Land Development under MGNREGS proves silver line in hillly terrain

Erasantaguda is a a tiny hamlet of Maliput GP, which is situated under the top of a small hill in Potting Tehsil in Koraput District of Odisha State. It is located 52 KM towards South from District head quarters Koraput. 418 KM from State capital Bhubaneswar. Just a decade earlier , the village is surrounded with dense forest and the villagers used to live in the forest and basically depend upon Ragi (MANDIA) , Millet (BAJARA) etc. cultivation. Till few year earlier, they had no idea of vegetable and its cultivation as the village was surrounded with steep hills. Financially and educationally too they were very poor. Under this back ground the MGNREGS came as boon for them. Intervention The scheme MGNREGS was implemented in the year 2006 and the category of Land Development work was implemented in the year 2016 throughout the village. That time the beneficiary involvement was missing as works on individual lands are decided elsewhere and dumped on gullible poor. Works are isolated as officials pursue their whims or act as directed. Works detailing is based on experience of rural development officials or their intuition, rather than technical knowledge. Single intervention or investment is deemed to qualify an “asset” and isolated infrastructure creation has not impacted increased productivity. Approach to land development in MGNREGS assumes that a large latent resource is waiting to be tapped with one or two steps for being productive. This narrow approach offers little to lands with poor endowments and thus has little to offer to SC/ST farmers. The community land development project was made in the hilly area as tracing approach. The estimate cost of the project is 5.00 lakhs. Around 60 beneficiaries are covered in this project. At least 12 hectares of land have been developed for the villagers by cutting the slope of the hill. Irrigation facilities have also been made by diverting the stream flowing through hill by a diversion made with soil and stone. Now, the with the land development, the villagers are able to cultivate different vegetables like cauliflowers, beans, banana, jinger, dal, etc in the barren small hill. Marketing Linkage for the Vegetable. To create marketing facilities for the villagers to sell their vegetables, The district administration has constructed a Kunduli vegetable market under Regulated Market Committee and linked it with the National Agriculture market through www.enam.gov.in . The market is just 2-3 kilometers away from the villagers. The c ivil construction work of include development of vegetable market at Kunduli Including electrification and water supply under RKVY and State plan with a total expenditure of 761 lakhs. Now the villagers are selling their vegetable in the Kunduli regulated market at Good price. The vegetables produced by the villagers are now export to Raipur , Berhampur and Andhara Pradesh. Impact Effective implementation of MGNREGA enhanced the livelihood of Mr Bira Kishore Khara by providing additional food grains and vegetable for last 2 years from Paddy, papaya , mustard and vegetables by converting fallow land to fertile land. He sold Paddy of Rs 7500-9000 every year for last 2 years and the money is being invested in child education and household expenditure. He also worked in the MGNREGA during the land development work. This is one of the success story of Birakishore out of 117 farmers who got benefit from the MGNREGA. Giving a gratitude , Birakishore said “We the villagers are extremely thank full to the Government due to the MGNREGA , our life has saw a 360 degree improvement”. “Not only the land development, we got the road constructed under MGNREGS which helped us to market the vegetable”, he further added with a smile in his face.
District : Koraput
Block : Pottangi
Panchayat : Maliput
Financial Year : 2015-2016
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