Changing Face of Sishaput Village

An extract from Case Study - Sishaput VDC and two individuals 

History & Background of the Village and people 

Sishaput is a small village with 11 tribal households in Badel Gram Panchayat of Nandapur Block in Koraput district of Orissa.As told by the villagers, the village was established in 1986 when only 8 families from a nearby village called Kareiput came over to settle there. They did not have even a home stead place to live there in.  They did not feel at home with the community already living in the village. Hence they decided to leave the place and start a village of their own.

By the time the village was established, there were dense forests with diversity of tree species starting from fire wood, fruit bearing and non timber forest produces. There were three streams, water from which was used for drinking purposes. By the end of 2000 all these streams dried and the villagers requested the Panchayat to make provision of a well for drinking water. The community dug a well in 2000 with support of Rs 6000/- from the Panchayat.

The villagers depend on farming for their livelihood. They can be categorized as small and marginal farmers with an average of 1 to 3 acres of land holding per family. They cultivate paddy, Ragi, minor millets, Niger etc. They are dependent on monsoon rains for their agriculture activities. But the yield they got was not adequate to feed them through out the year and hence they used migrate out to towns within the state as well as to Andhra Pradesh. Some of them had to borrow from nearby villagers to tide over the periods of food insecurity.

For the ful story, please see Case Study - Sishaput VDC and two individuals