English

QIn a dropped down spirit with crossed arms and pulled together shoulders, face turned downward, I was desperately searching for the mother Olive Ridley Sea turtle to make her know that her babies were popping out from the rookery, that she should be going near them to caress the babies as the mother dogs or cats do with their little ones, but there was no trace of her.

After making some frantic search for the mother sea turtle to push her to cuddle the new born babies with love, I eventually realized that there was no hope for searching the female Olive Ridley Sea Turtle.

This realization, made my energy stripped off my body and I stood there like a passive bystander, with sinking shoulders, teary eyes giving no attention to the popping up babies, immersed in the imagination that how can a mother abandon her eggs and vanish somewhere deep in the ocean! Just then a loving touch I felt on my shoulder, I looked up and see a transcending smile of ‘Ms. Chitamma’, the UN Equator awardee for the conservation work for Olive Ridley Sea Turtle.

She said with a bright smiling face, “Don’t worry, they know where their mother is living. You will see, these tiny little ones, will make their own way, up to their mother. Just wait and watch.”

It made me smile once again, restoring my curiosity in these little creatures and their journey.

I watched with Chitamma, how the small ones were popping out from beneath the sand and advancing straight in the direction of sea.

The moment they emerge from underneath the seashore, they flap their four legs projected out of their shell from both the side and head protruding towards the direction of the brine.

Instantaneously with their profound waving of their limbs they moved forward in the direction of sea, lurching through the sandy beach, finally entering in the water and start floating.

The view was enormous and magnificent, as thousands of them were seen floating in the sea water, lurking with the waves, getting submerged under water in a moment and then lifting up their body floating on the surface of the wave the next moment.

The elders present on the beach were happy that the baby turtles could make up to the sea water, the most critical struggle of their life, while I was happy that the babies would meet their mother soon.

These were some of the memories of Chitamma, the woman who played a pioneering role in sensitizing and involving local fisherman community in the conservation work of one of the most beautiful yet mysterious creature of ocean world, the olive ridley sea turtles.

The news about beginning of mass nesting in the Rushikulya estuary in December 2021 briskly created a flashback of yesterdays that I spent with Chitamma at the arribada site.

She had a great convincing personality; with a smiling face she can make anyone understand the relevance of protection and conservation of the smallest creature of the sea turtle family.

Maybe she, in her inner capacity had ascribed herself the motherly role for these soft, non-threatening ocean animals, became instrumental in promotion and conservation of Olive ridley sea turtles, those are coming to Rushikulya estuaries annually for mass nesting.

During my childhood, I got the opportunity to witness the serene beauty of hatchery and hatchling of Olive Ridley Turtle eggs on many occasions along with my father.

Whenever I went to the estuary to behold the magnificient activity of laying of eggs in a self-dug hole and then covered with sands by mother turtles in deep dark night, I always found Chitamma being present there, with her volunteers.

Since the beginning of mass nesting up to the last hatchling of turtle eggs, she kept a vigilant eye over the place, to protect the eggs from possible predators.

The mother turtles after laying the eggs in the sandy beach, leave the place, exposing the eggs to the predators.

Chitamma understood the vital importance of the Olive Ridley Turtles in the promotion of marine ecosystem, which ultimately results in good catch for the fishing community throughout the year.

She made the fisher folk realize this fact, and with her charismatic personality, created volunteers who work day and night for the protection of the abandoned eggs till the hatchling of the last egg.

Olive Ridley sea turtle like other member of the turtle family play a critical role in maintaining the marine ecosystem.

They are omnivorous who feed on all types of invertebrates found in the marine water as well as in the estuaries.

Like the scavengers of marine world, they eat all types of dead aquatic animals, thus cleaning the sea bed.

They are the predators of jellyfish who prey on the fish larva and egg, and hence create a marine environment for the fish population to grow.

These turtles also feed upon the sponge part of the coral reef leaving the hard and cleaner surface area of the coral reef for the healthy generation of fish habitation.

Chitamma had understood this beneficial aspect of the olive ridley turtles in her young days from her observation and experience, much before the forest department led conservation programme that took shape in the state of Odisha since 2010. She had observed that, in the post annual event of mass nesting the fish catchment increase in size.

In rare occasion, when the mass nesting got shifted to some other place instead of Rushikulya estuary, catch of fish fell down drastically.

This observation made her to establish a positive co relation between the arrival of the turtles and good fish catchment, however she lacked the terms and terminology to convince the fellow villagers to work towards the conservation and protection of the turtles, that took ground after the forest department’s initiatives.

The olive ridley sea turtle otherwise known as Pacific Sea Turtle travels a great distance in the sea and act as great leveler in maintaining diversity throughout world’s ocean by transporting multiple marine life that thrives on them.

In recent years they are listed as endangered as their numbers are shrinking, due to their uniqueness in the reproduction process.

The mother turtles lay their eggs on the beach, where they have seen the first light of the sun and touched the first sea water.

They travel quite an impressive long distance to lay their eggs in the coast line of Odisha in Rushikulya estuary, Gahirmatha and Devi River estuary, the prominent three nesting places in the world for the Olive Ridley Turtle.

Another unique feature of their nesting behavior is that they move in large numbers, lay their eggs in the beach, cover it with sand, vacate the place and get immersed in the sea water.

This impulsiveness of the mother turtle makes the eggs vulnerable to fall prey to the predators.

Here comes the role of Chitamma, who like a mother figure along with the forest officials and community volunteers make every possible attempt to protect these abandoned eggs.

Fences are erected around the natural hatchery site along with creation of artificial hatchery provisioning, to protect each and every turtle egg.

She was vigilant enough to see to it that all the eggs got hatched, the babies get safe passage to return to the sea.

I got the opportunity to interact with Chitamma, when I was seven years old.

At that age, the abandonment of eggs by their mother was annoying me, I was in a haste for the reunion of mother and the babies.

I wanted to help the little ones by releasing them in the sea that would ultimately ensures their reunion with their mother.

However, Chitamma with a smiling face made me understand the struggle aspect of the baby turtle in finding their own way towards the sea water.

She said, “If the babies could find their own path by responding to the sound of the sea waves that would increase their survival chance in the ocean world.

Allow them to search them their own way, we are here for those who are unable to locate the sound and move towards the wrong direction.”

Bhubaneswar, Dec 31: With the advent of new technology and widespread use of the internet of things, the Odisha government has adopted digital governance to enhance public service delivery.

The state government has rolled out the Mo Sarkar (My Government) initiative, which has transformed the whole process of public service delivery.

Under the initiative, it seeks feedback from the citizens and fixes accountability on officials to improve the delivery of public services.

The Revenue and Disaster Management Department of the state government is at the forefront in implementing the Mo Sarkar initiatives.

While the department is delivering different public services online, it has also taken action against a number of officials for corruption and doubtful integrity.

Making officials accountable

The sword of Damocles has fallen on the corrupt and inefficient officials as the R&DM department has taken action against them based on various feedback under Mo Sarkar and subsequent departmental inquiry.

At least eight Group-C employees were given pre-mature retirement for doubtful integrity or inefficiency.

Disciplinary proceedings have been initiated against as many as 22 OAS and ORS officers for misconduct, negligence in duty, dereliction of duty or doubtful integrity.

Besides, the Revenue and Disaster Management Department has given compulsory retirement to five OAS officers and one District Sub-Registrar pre-maturely from service on the ground of doubtful integrity or inefficiency.

Based on feedbacks of Mo Sarkar, District Sub-Registrar, Puri has been put under suspension and head clerk, Jagatpur SRO has been transferred.

Online application of mutation cases

The R&DM department has implemented an array of reforms to improve mutation services in the state resulting in the resolution of nearly 2 lakh cases.

The department amended the Odisha Survey & Settlement Rules to obviate the mandatory notice period and party hearing in uncontested mutation cases. The appeal period has also been increased to rectify any possible error within 180 days of disposal of mutation case.

To reduce the physical interface between the citizens and government offices, facility for online application for all kinds of mutation cases has been provided.

After registration of land transaction, initiation of mutation case and updation of Record of Rights (RoR) is automatic.

Applicants get details of application processing through SMS and the progress of every case can be tracked from the DWIST Portal either with the case number or through the registered sale deed number.

The mandated timeline for disposal of uncontested mutation cases has been reduced from 90 days to 7 days. Sub-Collectors get alert for cases pending beyond 7 days, while Collectors get alert for cases pending beyond 15 days and Principal Secretary gets alert for cases pending beyond 30 days.

As a result, the average number of days of disposal has been reduced from 188 days just before onboarding of Mo Sarkar to just 33 days during the period from 1st July 2021 to till date.

Only 4.27% of uncontested mutation cases are pending beyond ORTPS mandated timeline of 7 days as on December 27, 2021.

In some cases, the updated RoRs are delivered within few hours of Registration itself.

Rajaswa Ratha: Revenue services on wheel

Through Rajaswa Ratha, the Odisha government has touched upon 1,99,080 people for delivering various revenue services of Tahasil, starting from certificate to mutation.

In this endeavour, Ganjam has delivered the highest number of services of 63,812 services since inception of Rajaswa Ratha.

Faster delivery of certificate and registration services

Since 27th February 2020, the department has disposed 75,00,707 certificate cases only on edistrict portal based on ServicePlus platform. The ORTPS mandated timeline for many certificates like resident and income certificates have been reduced from 15 days to 10 days and for caste certificates, the ORTPS mandated timeline has been reduced from 30 days to 15 days.

After the implementation of Mo Sarkar, the average time taken for delivery of registered document has been reduced from 2 days to 1 day for Marriage Certificate, average time taken has been reduced from 90 days to 30 days. For Encumbrance Certificate and Certified copy of documents, average time for disposal takes one day.

Right now, all registration services are completely online save except the need for statutory requirements.

The facility for single point collection of Stamp Duty and Registration Fees will be ready for launch by 31st January 2022 as the development of API and integration with iFMS is under progress.

Floriculture is a booming industry and the country has exported 20703.46 MT of floriculture products to the world worth of Rs. 507.31 crore/78.73 USD million in 2017-18. Major export destinations are U.S.A, Netherlands, U.K., Germany and United Arab Emirates.

Commercial floriculture has higher potential per unit area than most of the field crops and is therefore a lucrative business.

Floriculture products mainly consist of cut flowers, pot plants, cut foliage, seeds, bulbs, tubers, rooted cuttings and dried flowers or leaves.

Top three flower producing states are Tamil Nadu (20%), Karnataka (13.5%) and West Bengal (12.2%).

Odisha with its diverse agroclimatic conditions, poised to be next floriculture hub in Eastern India.

For promotion of floriculture in Odisha under CSIR Floriculture Mission, a team of scientists from CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI), Lucknow visited several farmer-clusters and interacted with SHGs who are involved in floriculture in the state.

In order to strengthen and boost floriculture trade in Odisha, introduction of high value floriculture crops in the state is need of the hour informed Dr. Chandra Sekhar Mohanty, the state co-ordinator of Odisha.

Dr. Mohanty and other scientists of CSIR-NBRI, Dr. Soumit Kumar Behera, Dr. Khuraijam J Singh and Dr. Sandip Kumar Behera organized a series of training programmes for farmers and SHGs.

The scientists motivated farmers in floriculture-clusters in Cuttack, Ganjam and Koraput to scale up floriculture through CSIR Floriculture Mission.

The activities in Koraput were undertaken with support of district administration of Koraput.

Four hands-on training programmes on Dehydrated floral craft techniques were also organized to empower the women folks in the floriculture clusters.

Establishment of decentralized nursery were also initiated in Cuttack, Ganjam, Koraput and Nabrangpur.

Floriculture gardens will soon be established at premier educational institutions, the Sainik School Bhubaneswar and Kendriya Vidyalaya, Koraput to impart knowledge and enthuse interest among the student about the potential of floriculture.

It is not a child’s play to grow facing recurring disasters.

Children are the worst and silent victims of climate stress and frequent disasters.

Impact of climate stress on food security, water availability, loss of family incomes disturbs the social harmony and peace both at family and society level.

This has direct bearing on the lives of children growing up in those areas.

Climate hazards also pose threat for the children and they get confined to house to avoid such risks.

The incidents of lightning strikes while children playing outdoor and the fatal events have been reported many times.

The heat waves also bring shorter school days and children are forced to stay at home.

All this affects the childhood of children in a disaster prone area.

Debilitating ecological zone affects the food security and creates a malnourished body and mind that fails to take the challenges of the future.

Food production gets affected and the families loose various livelihood options.

This affects the quantity and quality of food available at the family level.

Malnourishment affects children’s cognitive development and immunity and hence restricts their future prospects of growth.

Climate change affects the children in a very silent way.

The investment in their capacity building initiatives get eroded because of the reduced family income.

It erodes the capacity of the eco system and ultimately destabilizes the confidence and happiness of the family.

It restricts their free movement and access to various services that supports their livelihood.

This gets further accelerated, when the society faces chronic disasters at regular intervals.

Geographic location of Odisha makes it vulnerable to multiple natural disasters that has been further accelerated by the climate change.

New dimensions of climate hazards are experienced at regular intervals and some of these are lightning, increased storm surge, forest fire, new varieties of pest attack and others making it harder for the people engaged in the primary sector to earn their livelihood.

Historically the state used to be very vulnerable to flood and drought condition because of its underdeveloped water management system.

U Any irregularities in the monsoon rain creates sufferings for the people that they are used to over the period of time.

Further to this, the state is also experiencing cyclones at regular intervals because of its long denuded mangrove coastline.

The two major cyclone that people have experienced are 1971 and 1999 super cyclones.

In the recent history the infamous 1999 Super Cyclone not only caused more than ten thousand deaths but also brought sever damage to the property, infrastructure, agriculture and vegetative coverage of the state along with making a grinding halt to the confidence of the local people.

Jagatsinghpur, my home town being the eye of the cyclone, was ravaged by the Super Cyclone.

I grew up listening to those horrifying stories of high wind speed, storm surge up to 30feet height sea water incursion, deaths and helplessness.

In the post-Super Cyclone years the understanding of the governance system about the relevance of preparedness in disaster management has drastically reduced the number of causalities during subsequent cyclonic events.

The Chief Minister of Odisha laid the foundation of mission “Zero Casualty at Any Cost” at the time of cyclone Phalin-2013, created an euphoria of evacuation drive among officials and were successful in evacuating close to two million population in forty-eight hours.

High preparedness activity on the part of government managed to restrict the death toll to single digit only despite of high wind speed of up to 230kmph.

This attempt acclaims the state of Odisha with many appreciations at various fora.

The same story of evacuation drive got repeated in the Cyclone Hudhud 2014, Cyclone Titili 2018, Cyclone Bulbul 2018 and Cyclone Fani 2019.

When the state of Odisha was making an attempt to facilitate economic development along with natural disasters, the advent of Covid 19 brings a complete new dimensions of vulnerabilities, which people and the state administration were not aware of and had no clues to address it.

Around the end of the year 2019, world saw an emergence of a virus, unique in its character, travelled the world within a very short span of time.

In a period of two months since the first spotting of the infected victim, millions of people across the globe got infected by the virus.

Looking at the scale of spread over geographical region along with the terrifying symptoms of the infection, World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the incident as pandemic on 11th March 2020.

The corona virus belongs to a group of virus that causes diseases in mammals and birds. In humans and birds the virus cause respiratory tract infections that range from mild to lethal.

Mild illness in human includes common cold while lethal varieties mostly attack the respiratory system of the body and within few days of infection the body succumbs due to deficiency of oxygen.

The peculiar characteristic of the virus is that it remains in the host body for almost fourteen days and after that it dies its own death.

In order to win the war against the virus either the victim should have a robust immune system or should have secondary supply of oxygen along with immunity booster medication.

The virus enters into human body via nose and mouth openings.

In the initial days, the victims shows no sign of infection but within three to four days if remain untreated the virus becomes acute and affects the lungs along with secondary ailments.

Even in the dormant state the virus has the potential to infect another healthy body.

The easy way to deal with the virus is to maintain “physical distancing” from other individuals, wearing masks and maintain cleanliness along with washing hands frequently.

This measure is appropriate at the individual level but looking at the speed of the spread of the virus, the government needs to have measures to deal with the public health.

In this regard certain decisions were taken at the government level that had long term implication on the future of the children.

Especially the decision of shut down, lock down and on-line academic classes had detrimental effect on the health and future prospect of the children.

Dealing with the Spread of Epidemic:
In the post-super cyclone years, the Odisha State Government had invested in building the capacity of the community members in collaboration with UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and many international and local non[ governmental organizations (NGOs).

In the advent of any emergency situation the state government’s first priority becomes prevention, which they followed in March, 2020 also to save the lives of the people.

With the increasing number of corona patients in the country, the state government declared shut down of schools as a preventive measure to check the spread among the children.

Then on 21st March 2020, the state government declared partial lockdown of the twin cities (Cuttack and Bhubaneswar) along with the industrial hubs of the state to incorporate social distancing measures as a remedy to arrest the growth of corona patient.

Simultaneously an epidemic management and communication team was formed under the leadership of chief minister himself to have control over the extra ordinary emergency situation.

The mission statement of the state of Odisha was “Each and Every Life in the State is Precious- and we will attempt every possible actions to safeguard the interest of our four corer family members.”

Massive awareness campaign with regard to prevention and precautionary measure were carried out via electronic, social and print media. Frequent appeal by the chief minister referring to ladies and children brought a sense of belongingness and ownership among these otherwise left out group in decision making process.

Listening to Mr. Subroto Bagchi was like wonderful story sessions, which kept all of us informed and helped us to cooperate with our family members.

Similarly during the second wave, when there were reports of shortage of oxygen in hospitals, the Chief Minister of Odisha once again came up with another mission of “

Fighting the crisis together : Mission Oxygen” and were able to provide to various hospitals in many states.

The government of Odisha formed a special team and green corridor for loading and transportation of the life-saving gas to states facing deficit.

The inter-state collaboration and the readiness of the government of Odisha to provide oxygen saved the lives of millions in India.

The readiness of the corporate houses in this regard is praiseworthy and many steel making companies like Tata Steel and others came forward to provide oxygen to various states across India.

The state of Odisha has demonstrated its leadership in managing disasters and especially saving the lives of the millions at the time of crisis by making the communities as first responders.

The active communication of the state with the people gives lot of confidence that we can overcome any crisis, if we act together.

This also creates an environment to promote “Compassionate Governance” where the difficulties and hardships of the people becomes the foundation of response and policy initiatives.

This makes us feel confident that the state will surely build a positive environment for the children.

Further to this, children should not become only passive recipient of support and must participate in the decision making process.

The theme of 2021 World Children’s Day is, “Investing in our future means investing in our children” and on this day of 20th November 2021 we must take the pledge to create positive environment for the children and build their capacities so that they become active participants in all decisions taken in the state of Odisha, that affects the lives of the children.

Aditya Anurag Nanda
First Year, National Law University Odisha.

Bhubaneswar, Nov 16 (LocalWire): Orissa Stevedores Limited (OSL) has donated Rs 10,00,000/- to Mahavinayak Vidyayan, Barchana under “Mo School Abhiyan”.

Recently, OSL had extended financial support of Rs 20,00,000/- to the schools of Cuttack district under the ambitious “Mo School Abhiyan Parichalana Sangathan” (MSAPS) launched by the Government of Odisha.

The donation will go a long way in providing a boost towards building infrastructure in the school campus necessary to fulfil smart school requirements.

Speaking on the purpose of such a support and contribution, Shri Mahimananda Mishra, Managing Director (MD), OSL Group, said OSL is proudly contributing to “ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”.

“We will provide our full support to the Odisha Government’s Mo School Abhiyaan, a robust approach towards building a brighter future for the state and its people,” Mishra remarked.

In this regard, a resolution to this effect has been passed in a meeting of “Mo Schoo Abhiyan” of Mahavinayak Vidyayan, Barchana expressing gratitude and thanks to the OSL Group for its generosity and commitment to education.

‘Mo School Abhiyan’, started in 2017 by Odisha Chief Minister Shri Naveen Pattnaik to revamp the state’s school ecosystem, has been yielding tremendous success on all counts.

Over the years, OSL Group, as a major corporate house in the state, has built many impactful CSR activities with focus on pandemic relief works, education, health care, development of community infrastructure among others.

As part of its many interventions, OSL Group also extended significant support towards helping battle against the apocalyptic Covid-19 pandemic.

Bhubaneswar, Oct 9 (LocalWire): The second edition of the annual global conference aimed at promoting the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for the development of Odisha and advancement of Odia language in the digital era is being organized virtually on 9th October.

The conference, called Odias in ML Conference, is being organized by a group of Odias, also called Odias in ML, with a shared interest in AI and ML. The theme for this year is Act! The Future is Now!

Dr. Amar Patnaik, Rajya Sabha MP, and a leading voice on technology policymaking, will be delivering the opening keynote in the conference.

Other keynote speakers at the conference include Manoj Mishra, IT Secretary, Odisha; Dr. Ashok Kumar Mahapatra, Vice-Chancellor, Siksha O Anusandhan University; and Prof Prasant Mohapatra, Vice-Chancellor, Research, University of California Davis.

The inaugural edition, held on 4th October 2020, saw the participation of more than 200 technologists, researchers, executives, entrepreneurs, financiers, academicians, policymakers, journalists, administrators, and students across the world.

This year’s conference, to commence at 5.30 PM IST, will comprise of three sessions, themed Building an Ecosystem for Odias in AI, Entrepreneurship and Business Opportunities in AI and Skill to Scale.

The speakers, all Odias based across three continents, will come together to brainstorm how the opportunities created by these emerging technologies can be leveraged effectively to propel the next phase of growth for Odisha and Odias.

Arvind Pani, Co-founder, and CEO of Reverie Language Technologies; Debabrata Nayak, Add Director, NeGD and the man behind DigiLocker app; Prof Suprava Patnaik, Dean School of Engineering, KIIT; and Mr. Manas Panda will participate in the session on building an ecosystem for Odias in AI. The session will be moderated by Shyamanuja Das.

The entrepreneurship session will feature the US and India-based entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship ecosystem enablers such as Prasanta Behera, Amarjeet Sahoo, Dr. Manisha Acharya, Chandrahas Panigrahi, Sambit Prasad Kar, SakyaSingh Mohapatra, Manoj Kumar Nayak, Sam Biswal, Akash Roshan Mund, and Priyanka Pani. Anjan Kumar Panda will moderate the session.

The skills session would feature experts like Dr. Sanghamitra Pati, Sudeepta Maharana, Manoj Patra, Debu Panda, Swati Satpathy, Sunil Sabat, Valliappa Lakshmanan, Dr. Aviseka Acharya, Vivek Pani, and Ambika Sukla. Dr. Pragyasmita Nayak & Kirtisundar Sahu will co-moderate the session.

Damodar Sahu and Pradeepta Mishra will anchor the community conversations, titled Gapashapa.

The conference will be available live on YouTube. They will also be shared across different social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

About Odias in ML group

Odias in ML aims to help leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning for the overall development of Odisha and Odia language through collaboration among Odia technologists, academicians, executives, policymakers, and the broader community–working strategically with technology and thought leaders in the space.

This aims to enable a kaleidoscope of thoughts, ideas and applications that will see their journey into utilities and commodity products in daily life.

LocalWire