Orissa

Over the years traditional fishing methods and fishermen's organisations have undergone dramatic change on the Chilika Lake. Fishing and shrimp culture operations now rely overwhelmingly on informal credit structures which have in turn led to increasing indebtedness and the lake itself is shrinking gradually because of siltation and environmental damage.

The authors examine the poverty situation in 15 major states across four distinct dimensions of headcount ratio, size of the poor population, depth and severity for the rural, the urban and the total population. The poverty situation, they find, worsened over the six-year period 1993-94 to 1999-2000 in Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. In the remaining 12 states there was a distinct improvement in terms of the most visible indicator, namely, the absolute size of the poor population. Overall, despite diversity across poverty indicators and across states, the overwhelming impression is one of greater improvement in the poverty situation in the 1990s than in the previous 10�½-year period.

The Indian Meteorological Department will need to go beyond its current attitude of scientific information dissemination to being a user-driven warning service. The department has to combine technological systems with social science knowledge if it is to provide efficient warning and save lives in a cyclone.

Kashipur's woes began with the displacement of a majority of its people from land and forests, they long had traditional rights to. Yet, despite their unevenly matched struggle against a government that remains indifferent, and against the sweeping tide of industrialisation, theirs remains a story of sustained agitation and hope that has now also encompassed disaffected tribals in other areas as well.

Adivasi Assertion Towards the middle of the year and about the same time as the spectre of starvation loomed large over Kashipur in Orissa, adivasis of the nearby district of Nabarangpur, bordering Chhattisgarh, were engaged in a prolonged struggle to recover land they claimed had been illegally settled by non-tribals, mainly Bangladeshi immigrants.