STREAM Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp 1-19. July-September 2005

CONTENTS: One-stop Aqua Shops: an emerging phenomenon in Eastern India, by Graham Haylor, Rubu Mukerjee and S.D. Tripathi. Ranchi One-stop Aqua Shop, by Ashish Kumar. Kaipara One-stop Aqua Shop, by Kuddus Ansary. Bilenjore One-stop Aqua Shop, by Bhawani Sankar Panda. Patnagarh One-stop Aqua Shop, by Dipti Behera and Lingraj Otta. Using bar-coding in a One-stop Aqua Shop, by Christopher Keating

One-stop Aqua Shops (OAS)

(4pp.

An Economic Analysis of Agricultural Sustainability in Orissa

The development of a method for generating Sustainable Livelihood Security Index (SLSI) for agricultural sustainability and evaluating the existing status has been reported. Some measures have been suggested to promote sustainable agriculture of Orissa. This state has been selected since it faces wide inequality, improper management and over-exploitation of natural resources and explosion of population. These have created a threat to ecological balance and economic as well as social status of households in different districts of the state. The study of Ecological Security Index (ESI), Economic Efficiency Index (EEI) and Social Equity Index (SEI) has revealed that the agricultural systems of all districts display wide variations in their ecological and social equity aspects relative to their economic aspects. The districts with better SLSI ranks are often described as advanced districts and vice versa. Hence, SLSI has been found to reflect the picture of overall performance of a district in three dimensions of sustainability. On the basis of the overall performance of districts in terms of their SLSI, only eight districts in the state have an index value of more than 0.5, while thirteen districts have SLSI less than 0.4. Also, many districts of coastal Orissa have depicted better performance in agricultural sustainability in comparison to the districts of western Orissa as a whole. Some policy implications of SLSI approach have also been reported.Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

Measuring Regional Backwardness: Poverty, Gender, and Children in the Districts of India

This paper examines regional disparity in India from the perspective of the smallest geographical unit for which a consisent set of data is available: the district. By doing so, we are able to focus on pockets of deprivation rather than viewing deprivation as a phenomenon affecting a state or a region in its entirety: ‘forward’ states have deprived districts while ‘backward’ states have districts that are not deprived. Consistent with the United Nations’ Human Development Index, the paper examines deprivation from a broader perspective than that of simply income. More specifi cally, it looks at six indicators of district-level deprivation: the poverty rate; the food scarcity rate; the (gender-sensitive) literacy rate; the infant mortality rate; the immunisation rate; and the sex ratio for 0–6 year olds. The central conclusion that emerges from this study is that different districts were ‘most backward’ on different metrics. Districts in Orissa were the poorest; districts in Arunchal Pradesh had the highest rates of food scarcity; districts in Bihar and Jharkhand had the lowest rates of literacy; tribal districts in the North-East, along with districts in Bihar and Jharkhand, had the lowest rates of immunisation; districts in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh had the highest rates of infant mortality; and districts in Punjab and Haryana had the lowest (0–6 years) sex ratios.India; Districts; Backwardness

Distress Seasonal Migration and its Impact on Children’s Education

There are still many categories of children in India for whom adequate and appropriate strategies are not in place for their effective education. One such substantive category is children of seasonal migrants – a group which has not been on the radar screen of the government or development agencies. Distress seasonal migration is a growing phenomenon in almost all arid parts of India. Drought and lack of work in villages forces entire families to migrate for several months every year in search of work merely to survive. Children accompany their parents, and as a result drop-out rates go up. Migrants comprise the most vulnerable sections of society, and especially those that also belong to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe groups. There is no official data available on the scale of distress seasonal migration, but estimates put the numbers of migrants between 1 and 3 crore (10 to 30 million). The number of children involved in these migrations may range between 40 and 60 lakhs (4 to 6 million). Migration takes place to a range of industrial and agro-industrial sectors such as brick manufacture, salt making, sugar cane harvesting, stone quarrying, construction, plantations and fishing. This paper identifies major sectors and geographies with a high incidence of seasonal migration, and gives broad estimates of the numbers involved, especially the number of children between 0-14 years. It also outlines the nature and patterns of seasonal migration in different sectors, and how these annual migration cycles overlap with the annual school calendar. The discussion focuses on the difficulties that children face with schooling both in villages and at migration sites, and the conditions under which children drop out of schools, as well as the response or lack of response of local school systems to the education of migrant children in some areas. The paper also outlines the efforts made so far by government and NGOs to address these problems through alternative schooling, and provides recommendations for state and central governments in terms of policy and program interventions

Spatial distribution of housing and household amenities:a district level analysis, Odisha

Housing and availability of household amenities is considered to be the most valuable economic asset and is an important indicator of lifestyle and socio-economic status. Though we are in the path of 60yrs of independence, majority of people have been deprived of standard housing, without access to basic minimum facilities of drinking water, sanitation and public hygiene etc which requires utmost attention. The access to basic amenities like electricity, drinking water, toilet facility, clean fuels etc are the determinants of quality of life. Access to basic amenities varies in accordance with the size, categories of cities and towns except for toilet and sanitation. The access to basic amenities like electricity, drinking water, toilet facility and clean fuel are critical determinants of quality of life in most of the developing countries like India. As per 2011 census, 13% of households have no access to electricity, 16% have no access to safe drinking water and 17% have no access to toilet facility. This paper attempts to study the availability of housing and household amenities in the 30 districts comprising both of urban and rural areas. Subsequently, this study categorizes all 30 districts as low, medium and high using a composite score

In the Vacuum of Public Action Social Security in Orissa: A Long Way to Go

This paper is part of a large study on the Social Protection in Rural India and China. In this paper, we attempt at a critical appraisal of the historical development and experience of social security initiatives in Orissa, India. Unlike in the context of Kerala, an unfavourable dynamics of historical conjunction of ecological, economic, social, and institutional conditions in Orissa has worked itself out to contribute to the high level of insecurity there. We argue that the failure of Orissa was in its inability to develop the forces of organization and mobilization into its logical end of participatory development process for a secured life on account of some unfavourable historical conjunction. It is also attempted in this paper to categorize the on-going social security schemes according to the definitional framework of our study, that is, in terms of the definitional division of social security into basic and contingent social security.Social security; Orissa; Development; Contingency

An Ethno-Medico-Botanical Study of Bolangir, Orissa, India: Native Plant Remedies Against Gynaecological Diseases

The present paper enumerates 33 plant species belonging to 24 families used by the tribal of Bolangir District of Orissa for the cure of Gynaecological diseases. Tribal generally collect these plants from the nearby forest and prepare the medicine under the guidance of vaidya or village medicine man in a traditional way. These medicinal plants are becoming extinct day by day by heavy use of such plants and transport to urban areas for commercial purposes. These plants definitely help the pharma industry for developing medicines in a hygienic way