Is Odisha Still The Poorest State?

Well, not the poorest, but…yeah, one of the poorest ones in India.

Odisha’s Chief Minister has pointed out multiple times when the question has been posed and directed at the Government of the state and the Chief Minister himself, that Odisha, though still among the Top 10 poorest states in the country of India, is still far different as compared to the Odisha of the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.

As Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has said and we quote ‘Over 80 Lakh people in Odisha Have climbed out of Poverty’. This has become a basis of more questions and curiosity about the state’s condition, though the Chief Minister has vowed to bring the state’s poverty level to ten percent.

A dream we all hope to see come true, for even though the state of Odisha is rich in culture and history, the MPI, as calculated by multiple organizations, is about thirty percent, which is…not bad but not good either.

And, honestly speaking, most Odia has owned up to be Indians hailing from one of the poorest states in the country, because the cultural and historical diversity is enough to provide them with enough pride to confidently announce being Odia.

The labels of poor and rich do not matter, as long you can take pride in the instances that are unique to your place (state) of belonging.

Many times, it would be the forefront of online forums and news that this or the other Odia person hid the fact that they hailed from the state of Odisha because their colleagues and people around them had a negative reaction to it, which might be true. But only for some.

The common problem arises here because of these online forums, where people are ready to spread a lot of situations and instances where they or their friends or people they know might have faced negative reactions, but I refuse to believe that people would be as ignorant as to judge a person by the state they belong to.

It is also a fact that Odisha is the home to many resources and important productions that benefit the world and many dormant resources whose worth still hasn’t been realized.

Given the fact that India itself stands quite low in the charts as a developing but poor country with a very unequal distribution of wealth, should we stop referring to ourselves as Indians? No, right? Then what’s the problem in belonging to a poor state?

I am Odia and I am proud of it. The state where my parents have grown up, which is still their home, is rich, not in terms of monetary value, but rather in the intangible history and culture and I take pride in that.