Member Profile: ANTODAYA

Established in the year 1989 by a group of committed youths seeing the problem of food insecurity, child selling, distress sale, land alienation of tribals by the non-tribal money lenders, ANTODAYA works among the Tribals and other marginalized sections of community in Kalahandi district of Odisha (India), with a vision of Realising a Society where there is No Hunger, fear (arising out of culture of silence), injustice & diseases.

ANTODAYA Contact
Primary Contact Person: Dillip Kumar Das, Chairman
Contact Address:
At/ Bahadur Bagicha Pada
PO: BHAWANIPATNA
District: Kalahandi
Odisha, India
PIN: 766001
e-mail: chairman@antodaya.org.in
Tel: +91-6670-232038

ANTODAYA started its work in the year 1989 around the issue of Land alienation of poor tribals and restoring them judicially in Thuamul Rampur block area of Kalahandi. Subsequently started the work towards livelihood of those tribals whose land got restored and in the process of analysing the situation of the area and the target community we came across the issues of exploitation of tribals by money lenders during their scarcity, exploiting them in charging high rate of interest, compelling the tribals to go for distress sale of their produces and also the collected forest produces. On these issues ANTODAYA worked and in the process also came across the health issues as well as the issue of Lack of safe drinking water. With very limited resources available ANTODAYA tried to renovate the BALI CHUANS (traditional water holes dug near the spring from where the community use the water for drinking). As the road communication was very much difficult at that time during early years of 1990s ANTODAYA could not think any other alternatives to mitigate the problem of drinking water.
But in the year 1996, Diahorrea occurred in the area in Epidemic form claiming 73 lives (including new born babies) within a span of 10 days in the month of August. As contaminated water is the main cause of diahorrea (Cholera), we started thinking around the issue of providing / ensuring safe drinking water in the target villages. We took Taragaon (the worst affected village during the epidemic) of Kaniguma Panchayat as our pilot village and invited the engineers from Rural water supply and Sanitation department of Government of Orissa to assess the situation and also to plan for the alternatives. Earlier the department had dug six bore wells and one open well in the village and all were not yielding water. The engineers and the officials from the department expressed their inability for the work. When we suggested the filteration of spring water coming from the hills, the officials denied working on it as they didn’t have the freedom to alter the policy of the government.
Then we contacted the Kalahandi water & Development Project of Save the Children with the proposal of having a filteration unit at the mouth of the spring called SUNAR PEDI and they agreed to assess the feasibility. Their Engineers visited the village and the work of Gravity flow pipe water system got innovated. With the support of this Kalahandi water and development project ANTODAYA also renovated dug-wells and bore wells (producing good water only) in other 41 villages at that time.
But with this small effort we could eliminate the threat of Cholera / diahorrea in limited number of villages, where there are so many villages in the block lacking safe drinking water. The government was only providing bore wells, from which stinking water with heavy iron content coming out and people are not using the water. In 2007 and 2008 again the epidemic occurred in other parts of the block claiming more than 100 lives. On the issue we again motivated the Orissa Tribal Empowerment and Livelihoods Programme of Government of Orissa, with which ANTODAYA works in 11 Micro watersheds of most deprived area in Nakrundi and Kerpai GPs, to divert their Development Initiative fund (DIF) and Community Infrastructure Fund (CIF) available at the village level with the Watershed Development Committees for providing safe drinking water tapping the water from the springs coming from the Hills near the villages. The programme officials got motivated and work started in the year 2009 in the most deprived village called TIJMALI (situated at a height of 1136 meter above MSL) where 18 tribal HH were not having any source of drinking water. The work was on the basis of our experience in Taragaon village. Tijmali project became a success in June 2009 which encouraged the people of the area, OTELP officials and ANTODAYA functionaries to take up such projects in all target villages under OTELP project where there is feasibility. Accordingly plans were prepared and water projects are now in 35 villages.
With support from NABARD also we have installed a project in Kukurbhursi village which provides water to villagers of Kukurbhursi and Bariguda in Karlapat GP. With all our water projects (starting from 1996) around 1246 HH with around 5700 population get drinking water round the clock using the gravity flow and among them 7 villages where there are schools have provided pipe line supply to the schools. The surplus water from the system is used for growing vegetables in the backyard adding to the nutrition of the villagers and reducing drudgery as well as expenses on the health front.

Most of our water projects are implemented through the Target Community with the financial support received by them directly from the Donors and the budget for the Water projects is not included in our Organisation budget.

ABOUT ANTODAYA
Organisation’s history
ANTODAYA has been dwelling in one of the most vulnerable and drought prone Districts of Orissa, India namely Kalahandi since its inception in 1989. It had started its work among the tribals prior to its formation by associating itself with the most sensitive issue of land alienation prevailing in tribal dominated block of Thuamul Rampur. At the outset, the late founder of the organization, Mr. B Salem Farook and the present Chairman Mr. Dillip Kumar Das along with some committed group of people, had started bringing forth the issue of land alienation by mobilizing tribals in the remote area and subsequently filing cases for them at the district level. The issue taken up by the group caught the attention of the media as well as the district administration and one public interest litigation case was filed at the high court of Orissa. All the persons of the social workers group involved in this struggle had to go through the wrath of the powerful group who used to exploit the tribals and acquire the lands of the tribals through fraudulent means. However, the district administration supported the issue-based fight of the group and suggested initiating work in an organized manner. The result of this bitter struggle yielded in restoration of around 175 acres of agricultural land to poor Paraja Kandha tribals of Thuamul Rampur block. Thus arose the need of giving shape and direction to the endeavors of some committed groups of people and a solid foundation of ANTODAYA was laid with the help of tribal people of the area in 1989.
Focus
Main focus of the organization is to ensure food security for the most vulnerable tribal groups by consolidating their livelihood options in the area through organized actions. Some of the results of organized actions of the organization in this direction are mentioned below:
 Food stress caused by regular failure of crops and dwindling resource base of tribals was reduced by nearly two months.
 Acquisition of agricultural and homestead land for landless tribals from Government through legal procedure.
 Restoration of agricultural land of tribals from the clutches of non-tribals and exploitative groups.
 Focused intervention for improvement of livelihood systems of tribals resulted in expansion of arable lands, improved method of agricultural practices, promotion of micro enterprises and better natural resources management by people.
 Mobilization of tribal women through self helps groups and subsequent formation of independent people's organization for assertion of their rights over natural resources.
 Facilitating the women's organization to acquire rights over NTFP and helping them to process and market hill brooms with distinct brand value in the state.
 Facilitating access to Government social welfare programs through right to food campaign.
Our achievements
Our achievements include: reducing food stress by nearly two months in some areas; acquisition of land for landless tribals through legal procedures; restoration of land from exploitative groups; expansion of arable lands, improved agricultural practices and promotion of micro-enterprises; the formation and mobilization of women’s self-help groups and other CBOs to assert their rights; facilitating women's organisations to acquire rights over NTFP and the production and marketing of hill brooms with a distinct brand value; facilitating access to government social welfare programmes and ascertaining good governance through the right to food and work campaign; and facilitating CBOs to mobilise resources through watershed activities.
We work with a number of government organisations (particularly OTELP), local banks (including NABARD) and regularly meet with other NGOs working in the field (at, for example, OTELP workshops) to discuss those issues and solutions particular to forest dwelling tribal communities. In the past have received funding from DFID (though its local facilitating partner, PRIA) and Action-Aid.
We also work for asserting people’s rights by using RTI Act and also on land rights with support from UNDP & Govt. of India under Access to Justice Project since December 2009. As a result of this project intervention every Public Authority under Government of Orissa is now disclosing their information suo-motto complying the provisions under section 4-(1)-(b) 0f RTI Act. We have also succeeded in getting Forest land Patta for 1664 HH under FRA.
organisation’s vision, mission
ANTODAYA is a voluntary (not-for-profit) organisation registered as a society and not affiliated to any Political and/or Religious organisation. Our vision, mission & Goal are as follows.
VISION
Realising a society where there is no hunger, fear, injustice (arising out of the culture of silence) or disease.
Mission: ANTODAYA believes that its vision can be realised through group action, which leads to:
The emergence of strong village level organisations.
Critical analysis of situations.
Having access to development opportunities where they exist and asserting for it where they do not.
Encouraging marginalized sections of society to be greater involved in a development process that is sustainable, socially acceptable, economically viable and technically feasible.
Collaboration and the building of partnerships with like-minded institutions, groups and individuals.
Goal/AIM:
To ensure food security for the most vulnerable tribal groups by consolidating their livelihood options in the area through organized actions.
To ensure people-participation for sustainable development.

During the 23 years of existence ANTODAYA has been working with the community getting support from reputed in country donors including NABARD(National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development-India), Government of Odisha and its OTELP project, Ministry of Labour –Govt. of India, UNDP, Department of Justice –Govt. of India, as well as overseas donors like Oxfam (I) Trust, Action Aid, Cord Aid-Netherlands, IGSSS, DFID & Save the Children to address the needs and the issues of the target community

$33,000

$60,000

http://www.antodaya-kalahandi.org.in

For the funding from overseas donors ANTODAYA has the designated bank account at Bank of India - Bhawanipatna Branch and the detail about the bank account is as follows: Account Holder: ANTODAYA Thuamul Rampur Account Number: 514110100002780 Customer ID: 015329613 Bank Name: BANK OF INDIA Bank Branch: Bhawanipatna Branch IFSC Code of the Branch: BKID0005141 MICR Code of the Branch: 766013002 BANK BRANCH ADDRESS Bank of India Bhawanipatna Branch Jagannath Temple Road PO: BHAWANIPATNA Kalahandi District Odisha India PIN Code: 766001