As 5.22 lakh migrants return to Odisha, civil society sets up help desks in 16 districts

Helpdesk in Malkangiri district

By A Representative
In a mission to restarting livelihood for migrant returnees and other needy families who mostly depend on the informal economy and had to lose their livelihood due to the Covid-19 in Odisha, two state civil society organizations have set up 16 district level help desks in order to link them with various livelihood based schemes and employment opportunities, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
The help desks will offer specific livelihood information, food security programmes and other government assistance announced by the state and central government especially during Covid-19.
The Odisha Shramajeebee Mancha (OSM) and the Mahila Shramajeebee Mancha, Odisha (MSMO) have launched this initiative as a part of their livelihood campaign entitled “Prabashee Shramaku Na Karibaa Mana, Nija Gaon Re Karibaa Jeebika Arjana” which literally means to promote livelihood at the locality and avoiding distress migration.
Balangir, Kalahandi, Nuapada, Gajapati, Koraput, Nabarangpur and Rayagada are among the 11 migration prone districts where the help desks have been set up. As the influx of the migrant returnees is large in numbers, one of the immediate challenges for the returnees will be their livelihood prospects.
Similarly, other districts where help-desks have been set up, are Malkangiri, Kandhamal, Boudh, Nayagarh, Mayurbhanj, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Sundergarh, and Deogarh. In these districts, tribal people are confronting to an extremely difficult time due to Covid-19. The greater chunk of minor forest produce is gathered between April and June every year and the lockdown has stopped them to collect the forest produce for the entire year.

Help desk in Rayagada district

“The help-desk facility is useful for such communities who seek work at this critical time. People can call us, register their issues over telephone or visit our help-desk centres which are located in the district headquarters, to know about schemes and Act that concern them. We are there to help”, says Mukunda Madkami, a Sangathan member of the Shramajeebee Sangathan and an in-charge of the district level help-desk centre, set up in Malkangiri.
“We have so far been successful to mobilise work under MGNREGA for around 60000 households per day in these 16 districts for two weeks consecutively, which we had started on a campaign mode from 1st June. Our Janasathis (grassroots workers) have been visiting villages, interacting with the people and persuading them to benefit from various government schemes which are announced by both the central and the state government during Covid-19”, says Anjan Pradhan, the convener of Odisha Shramajeebee Mancha.
According to the data provided by the Information and Public Relations Department, Government of Odisha on 11th June 11, as many as 5, 22,148 Odias have returned to Odisha since May 3.
“This puts us in a humongous task. With the Odisha government bracing for effective implementation of MGNREGA in the state, the help-desk will serve crucial”, says Ms Shanti Bhoi, state president of Mahila Shramajeebee Mancha, Odisha.
Meanwhile, the State government has announced that under the MGNREGA scheme, it will provide 20 crore persondays for migrants in excavating around 1.3 lakh ponds across the State.

Comments

The golden crop: How turmeric is transforming women's lives in tribal India

By Vikas Meshram* When the lush green fields of turmeric sway in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, it is not merely a spice crop — it is the golden glow of self-reliance. In villages where even basic spices once had to be bought from the market, the very soil today is yielding a prosperity that has transformed the lives of thousands of families. At the heart of this transformation is the initiative of Vaagdhara, which has linked turmeric with livelihoods, nutrition, and village self-governance — gram swaraj.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

False claim? What Venezuela is witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat

By Manolo De Los Santos The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility. In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines: One . The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution. Two . Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandone...

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Search This Blog