BHUBANESWAR: The government claim of an annual growth rate over 6 per cent notwithstanding, more than 23 lakh households live in one-room houses made of kutcha roof, whereas 34 lakh households (HHs) earn their livelihood from manual and casual labour in the State.
The provisional report of the first ever Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011, released by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at New Delhi on Friday, has brought to fore acute economic deprivation in Odisha. The census, which focused on rural areas, found at least 66 per cent of the households in the deprived category.
According to the report, 54 per cent of the 86.22 lakh households possess no land. The percentage of households depending on alms for livelihood is also found to be among the top four in the country. Of the 20.62 lakh ST households enumerated during the census, 6.51 lakh were found to be living in one-room kutcha houses. For the SC category, the figure stood at 5.43 lakh of the total 15.55 lakh households.
While 63 per cent of land remain unirrigated in rural Odisha, the SECC shows that just about 1.5 per cent households of the State — predominantly agrarian in nature — have Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) with more than Rs 50,000 as their credit limit against the national average of 3.6 per cent. Close to 40 per cent ST households (over 8 lakh out of a total 20.62 lakh HHs) are landless casual labourers and more than 95 per cent have a monthly income of less than Rs 5,000. Just 33,905 households have a government job which fetches a salary of Rs 5,000 and above.