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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Deaf & Dumb Orissa Govt Silent On Farmer Suicide In Kosal

Courtesy - NDTV

In a small village in Western Orissa's Sambalpur district, in a small house, a family looks to its neighbours for support. 61-year-old Shukla Chand killed himself by drinking pesticide. In this part of Western Orissa, this has become a frighteningly familiar story. Since November, 11 farmers from here have killed themselves.

Farmers have been catapulted from one crisis to another in Western Orissa since 2009. Floods, drought, and then exceptionally heavy rainfall last year before the harvest. The deaths of 100 farmers have officially been registered as suicides. The state government says it wasn't their failed crops that drove them to their death.

For farmers whose crops were wiped out by pre-harvest rains, the Centre has sanctioned Rs. 400 crore for Andhra Pradesh and another Rs. 600 crore for Maharashtra. No compensation for Orissa has been announced so far.

The state government, led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal, has offered to pay farmers Rs. 400 per acre for rain-fed areas and Rs. 800 per acre for irrigated land - only if the farmers can prove he has lost his entire crop. But farmers point out they invest at least Rs. 9,000 per acre for their paddy crop. So the compensation being offered is worthless.

For farmers like Shukla Chand, it seems like there's no one on their side. His suicide note says after his last crop of paddy failed just before the harvest, the loans he owed seemed insurmountable. He had cultivated eight acres of paddy with an initial investment of Rs. 80,000. He then took a bank loan of five lakh to buy a tractor, and another three lakh from private money lenders. When heavy rains destroyed his standing crop in November last year, he could no longer cope.

"The Centre and state are playing a cruel joke on our farmers. The policy to compensate for losses due to calamities has not kicked in. There are thousands of farmers like Shukla Chand who are not dead as yet, but on the verge of death," says Saroj, the leader of a local cooperative of farmers.

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Welcome to KOSAL

JAI KOSHAL

"Aamar Sanskruti Aamar Gaurav"

Welcome to the land of culture "Koshal" . Koshal is the land of great warriors. The land of Maharaja's.The land of Maa Samalei, World famous sambalpuri saree , great teracotta works, land of tantrik Vidya, world famous Sambalpuri music and dance.

Koshal consists of ten beautiful districts..
Sambalpur,Balangir,Kalahandi,Sundergarh,Bargarh,Jharsuguda,Subarnapur,Boudh,Nuapada
and Deogarh.

The motto of this community is to bring all the young warriors of koshal to a common platform from where they can initiate the process to preserve the great Koshali culture and swear to free our motherland koshal from atrocities..

So friends lets join hand and do something extraordinary to create a separate identity of us across the globe and create a separate koshal state,full of prosperity and impartiality.

We Consider Kosali language as the mother of Oriya language, the origin of kosali language was found by the historians from Subarnapur in Stambheswari inscription of 12th century A.D. The Kosali language is spoken by about 2 crores of people in the entire KBK belt and Western Orissa and part of A.P., M.P., Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. It is a matter of regret that the Government of Orissa has not taken any interest to improve the standard of Kosali (Sambalpuri) language.


KOSAL COMMUNITY STRONGLY DEMANDS THAT THE KOSALI(SAMBALPURI) LANGUAGE SHOULD IMMEDIATELY BE ENLISTED IN THE 8TH SCHEDULE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA


So start sharing your views on Koshal.....