World leaders gathered in New York last week (September 20-22) to discuss progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, the ambitious targets set in 2000 for reducing poverty. Just days earlier and 8000 miles away, another group of politicians, academics and development workers met in Bhubaneswar, the state capital of Orissa, to talk specifically about the chances of achieving the MDGs in one of India’s poorest states.

I arrived at the summit just in time to hear the opening address by the state governor, MC Bhandare. He gave the proceedings a sense of cultural context by quoting Mayadhar Mansingh, a renowned Oriya poet: “Orissa is the most beautiful and scenic place in the world. Minerally it is the richest, culturally richest, scenically richest but economically poorest. How could such a beauteous nation be so cursed?”

“Orissa is the most beautiful and scenic place in the world. Minerally it is the richest, culturally richest, scenically richest but economically poorest. How could such a beauteous nation be so cursed?”

With his challenge to answer that question, and to find a solution, hanging over us, we divided up into smaller groups to discuss progress towards the Goals, and where there was still more work to be done, just as was done later on a global scale in New York. Looking back now, it’s interesting to compare the overview that world leaders saw with the specifics here in Orissa.

The region suffers from many of the problems crystallized in the MDGs, but it has unique priorities all of its own. For example, while HIV is a major issue in many parts of the world, here the rate is still thankfully relatively low, but malaria and cholera remain big killers. That is where medical resources need to be directed.

Similarly, while many areas in the world are struggling with massively inflating urban populations, in Orissa the people in most need are still to be found in the rural areas, particularly scheduled caste and tribal populations. ‘Scheduled’ caste and ‘tribal’ people are recognised by the Constitution of India as being the most neglected and marginalised in the country, and their population in Orissa is much larger than in other Indian regions.

Development indicators are significantly lower for these groups across the board: for example, the literacy rate for Orissa is 54%, but for tribal people that falls to 37%, and just 23% for females. Similarly, while the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 47.15% in 1997 to 39.90% in 2005, the percentage of tribal people living below the poverty line exceeds 78% in some areas.

The summit may not have been able to answer Mansingh’s lament for his cursed nation, and only the most optimistic think that the Goals will be met by 2015, but for the delegates that is no reason to stop fighting. One of the key lessons is that world leaders making the headline-grabbing decisions must be attuned to local contexts and realities on the ground.

Speaking to Shairose Mawji, the Chief of UNICEF’s field office in Orissa, at the end of the summit, she told me that even within the state they need to vary their approach widely between cities like Bhubaneswar and the rural areas in the south of the state. However, she made it clear to me that she’s undaunted by this challenge. “Now is the time to act, for all of us. Focusing on the poorest, the most marginalised, is the way forward,” she said. “The answers are known, the key interventions are known, but we need to continue to take action.”

Words and photo: Kevin E.G. Perry