Odisha Pioneers Initiatives in Education, Land Reforms

The State of Odisha is located on the eastern part of our country along the Bay of Bengal. It is bounded by Andhra Pradesh in the South, West Bengal in the North, Jharkhand in the North West and Chhattisgarh on the West. Spread over 1.5 lakh sq km and home to 36 million people, the state is divided into 30 districts for administrative purposes. The state bagged seven SKOCH Order-of-Merit and was bestowed one Award also in the Education & Skill category.

Key Achievements

The first category where Odisha won an award is Education. The IT Department, Government of Odisha designed and implemented the Student Academic Management System (SAMS), which is an integrated Academic Management System and comprehensive tool for students/parents, administrators at colleges and Government as well, to overcome the challenges in the process of college admissions and post admission processes. This approach goes a long way in imbibing transparency and increasing the efficiency of the colleges and thereby helping them to provide better service to students. SAMS has a comprehensive reach across the entire state of Odisha and its gamut covers all Junior (+2) (currently 1514) and Degree/Autonomous (+3) colleges (currently 707) irrespective of their source of funding and area of location.

Odisha is one among very few leading States with faster reduction of poverty ratio from 57.20 per cent in 2004-05 to 32.59 per cent in 2011-12

In the e-Governance department, the National Informatics Centre, Odisha State Centre bagged Order-of-Merit for various projects. These were: BHULEKH (Land Records Web Portal); e-Shramik: Online Register of Odisha Building and other Construction Workers, to facilitate Education, Marriage, Accidents, Death and provide benefits and help in collection of cess; The e-Pothi project for Online Cataloguing of Manuscripts of Odisha State Museum; ‘e-Nijukti’ by Odisha State Employment Mission aimed at online identification of unemployed youths and imparting of skill development training and jobs; PATHSHALA (A skill development tool for Class Room Monitoring of Diploma and ITI students).

The Municipality category saw Odisha win an Order-of-Merit for Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation’s project: ‘My City, My Pride’. My City My Pride (MCMP) is a platform to empower citizens to bring about transformation, mobilise the public and connect with the government. MCMP is powered by m-office, a mobile app powered with a back-end portal that is used by the officials to take action. It now covers 1.3 million people, 67 wards and 25 citizen services and also boasts of more than 5,000 mobile users just within a month of its launch in March 2015.

The State economy has been experiencing a sectoral shift from agriculture towards industry and services sectors in the recent decades. The state’s 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) envisages an average annual growth rate of 9 per cent

Look Ahead

Odisha is one among very few leading States with faster reduction of poverty ratio from 57.20 per cent in 2004-05 to 32.59 per cent in 2011-12. The government is committed to carry on economic reforms, devising and updating policies, procedures and regulating framework ensuring broad based inclusive growth. The time has come to understand structural issues of poverty and work on them to solve with innovative approaches. Every level of Government that interfaces with the common man needs to become more responsive, and more delivery oriented on a sustainable basis. The endeavor to create an environment of trust that conveys the strong resolve of the government at all levels to fulfill every genuine aspiration of people is now the goal for officers and policy makers at all levels in the state. The government is seeking out partnership with private sector for development of required infrastructure and delivery of services through PPPs and other such means.

The State economy has been experiencing a sectoral shift from agriculture towards industry and services sectors in the recent decades. The state’s 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) envisages an average annual growth rate of 9 per cent with a projected outlay of Rs 1,24,373 crore. With active support from different sections of the society, Odisha so far has made significant progress in many sectors. The aim now is for holistic development, by striking a balance between its efforts and opportunities in a way that facilitates fulfillment of needs in its entirety.