like India have a higher concentration of poor people living in cities which is visible in its growing slums and informal settlements over the years. The central and state governments have taken several initiatives to solve this problem such as poverty alleviation, slum up-gradation and redevelopment programs and policies. However, dwellings units constructed under these schemes are still lying vacant due to unwillingness of slum dwellers to shift. This is majorly due to the quality of the housing units constructed and the lack of basic social and physical infrastructure available. The research involves the study of slums interventions schemes-VAMBAY, RAY, IHSDP and PMAY in the commercial capital of Orissa the city of Cuttack. The paper examines the issues, problems and potentials with the government interventions and recommends the city level preventive and improvement interventions strategy.

The Government of India Act of 1935 provided Orissa with the status of a new province and also made provisions for the constitution of a Provincial Assembly. After Independence, the new Assembly passed the Orissa Gram Panchayat Act 1948. It was the first legislation prescribing constitutional power to Gram Panchayats in Orissa. The current version of the act is the Orissa Gram Panchayats Act, 1964.
The provisions of the Act were to be extended to different areas of the state from time to time and they could be withdrawn as and when necessary, depending upon circumstances. In the year 1950-51, 500 Gram Panchayats were set up in different areas of the State. It was assumed that successful functioning of Panchayats in selective villages would serve as examples to the surrounding villages, which in turn would be prompted to demand the establishment of Gram panchayats of their own. This experiment, however, did not succeed because in many villages as people were misled by the misconception that in the areas under the jurisdiction of the panchayats, people had to pay additional taxes and fees to the panchayats without receiving corresponding amenities in return. The State Government, therefore, adopted a scheme of establishing Panchayats covering an entire district or a sub-division from 1952-53. The provision of withdrawal of Panchayats from certain areas was deleted in the Orissa Gram Panchayats (2nd amendment) Act, 1957.
During 1958-1961, Community Development (CD) Blocks were set up in selected areas of the state. The first Orissa Zilla Parishad Act was enacted in 1959 and subsequently amended as the Orissa Panchayat Samiti and Zilla Parishad Act, 1959 in the year 1961 (Orissa Act 24 of 1961). This act is now referred to as the Orissa Panchayat Samiti Act, 1960. In 1961, a 3-tier system of Panchayati Raj Institutions was established in the State. The intermediate tier or the Panchayat Samiti was made the implementing agency for all programmes. All funds for Community Development were given as grant-in-aid to the Samitis. Gram Panchayat was treated as the unit for the formulation of developmental programmes. Zilla Parishads were to function as the Supervisory body in charge of preparing the master plan of development programmes. Zilla Parishads, which were abolished in 1968, were established again after the implementation of the Orissa Zilla Parishad Act, 1991. Despite the Panchayat Samitis emerging as important institutions for the implementation of development programmes, poverty alleviation programmes and social security schemes, Panchayat Samitis and Gram Panchayats were not as effective as institutions of self-government.
In 1992, the 73rd amendment of the constitution mandated that the government shall endow Panchayati Raj Institutions with such powers authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government. After the 73rd amendment, the panchayat laws were amended according to the provisions of 73rd Constitutional amendment as given below: (i) Reservation of seats in favour of SC, ST, OBC and women. (ii) Constitution of Election Commission and Finance Commission. (iii) 5 years tenure for Panchayats. (iv)Redefinition of the Powers and Functions of the Gram Sabha and Palli Sabha. Pursuant to the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act 1992, Orissa has suitably amended the existing laws relating to Panchayats, which include the Orissa Zilla Parishad Act 1991, the Orissa Panchayat Samiti Act 1959 and the Orissa" Gram Panchayat Act 1964. Under the legislation, as it stands amended, Panchayats at all three levels have been entrusted with duties & functions with regard, to 21 matters listed in Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution.
In Orissa, either the Chairperson or the Vice-Chairperson of all three tiers of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) is a woman. Orissa Panchayat laws were amended to keep them in line with the provisions of the 73rd Amendment and Provisions of Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996 (PESA). Orissa was the first State to conduct PRI elections in accordance with the PESA act, in 2002. All the offices of elected heads of 3-tier PRIs in Scheduled Areas have been reserved for STs. Gram Sabhas and Palli Sabhas have been given more statutory power after the PESA Act came into force.

Latest information(2013) on the present status of sea turtles along India's mainland. A 2010-12 project initiative by WWF-India.Compiled and Edited by Annie Kurian.

(This survey is after a decadal gap since the last GOI-UNDP survey carried out between 2000-2002.And editors of this report-Marine Turtles of the Indian Subcontinent-were Kartik Shanker and BC Choudhury)

P.S  Included in the 2013 report is comprehensive chapter contribution by  Dr.Chandrashekar Kar, and a good review effort Dr.S.Bhupathy- predecessors and among the foremost in sea turtle research and conservation in India. It is sad that both of them passed away in April 2014, and this report probably constitutes among the last of their visible efforts!My deep gratitude and respect to both these wonderful people who enlightened other lives!

The study of the movement for making Odisha a separate province is often projected as the democratic and inclusive process, which is often contradictory in its material reality. The present study is taking an important concept i.e. the hegemony, to understand as well as examining the politics of nationalism in the context of colonial Odisha.

This paper will look at a public relations campaign, led by the Orissa State Government in India, to create awareness of India’s Right to Information (RTI) legislation, and consider whether it meets conditions set out by Mendelsohn (1973) for the success of public information campaigns, and more recently corroborated by Windahl et al (p.145):
• campaigns should have realistic goals
• strategists should use environmental systems to support complement mass communication, for example interpersonal communication
• strategists should know and segment their target publics

The "Paika Rebellion" of 1817 in Orissa, India has been depicted by colonial officers as a local disturbance caused by the dissatisfaction of one powerful individual deprived of traditional privileges who instigated the pāikas. The nationalist reconstruction has depicted the event as a popular freedom movement involving various castes and classes of Orissan society. This has culminated in a current move to declare the "Paika Rebellion" the First Indian War of Independence. I would like to suggest a third perspective, which focuses on the heterogeneities and linkages of the Rebellion. It is important to note that the "Paika Rebellion" was a meeting point of plural genealogies: "tribal" revolts to protect autonomy, "peas-ant" resistance to secure livelihood, restorative attempts by the traditional landed class, and ruling class efforts to defend and expand authority. Appreciating the plural genealogies of the Rebellion leads to more perceptive understandings of the heterogeneous characteristics of popular movements and their aftermaths in modern India. Lastly, in order to go beyond colonial and dominant-caste centred perspectives , I propose that we name it the "Orissa Uprising of 1817".

In 2005, Korean steel giant POSCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Odisha state government in India to build a US$12billion integrated steel project, involving a plant, mine and associated infrastructure. For the ten years since then the project has faced strong opposition from the communities affected by the proposed steel plant, who do not want to relinquish their agricultural lands and face displacement. This is a case not only of human rights risks and harms, but also, much more broadly, of contests over development agendas, and who gets to set them. This report evaluates the strategies used by communities and their supporters to both resist land acquisition and the construction of the steel plant, and seek remedy for harms that have already taken place, primarily to do with violence, intimidation, dubious criminal charges, and the land acquisition that has occurred to date. The report focuses on the OECD National Contact Point process, and concludes that this process made no identifiable positive impact on human rights in this case. The report also finds that the international business and human rights discourse has had ambivalent effects in this case. It has led POSCO, which was previously inexperienced in this area, to develop some voluntary human rights commitments, but has not led to any tangible changes in its business behaviour in India. Furthermore, it may have equipped POSCO with tools to deflect criticism without making changes on the ground, thereby having an ultimately damaging effect on human rights fulfilment. The report situates the international business and human rights processes (primarily the OECD National Contact Point process) within a broad landscape of avenues of redress and resistance, and identifies broad factors that have enabled and constrained resistance and access to remedy. It concludes with lessons learnt for the OECD National Contact Points, aggrieved communities and their supporters, and business.

A lot has been written and discussed how India is at the point of take-off.  Economic growth is accelerating, and most believe that high growth is going to continue for many years into the future.  A generation that is less affected by colonial hang-ups, more confident, highly educated and aware, is leading all sectors of the Indian economy.  However, differences within the country remain, and may even widen if concerted efforts are not put in.  Identifying the constraints and strengths at the state and sub-state level will enable a much more fine-tuned action.  This volume is designed to facilitate that objective by informing industry, students, government, NGOs, and any person interested in the progress of the states of India.

India has 6 Union Territories and 29 states (including Delhi which is now considered to be a state).  Of the 29 states, 19 have a population greater than 10 million – roughly the population of Poland.  Of the 235 countries of the world, 150 odd countries have a population below 10 million.  At 131 million UP has a population that is lower than only 8 countries including India.  A state such as Rajasthan has a land area greater than 342,000 sq. km and is larger than the United Kingdom and Ireland combined.  That there are significant differences in lifestyles, facilities, law and order, governance between different states is well known; but again, this common knowledge has come about more due to perceptions formed out of individual experiences.

Though most documents and reports bring out the salient features of the key states of India, few are able to bring out for the smaller states, Union Territories, and the north-east.  Moreover, precious few do so using data and information in an objective manner, such that anyone can decipher the strengths and weaknesses on various fronts.  Over and above that, very little is known about how states compare with each other.  Last, but not least, little is known how different parts of a state compared with each other. 

Indicus Analytics received support from PHDCCI to put together information on scores of different issues for all the states of India, including yours.  This information draws from the most credible and highly respected publications and databases brought out in recent years.  After ensuring that the information met the minimum quality specifications, it was analyzed in different ways.  Data for a state was compared over time and also with other states.   

Care has been taken that the researchers’ biases do not creep up, as is the case in many such comparisons.  The reader should for himself understand the various constraints that his or her state is facing, how well it is performing, how it compares to other states in the vicinity and with India overall.  This is all put together in such a way that the reader can draw his own conclusions. 

We hope that this profile benefits you in better understanding your state.  However, despite many crosschecks and dependence on credible information some errors might have crept in.  We accept those and would appreciate your comments for future improvements.

Through an analysis of Bhima Bhoi Malika, this paper underscores the significance of the persistence of kaliyuga in popular time reckoning. It highlights the multiplicity of meanings the idea of kaliyuga generates and the myriad uses to which it is put.

Agrarian distress in rural India seems to have at least two important dimensions, distress under backwardness and distress under commercialization. Although Orissa, in terms of its overall agricultural performance represents an area under backward, low productive agriculture, within the state there are signs of low productive as well as relatively advanced agricultural systems. By focusing upon particular aspects of the agrarian economy, this paper attempts to bring out the underlying mechanisms, which contribute towards the making of the agrarian distress.

Translocal mobilizations on issues of social and environmental justice have arisen across the world, often in response to the depredations of extractive industries linked to global capital networks. A key challenge in theorizing such mobilization is to understand how dispersed and diverse actors come together contingently around common campaigns of justice, and enable powerless and marginal actors to contend with powerful state and corporate actors. In my paper, I draw on DeLanda’s work on assemblages to engage with this question in the context of the case of Niyamgiri in India. The proposal to mine Niyamgiri, a mountain located in South Odisha in India, gave rise to a transnational mobilization which included local grassroots movements, activists, lawyers, conservation organizations and human rights/indigenous rights networks from around the world. I describe the mobilization as a translocal assemblage of resistance, individuated out of interactions between diverse actors across locations and scales. I discuss how this assemblage emerged through interactions between pre-existing actors, networks and institutions, and enabled marginalized and powerless communities to contend with powerful assemblages of state and capital. I argue that thinking in terms of assemblages can provide a strategic depth to social and environmental justice movements, which totalizing discourses of capital, power and revolution often foreclose.

Mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) is an alternative anthropometric measurement to assess undernutrition but a universally accepted cutoff is yet to be established. The objectives of the present study are to determine whether the proposed sex-specific global cutoffs are suitable across several tribes in India. This cross-sectional study was conducted among nine tribal populations in India (1046 males, 1087 females). Weight, height and MUAC values were obtained, and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. The BMI cutoff (<18.5 kg/m 2) was used to determine chronic energy deficiency (CED). The ROC Curve analyses of binomial logistic regression for MUAC versus CED revealed optimal cutoff point of MUAC as 23.8 cm (in males) and 21.8 cm (in females). MUAC cutoffs were similar in females, relative to males, in all tribes. Males with MUAC<24cm and females with MUAC<22 encompassed significantly higher numbers of CED than those with MUAC≥24 and ≥22 cm, respectively (χ 2-value males: 254.9, p<0.001; females: 493.60, p<0.01). A single cut off point of MUAC may not be universally applicable for diverse populations and both sexes as well. It seemed that there is no alternative than to undertake further validation studies in various populations before using the MUAC cut off to identify undernourished or CED condition.

Tribal areas in Orissa are some of the most backward and poverty ridden areas in the country. They are also extremely resource rich. 72% of the tribal households in Orissa live beneath poverty line. The paradox of “rich resources, poor people” in the tribal areas has been a ...

Deductions have been made to suggest that historically Orissa had a good population of Platanista gangetica along with two sympatric reptiles, Gavialis gangeticus and Trionyx gangeticus. Continued occurrence of P. gangetica to recent years refer to lower Mahanadi (pre-1950s), Chilika lake (1987) and the estuaries of rivers Brahmani-Baitarani (1990). The reasons for isolation of the Orissan population of P. gangetica from the main Gangetic population is geologic. The reasons for the decline in population of the dolphin in Orissa are stated to be (a) geographical isolations and genepool corrosion, and (b) habitat deterioration including competition with humans for resource. A systematic Project-Dolphin is urged for the state of Orissa for purposes of research and conservation.

Focusing on The Minneapolis Institute of Art's Yogini Holding a Jar, a 10th-century South Indian sanctified granite rock sculpture of a tantric goddess, my intention is to demonstrate how physical science assumes the role as explicator of the divine world through the symbolic usage of the geological nature of stone. Through research on the living rocks of the Tamil Nadu region and their quarrying processes as well as the ritualistic and symbolic purposes for which certain stone was chosen to carve out temples and their sculptures, I will bring to light the ways in which shared connections affirm that the geological nature of a particular rock has a profound influence on the stone carver's ability to generate dynamic works of art that arouse feelings of religious fervor and facilitate metaphysical experiences. As well, comparing the iconographic progression of the 9th-century yoginis at the temples in Orissa to the yoginis at Kanchipuram, we will discover how physical science, artistic expression and divine philosophy intersect to present a fascinating visual and spiritual journey into a unique realm of cult goddesses that inspire a deep sense of fear and awe.

One of the central debates that feature in any discussion of the history of the Caitanya sampradāya is whether Caitanya Mahāprabhu can be placed in the Mādhva paramparā i.e. the disciplic line of succession followed in the Brahma Vaiṣṇava sampradāya of which Madhvācārya was the chief proponent. The name of Mādhavendra Purī plays a crucial role in this debate. Mādhavendra was the guru of Īśvara Purī who in turn was the guru of Mahāprabhu. Hence, by the paramparā terminology, Mādhavendra was the parama guru of Mahāprabhu. Despite being such an important figure, Mādhavendra Purī has not incited adequate attention or research  and remains a missing link in the evolution of the Caitanya sampradāya; necessary nonetheless, in order to understand the advent of Mahāprabhu at an important historical and philosophical moment. The most detailed account on Mādhavendra till date is the Fourth chapter in the Madhya Līlā of the Caitanyacaritāmṛta (CC), where Mahāprabhu himself tells the tale of his parama guru. The following is a textual rethinking of this act of narration and what it signifies for the history of the Caitanya sampradāya. Supplementing this narrative with some additional accounts, this article seeks to arrive at an understanding of the contribution of Mādhavendra Purī, and also, how this enigmatic figure is being firmly established in the CC by Caitanya Mahāprabhu himself as a precursor of what would later become the Caitanya sampradāya.