"The regular cultivating classes make very large profits annually by the sale of produce to merchants who flock to the State in large numbers to export rice, rashi (sesamun), and other cereals, and very large sums of money pass through the post office on this account . . . A vast change has come over the State during the last 50 years: the population has increased from 80,000 to 350,000. The soil has come under the plough and the open country is now highly cultivated and well-irrigated with fine tanks an d embankments . . . The State has never suffered from any general or serious failure of the crops, and even in 1900 when all neighbouring country was severely affected, Kalahandi knew only a slight scarcity." (L.E.B. Cobden-Ramsey, Feudatory States of Or issa, cited in Kalahandi District Gazeteer, pp. 241-2, emphasis mine.)

What has changed in Kalahandi? Were the seeds of the present disaster laid with the earlier "very large profits" from "sale of produce to merchants"? Or has the independent Indian (Orissan) state failed to maintain even the degree of development in the la rgely adivasi region of western Orissa brought about under British hegemony?

Manushi, Issue 97

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