MALKANGIRI (ODISHA): Acknowledging the achievements made by Malkangiri district administration in various key fields, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, the Centre's policy think tank has put the tribal dominated Malkangiri district at No-1 rank in Odisha for making most number of improvements amongst all aspirational districts from Odisha, District administration sources here said.
Centre had selected eight districts namely Rayagada, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Gajapati, Dhenkanal, Balangir, Koraput and Malkangiri from Odisha. Niti Aayog has launched the first Delta ranking (incremental progress) for the Aspirational Districts, based on self-reported data of districts between March 31, 2018 to May 31, 2018. The data is being measured across five developmental areas of Health and Nutrition, Education, Agriculture and Water Resources, Financial Inclusion and Skill Development, and Basic Infrastructure.
Malkangiri has shown most improvement amongst all aspirational districts from Odisha and is rank 1 in Odisha. With an improvement of delta 8.1, it is ranked 27th in India. It is worth noting that Malkangiri is amongst the top most improved districts in the field of agriculture with an all India rank 3, District Collector Manish Agarwal informed Express today.
"Focus on aspects like productivity, price realization, quality seed distribution, soil health cards and institutional support in form of crop insurance, AI, vaccination etc. has helped in improving income of farmers. Recently district administration has successfully helped farmers in getting a good price for groundnut by ensuring procurement at MSP through MARKFED," Agarwal claimed.
We are well pleased that NITI Aayog has recognized our achievements which will further encourage us to work still harder for the development of the district. The hard work of all the line departments and especially District Rural Devolvement Agency (DRDA) has generated these results, he further added.
Notably, the district administration under the leadership of the Collector Manish Agarwal and his team has successfully reached out to the people at remote, inaccessible and interior pockets of the district ensuring that all the government schemes are availed by all locals.
Earlier in April this year, the district NITI Aayog prabhari Santosh Kumar Sarangi, the Odisha cadre IAS officer who is now on central deputation visited Malkangiri and lauded the the achievements of the district administration in various sectors.
The state Government appointed Malkangiri in-charge, Vijaya Arora, the Principal Secretary Public Enterprise Department also appreciated the role of the district administration for the improvements made in the key sectors during his visit to the district this year.
According to the baseline rankings, the worst performing districts in the country are Mewat (Haryana), Asifabad (Telangana) and Singrauli (Madhya Pradesh).
The aspirational districts programme, through real-time monitoring and proactive course corrections, reinforces the mechanisms of cooperative and competitive federalism between the Centre and the states, down to the districts, said a statement from the think tank.