'Allowing Pandian To Rule Over Us Will Be A Disrespect To Our Forefathers' — Ground Report From Ganjam, Naveen Patnaik's Home Turf

Ganjam is often referred to in Odisha as a ‘VIP district’ because the Hinjili assembly seat, which has been represented by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik since 2000, falls in this district.

But Ganjam also suffers from the dubious distinction of being one of the poorest districts in the state. 

Ganjam is a living example of the ‘poverty amidst plenty’ conundrum which Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to in his speech at Berhampur earlier this week.

The district, as well as its surrounding areas that make the Berhampur and Aska Lok Sabha constituencies, are rich in many resources and could well have been centres of growth and prosperity. 

But absence of planning and vision, over-exploitation of natural resources, rampant corruption and unfettered environmental degradation have pauperised not only Ganjam, but also the entire southern and southwestern part of Odisha. 

Ask anyone in Ganjam about the primary woe tormenting the district, and the immediate response will be “water”. The Rusikulia and Bara are the primary rivers of the district but in the dry season, they shrink to a small stream of putrid water snaking through a wide expanse of arid riverbeds where sand-mining is rampant. 

The illegal and unscientific sand-mining, say experts, has affected the  natural flow of the rivers. The mining is controlled by BJD (Biju Janata Dal) leaders or those with strong links to them, and generates humongous sums of money for the BJD’s coffers. 

But during monsoons, the two rivers overflow their banks and cause devastating floods that inflict huge losses. The thought of building reservoirs to store rainwater and the excess water of the rivers has never occurred to successive governments (the Congress in the past and now the BJD) that have ruled the state since Independence. 

Only about 17 per cent of the district has irrigation facilities. Result: farmers in the rest of the district can grow only one crop. That makes agriculture a subsistence occupation. 

The first sugar mill in Asia was set up in Aska by an Englishman in 1824. The entire area was rich in sugarcane cultivation and the cane juice of Ganjam used to be celebrated as very sweet. But its a bitter harvest now for the cane farmers of Ganjam. 

Lack of irrigation facilities and absence of adequate support from the government have resulted in declining yields and quality of the crop. Cane procurement prices are also low, making cane farming a not so profitable prospect. 

As a result, the two century old Aska Cooperative Sugar Industries Ltd now operates at barely half its installed capacity of 2,600 metric tonnes a day. The factory is a picture of neglect. 

Barely a couple of kilometres away from the sugar factory lies the skeletal remains of Balaji Spinning Mill that shut down a few years ago because it turned unviable due to lack of raw materials. 

This region produced adequate cotton to feed the mill, but lack of irrigation facilities and declining flow of the Rusikulia and Bara rivers discouraged farmers from cultivating the crop that requires a lot of water.

The closure of the spinning mill, which was set up in 1950 and was once a highly profitable industry that used to power the economy of the region, resulted in hundreds of families being reduced to penury. The spinning mills also used to provide indirect employment to thousands of others. 

All this has resulted in young men and women from Ganjam and its neighbouring districts migrating out of the state in search of work. 

Ganjam has become infamous in Odisha for the large number of its menfolk who migrate to other states in search of work. In many villages, as well as urban centres in the district like Hinjilicut and Aska, lakhs of households have only aged residents — the younger lot work in other states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala and Karnataka. 

It is not just the unskilled or semi-skilled who migrate out. Berhampore (in Ganjam district) has, since British rule, been an education hub. It has a reputable university and good law, medical, engineering and other colleges imparting professional courses. 

But lack of employment opportunities means that the thousands of bright and skilled youngsters with professional degrees who pass out of these institutions have to go to Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi and some other places to work. 

This migration, the BJP’s Berhampur Lok Sabha candidate Pradeep Kumar Panigrahy told Swarajya, has created huge social and other problems.

“Houses in many villages and towns have only the elderly living in them. This has become a social issue since the elderly do not get care and attention when they need them the most. Our society is being adversely affected,” he said. 

Curiously, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik or the many powerful Congress and BJD politicians who have been representing the 13 assembly and two Lok Sabha constituencies in Ganjam haven’t done anything to provide succour to the people in their turf. 

Swarajya visited a few villages in Ganjam district to meet the poverty-stricken and neglected people of Ganjam and gain a first-hand account of their woes. 

I travelled to Jaipur village, a few kilometres from Aska town. Rama Kanta Mohanty, 67, is perhaps the most celebrated resident of the village. 

Mohanty has won many awards for growing high-yielding and high-quality sugarcane in his eight acres of land. He took to farming sugarcane at the age of 15 and has been a witness to the crop’s decline over the years. 

“I used to grow at least 50 tonnes of cane on one acre earlier. Now, with lack of irrigation, the yield has gone down to 30 tonnes. The government used to help farmers with high quality seeds, fertilisers and insecticides, soft loans and even farming implements in the past. All that has stopped and we are now left to fend for ourselves,” he told Swarajya. 

Mohanty said that since farmers have to depend on groundwater to irrigate their fields, over exploitation has led to a sharp decline in the groundwater table. 

“For many years, the Aska sugarcane mill authorities used to keep our payments (for the sugarcane purchased from farmers) pending for months and that caused severe farm distress. We get only Rs 3,000 per tonne of cane and with rising input costs, that has made sugarcane a subsistence-level crop. We need to sell at a minimum of Rs 4,500 to Rs 5,000 a tonne for sugarcane farming to be viable,” he said. 

Mohanty said that shortage of water has led to the earlier good varieties of sugarcane that would be growing here being replaced by varieties which require less water.

“Those varieties yielded very sweet juice. A thousand kilos of cane would yield about 100 kilos of good quality sugar. The sugar produced at Aska won international awards also. But now all sugarcane farmers grow low-quality cane that requires less water but yields juice that is not as sweet and good as earlier,” he said bitterly. 

Mohanty, father of four daughters (all married) and one son (an electrical engineer who works in Bengaluru), told Swarajya that the low yields from farming sugarcane has led to the younger generation losing interest in farming and going out in search of jobs. 

Jaipur village has many houses where only the elderly stay. “There is no one to take care of them (the aged) now since their children have migrated out. There is no one to even take them to a hospital in case of an emergency,” he said. 

I came across 80-year-old Nityanand Sahani whose two sons work at a textile factory in Surat. He is a widower and laments that his wife died three years ago from a mild stroke because she could not be taken to the government hospital at Aksa immediately. 

“Had my sons been here, my wife would have been alive. After she suffered a stroke one night, I had to wake up some neighbours who made calls and arranged for an ambulance after a few hours. The plight of many of my neighbours is also the same — they don’t have any young men or women in their houses now since all their children have migrated out,” said Sahani. 

Mahendra Jana, 52, works in Surat and is in Jaipur on a short visit. “There is nothing here. I have myself facilitated jobs in Surat for at least two dozen youngsters from my village (Jaipur),” he told Swarajya. 

Nilanchar Sabat, 29, is perhaps the only youngster in Jaipur who had migrated out of the village but has returned. He had gone to Mumai when he was 20 to work at a textile mill. 

“I returned to Jaipur during the Covid-19 pandemic, but didn't go back. I am the only son and my parents are not well. I didn’t have the heart to leave them, so I got work as the priest of the village temple. I earn much less than what I would have made in Mumbai, but I have the satisfaction of being with my parents and caring for them in their old age when they need me the most,” he told Swarajya. 

None of the other elderly people in the village are as lucky as Nilanchar’s parents. Ashok Kumar Jana, 68, runs a small shop selling puffed rice and other items in the village. His two sons — Debabrata and Dasaratha — live in Bengaluru and Hyderabad with their families. 

“My nest is so empty. I miss not only my sons, but also my grandchildren. I don’t blame them for leaving Jaipur because there’s nothing to do here. There are no jobs and agriculture is no longer viable. I blame our rulers for my plight,” he told Swarajya. 

My next stop is Badagada village, about 30 minutes’ drive from Aska through parched lands dotted with date palm trees and bushes typical of arid areas 

Aska, incidentally, is also known as Asika, a Sanskrit-Prakriti word for dagger. Aska town is shaped like a dagger between the Rusikulia and Bara rivers that merge at the southern extremity of the town).  

I chose this village because this is where the BJD candidate for the Aska Assembly seat, Manjula Swain, faced angry protests earlier this week by residents because of the severe water crisis there.

Swain, who also won from this seat in 2019, had gone there to campaign when she was stopped by irate villagers. 

At first glance, it appears that Badagada’s residents get piped water in their houses. There is a large overhead reservoir with water pipes reaching every household. 

But the reservoir is empty. The reservoir was built, water lines from the Bara river to the overhead tank were laid, a motor pump was installed to pump the river water to the tank, and water lines from the tank to all the 220-odd households were laid with funds from the Union government’s Jal Jeevan Mission. 

But in what can be termed as monumental government apathy, the pumphouse by the river was not given an electrical connection. As a result, water has not been pumped from the river to the overhand tank. 

The villagers have to depend on four hand pumps and just one well for their daily needs. Womenfolk have to go to the Bara river and make small excavations in the dry river bed to get clean water for drinking. 

“There were three wells in our village, but two of them are non-functional. There is a government scheme under which Rs 10,000 is sanctioned to renovate old wells. But despite repeated requests, we never got any funds. The four tube wells do not yield much water during the dry season because of the falling water table. We face an acute water shortage and have to even ration our drinking water. Many families make rotis because cooking rice needs more water. We have a bath only twice a week and don’t wash our clothes often. Life is terrible here,” Balkishan Das, 62, told Swarajya. 

Babul Swain, 19, is home (in Badagada) for a few days. He works at an automobile servicing unit in Bengaluru. 

“I left my village because of the lack of water here. How can one survive without water? I feel guilty to even drink one whole bottle of water,” he told Swarajya. About 900 people, mostly youngsters, from Badagada now live and work outside the state. That works out to, on an average, four persons from every household who stay away. 

Like Jaipur village, most houses in Badagada too have only elderly residents. Some are even locked; the children have migrated and their parents have either passed away or have gone to live with their children. 

“At this rate,” says Gomasta Nahak, a farmer, “Badagada will turn into a ghost village ten years from now”. “The elderly will die and the children will never return because there is nothing to return to,” he said. 

Nahak, 57, has two sons. One works in Ahmedabad as a car mechanic while the other works in Mumbai as a peon in a private establishment. 

Panchanan Sahoo, 60, is a bitter man.”This was a prosperous village. We never faced a water crisis because there are five large water reservoirs here. But those have little water because of lack of maintenance and siltation. The government played a cruel joke on us by building the overhead reservoir and laying pipelines to our houses, but not making the whole project functional,” said Sahoo. 

“The Naveen Patnaik government did not make the water supply project functional due to sheer negligence. This negligence can be seen in many other projects and schemes which have remained incomplete for many years. The state government is corrupt and inefficient, and people are suffering terribly due to official apathy and incompetence,” said BJP candidate for the Aska Lok Sabha seat, Anita Subhadarshini.

The only pocket of Ganjam district that offers hope amidst this dismal situation is Gopalpur, a small town by the sea and about 15 kilometres from Berhampur city. That hope, unsurprisingly, has been ignited by the Narendra Modi government. 

Gopalpur, apart from being a popular seaside destination for tourists, is also being developed as a port by the Union government. It was an ancient sea port during the Kalinga era and under British rule, it became a major trading port with Burma. It was an important port of rice trade with Rangoon (now Yangon in Myanmar). 

But post Independence, the port declined as successive Congress governments and then Naveen Patnaik did nothing to keep it running. The NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated measures to revive the port a few years ago.

Recently, Adani Ports & SEZ Ltd acquired a major stake in Gopalpur port for Rs 3,080 crore. This had ignited hopes among the people of Ganjam that the port would spur economic revival of the district. 

But a cross-section of people that Swarajya spoke to across Ganjam district say that there is little chance of anything happening as long as the BJD government remains in power in the state. 

More so since Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is ailing and has, in popular perception, ceded control to bureaucrat-turned-politician V Karthikeyan Pandian. Pandian is now a senior leader of the BJD and, for all practical purposes, runs the party as well as the government. 

But Pandian is a Tamil and Odiyas strongly resent the power he wields. Many recall the time when Ganjam was part of the Madras Presidency (during British rule).

“Our forefathers struggled a lot to take Ganjam out of the Madras Presidency and the overwhelming influence of Tamils that time. They succeeded when Ganjam was carved out of the then Vizag district (under Madras Presidency) and made part of the new state of Odisha on 1 April 1936. We will be disrespecting our forefathers if we allow Pandian to rule over us now,” said Sripad Naik, a lawyer. 

The sentiments expressed by Naik find wide resonance across Ganjam. This, and the intense anger over water scarcity, lack of job opportunities and the overall neglect of the region by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, has created a strong wave of anti-incumbency against the state government. 

A wave that the Bharatiya Janata Party is hopeful of riding in order to not only wrest the Berhampur and Aska Lok Sabha seats from the BJD, but also unseat the BJD from power in the state.

This report is part of Swarajya's 50 Ground Stories Project - an attempt to throw light on themes and topics that are often overlooked or looked down. You can support this initiative by sponsoring as little as Rs 2,999/-. Click here for more details.