Kalahandi - The Untold Story

Book excerpt: Twenty-three delightful real life stories and fifteen heart touching poems describe in graphic details the economic and sexual exploitation of poor tribal people of Kalahandi by scheming moneylenders, businessmen, local contractors, politicians and indifferent bureaucrats. The stories have been originally written in English, while the poems have been translated from the original Odia. For his poem collection on Kalahandi the author had won Sahitya Akademi's Golden Jubilee prize for poetry in 2007. Once known as the “rice bowl” of Odisha, Kalahandi became infamous for large scale starvation deaths in the 1980s. The agrarian economy of Kalahandi was devastated following a 20 year long famine starting in 1965. Poor people in interior pockets died in hordes although Kalahandi district as a whole remained rice surplus even during the famine decades. Therefore the author contends that, although the famine was a natural calamity, the starvation deaths were an avoidable man made disaster. The stories and poems included in this book are written in a very simple language, in the form of funny real life anecdotes. But underneath their humorous exterior, these highly symbolic stories offer in-depth diagnosis as well as practical solutions to various grassroots level socio-economic problems in a penetrating manner.