The primary means for survival for Ganjam’s people has been migration. For the past three decades, boys (as young as 12) and men have migrated to western India for work, particularly to Surat’s textile mills. The scale is such that roughly 2 of every 3 males between the ages of 15 and 50+ now works year-round in western India — returning to Ganjam for just a few weeks.

Employment of the kind found by Ganjam’s migrants is no solution to their poverty. Indeed, it is another shade of exploited poverty. Their hard labour of 12 hours a day earns them just Rs 75-175 (per day), but with no health care, housing, paid day off, job security or even minimal pension. They live dozen or more to a slum room. Prolonged illness or old age often lead to destitution.

The pattern of migration has also fuelled one of India’s highest HIV rates, with 2-3 per cent of Ganjam’s adults infected. In Hinjilikatu and Aska blocks, from where migration has been especially high, there are villages with 25 per cent of adults infected or dead. Orissa’s AIDS programme should have long responded in ‘mission’ mode, but instead it is in the hands of an obstructive bureaucrat, Parmeswar Swain; tens of crores of Central funds are returned unspent every year.

What makes the continuing poverty and suffering in Ganjam — or Amethi or Andipatti, for that matter — inexcusable is that virtually none of it is inevitable. Virtually none of it is the consequence of hostile nature or poor natural endowments. (Only a few of Orissa’s districts are severely handicapped by nature.) Thus, for instance, consider that there are no inherent barriers to doubling irrigation, double-cropping and yields in Ganjam, according to local officials, or to multiplying production from fisheries or small-holder plantations.

... contd.