Bhubaneshwar, April 6, 2012: Hostels for tribal girls in Orissa, one of the state government’s various schemes aimed at giving tribals an incentive not to take up Naxalism, have been found short of facilities by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Bhuvaneshwar, March 29, 2012: To put in place an effective monitoring mechanism for the implementation of the emergency feeding and supplementary nutrition programmes (SNPs), the Women and Child Development Department has decided to recast mothers’ committees in a campaign mode across the State.

The Department, on Wednesday issued a set of guidelines to all Collectors, directed that the mothers’ committees be reconstituted on an annual basis. The last time the guideline was issued on formation of the committees was in 2006.

The Situation Analysis of sanitation arrangements in urban areas of Odisha was carried out in November 2009 and the key issues were discussed in a state level workshop at Bhubaneswar in January 2010. The Situation Analysis highlights the following issues that need to be addressed by the Odisha Urban Sanitation Strategy:
- Need to have adequate baseline information: especially comprehensive information about the full cycle of sanitation (viz.

Odisha, March 15, 2012: The Census 2011 figures for water and sanitation are just out.  It confirms how the industry crazy Odisha state has earned another dubious distinction of being the state with highest percentage of households without having toilets.

The Orissa Economic Survey, 2010-11 takes note of the efforts of the State Government to bring visible improvements in the State finances, to reduce Debt-GSDP ratio from 55.92% in 2002-2003 to the sustainable level of 23.24% in 2009-10, to create fiscal space for higher plan and capital outlays to propel growth in the economy, and to accelerate the pace of development. The analysis presented in the Survey, 2010-11 clearly brings out that there is a perceptible structural change in Orissa’s economy which has been following a high growth trajectory in recent years.

New Delhi, Feb 2, 2012: Nineteen districts of Odisha are covered under the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF). The annual allocations of Development Grant for these districts were Rs.305.67 crore for the financial years 2007-08 to 2010-11. From the year 2011-12, the annual allocation has been enhanced to Rs.320.96 crore.