a world in itself..

(21ST TO 23RD DECEMBER 2007)

The most highlighting news regarding the dist. Kalahandi is the death of the villagers. When the opposition political party claims it as the starvation death the govt. strongly denies this and says it as the death due to eating mango kernel.

The objective of this survey is to know the ground reality, what causes death. For this we the four students viz. Nidhi, Bhavana, Bidisha and myself of KNLS under the guidance of Mr. yogesh Pratap Singh, Mr. Pinaki Nadan Pattanaik and Mr. Kaish Khan had gone to the villages of Kalahandi dist.

We have conducted our survey by preparing questionnaire. We have also asked the government officials and others in this regard.

On the 21^st, we went to the villages of Kalahandi viz. Pokri Ghat and Yamuna Sagar. We asked the people about some of the general information and took their views on the functioning of the village authority. The average member of each family is five. Generally they belong to two caste viz. kandha and harijan. The level of education is very low. Maximum no. of the people does not possess land. So, they have to work at others land. The major crops which they cultivate are rice and the main source of income is agriculture. The income is nearly Rs. 800/- of a family.

The opinion of the people though different but they agrees upon many things. As per the data both of the villages have the gram panchayat. But the functioning of the gram pradhan ie. the sarpanch is not satisfactory. The govt. is providing ration and old day’s pension also in Pokari Ghat. Some of the people have got labour card, in which they get job. But unfortunately they do not get daily work. The NGOs called World Vision is working there. Some other nongovernmental organization has also built the bathrooms for them. The Natural Resource Management Plantation is doing plantation work over there. All most all agreed on the point that the people have access to the forest land. In Pokari Ghat and Yamuna Sagar, there are government schools upto 5^th standard and the Anganwadi workers teach the kids. The villages of the two villages agreed that there is no primary health centre over there and they have to go to Bhabani Patna, which is far from those villages. People are not aware about the Right to Information Act 2005.