In one year of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule in Odisha, there have been multiple and recurring incidents of atrocities on women including the recent death of 20-year-old college student who set herself ablaze because her complaints, accusing her teacher of sexual harassment, were not acted upon by authorities. 

Then, there was the shocking and distressing news of a 28-day-old girl child being sold off by her poor parents from Titlagarh in Bolangir district to a person in Bargarh district of the state for Rs 20,000. Nila and Kanak, the parents, have children from their previous marriages. While Nila has three daughters from his first wife, Kanak has one from her previous marriage. 

They are already burdened with responsibilities of feeding several children and did not have any resource to raise the infant. So, they sold her. 

The Odisha government has rescued her and handed over to the state child welfare department.

Sale of a girl child

Bolangir is part of the KBK districts of Odisha – Kalahandi, Balangir and Koraput. It is not only the most backward region in the state but one of the poorest and underdeveloped regions in the country. 

The sale of a newborn girl in Bolangir is reminiscent of an incident from the 1980s, while Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister, when a girl was sold off and starved to death in Kalahandi district. It had caused nationwide outrage and had prompted Gandhi to visit the region and send a team of  economists, headed by Professor Yoginder K. Alagh, to study the economic woes of the people and recommend measures to uplift them. 

That team suggested a package for improvement of the KBK region. These districts lacked irrigation facilities and land was concentrated in the hands of powerful communities such as Rajputs and Brahmins. 

As Anima Mishra, a sociologist from Delhi School of Economics, who is from Bolangir, wrote in her book, poverty and deprivation is more ethnic-based as tribals and Dalits suffer more severely than other communities. 

This is grimly indicated by the fact that, on an average, the longevity of the tribals in Tiralgarh, is 30 years.

The recent sale of the girl child is indicative of a terrible malaise caused by the deepening of poverty and deprivation in the region which has already drawn sensitive attention in the past, where a prime minister’s intervention helped create a special package to mitigate extreme poverty by generating employment opportunities.

A central assistance of Rs 250 crores was allotted for the development of the region to uplift the poorer population to higher income levels, better education and access to health facilities. 

When the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal was in power, the Odisha government also started the Biju KBK plan of assistance. The district-level annual plan was worked out with the help of specialists.

While these developmental works were effective during Patnaik’s tenure to some extent, they did not create a permanent solution to the poverty crisis.

BJP government’s apathy

A majority of the people in the KBK region of Odisha wanted a continuation of the special package started by the planning commission even after the BJP came to power last year. 

However, the package was abandoned by the Mohan Majhi government. This adversely affected the people and those who were lifted out of their economic adversaries were again pushed back to poverty. It resulted in a rise in hunger-related deaths and instances like the sale of the infant girl child.

Recently, in the Kandhamal district of the state, the Majhi government discontinued for three months the provisions people were getting under the public district system.  

The disruption of food supply was admitted by the civil supply minister of Odisha in the state assembly.

Speaking to The Wire, Kandhamal district collector Rabinnarayan Dash said that it was sad that the district administration is facing the wrath of the land-holding elite, who want funds for the welfare schemes to be replaced with contracts for developmental projects for their benefit.

On one occasion, in presence of the author of this article, Dash was abused and even faced criminal intimidation for refusing to give contracts to these local elites – who were backed by BJP leaders of the region – in the department of soil conservation and afforestation works.

After that incident, Dash got himself transferred  out of the district. He confessed that these elite locals take resort to intimidatory measures for exerting  pressure to demotivate the officials implementing developmental works of the district. 

Another collector of Bolangir, U.P. Singh, who retired as the secretary of water resources, told The Wire that he faced challenges as the district collector in implementing developmental works. 

The local landlords have become more assertive in disrupting developmental work since BJP leader Singhdeo became the deputy chief minister in the Mohan Majhi government, he said. 

Role of labour contractors

The distress migration is a regular phenomenon. In the Balangir district, one finds that despite the government giving higher wage for MGNREGS work, poor people refuse to accept it and migrate to southern states to work in brick kilns, very often getting trapped as bonded labourers. 

The seasonal migration takes place because of lack of employment facilities. The migrant workers all belong to backward classes and Dalit communities. They migrate because they can earn more as migrant labourers than working in their native places where they get indebted to money lenders.   

In a place like Titlagarh, where the girl child was sold off, MGNREGA is not properly implemented and people suffer from poverty, often ending up being exploited by labour contractors. 

It is notable that one of the labour contractors who supplied labour to brick klin factories of Andhra, who contested against then chief minister Naveen Patnaik, in Kantabanji Assembly constituency in the 2024 elections, defeated him. It was a huge setback for Naveen and his party, BJD.

Since 2024, 146 migrant labourers have died because of exploitation caused by brick kiln owners who forced them to work for long days and nights.

No accountability by BJP govt

During the 1990s, reported starvation deaths led to resignation of then chief minister of Odisha, J.B. Patnaik. But now, the Mohan Majhi-led BJP government is not taking any accountability for his acts of omission and commission. 

Deputy chief minister Shri Shingdeao, who belongs to Bolangir district, hails from a princely family.  He remains stoically unmoved by the sale of the infant girl child or the poverty in the region. 

The wilful disregard for accountability of the BJP government has multiplied what it owes to the people of Odisha, and the sale of girl child represents the morbid situation of the region.

Radha Kant Barik taught as a professor in the Indian Institute of Public Administration.

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