Orissa Vision 2020 draft aims to place state among top five in the country

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Bhubaneswar: The Naveen Patnaik government aspires to see Orissa among the top five states in the country by 2020. The draft Orissa Vision 2020, presented to the State Planning Board last week, aims at clocking a growth rate of 9-10% per annum during the next 13 years. It also plans to reduce the poverty level to below 10% from the present 47%.

The vision paper ‘‘envisions a society which, by the year 2020, has a well diversified and prosperous economy that attains rapid and sustainable development, and in which all citizens have ample opportunities and realisation of their potential, and enjoy a high quality of life. Orissa emerges as one of the top five Indian states in terms of human development indicators that surpass Millennium Development Goals, has brought down poverty under 10%, and improves substantially inter-regional and inter-personal equity.’’

It further says that ‘‘the engines of growth will be qualitative and quantitative improvement in infrastructure; agriculture (including horticulture and fisheries); forests as a substantial source of livelihood; substantially improved, and assured, irrigation; rapid industrialisation; well developed IT and service sector; tourism ; and speedy access to justice, safety and security for improved law and order situation, improved governance and service delivery.’’

Says the chief minister, who is also chairman of the planning board, ‘‘Higher growth rate can be achieved by giving stress on agriculture, irrigation , rural development, heath, education and infrastructure development.’’

The draft also mentions improvement of human development indicators, like infant mortality rate (IMR) at below 10. The IMR in Orissa is currently about 75. The paper has been formulated taking into consideration the 7.3% growth rate during 2002-06, agriculture growth rate of 3% in 2002-03 to 2005-06, besides projections by McKinsey, Morgan Stanley and Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy CMIE).

In 2005, McKinsey predicted a growth rate of over 7% in the next 10-12 years, while Morgan Stanley Global Economic Forum's report the same year said Orissa would emerge as a centre of metal business in India and attract investments up to $30-40 billion in the next five years. CMIE ranked Orissa as number one in value of investment projects under implementation (Rs 42,981 crore ).

The formulation of the Eleventh Plan has also been taken into consideration. The thrust area of the Planning Commission is to achieve faster, more broad-based and inclusive growth of 9% during 2007-2012.