BHUBANESWAR: The Finance Ministry has asked the State Government to add the villages, under Orissa Tribal Livelihood Empowerment and Livelihoods Programme’s (OTELP) Phase I, to its expanded project. At present, OTELP Plus is being implemented in Malkangiri and Koraput districts. However, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which supports the programme, raised concern that Phase-I villages were not covered under OTELP Plus. The OTELP operates with adoption of micro watersheds as the unit of planning and implementation with community participation. Under the Phase I, the programme was implemented in 30 backward remote blocks of seven districts, mostly located in south-west region, since 2005. It covered 56,180 families in 1,034 villages. The successful implementation of OTELP had prompted the State Government to extend the programme to an additional 251 micro watersheds covering 700 villages in Malkangiri and Koraput districts. Called OTELP Plus, this expanded programme is to operate in the uncovered micro watersheds in 12 blocks of the two districts during the current year. In a recent communique, the Finance Ministry lauded the achievements made under OTELP towards allotment of land to the landless under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) but it also stated in the same vein that the IFAD had pointed out the size of the land distributed is very small - just about one acre to 1.5 acre. It asked the SC and ST Development Department to provide community rights or ‘patta’, as per the provisions of FRA, to the landless. This will go a long way in creating more sustainable livelihood opportunities for the poor rural households. Besides, the IFAD has also called upon the Government to extend the benefits of Indira Awas Yojana apart from drinking water and sanitation projects to the areas. The Union Ministry observed that OTELP’s measures for better farming systems, newer crop varieties, livestock rearing have led to generation of demand for credit. Since banking service in these remote pockets is very poor, the Government could do well to improve the seed money to the self-help groups (SHGs). The IFAD has recommended that seed money could be enhanced to ` 15,000 per SHG. As per the target of the State Government, OTELP Plus is expected to cover the livelihoods issues of 40,000 tribal families in the 700 villages of Malkangiri and Koraput. It will be implemented over seven years with an estimated ` 263.94 crore as project cost.
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