For a long time, the foremost visible issue of Odisha is its dependency on other States to meet its domestic consumption demand. The State imports inland fish, meat, egg, vegetables, potato, onion , wheat, Dal, fruits, banana, sugar and edible oil, besides many more consuming products to feed its four crore plus population. The State Government has no control over the market price and quality of the produce. To minimise the import dependency, the State must improve its agriculture production and storage facility by ensuring application of modern farming.

The present image of Odisha as a consuming State must change to a producing State. The change is much needed to ensure and to raise the Nutrition level of the State. The other important issue getting more attention during Covid-19 is the plight of migrant workers.

Along with huge under EMPLOYMENT, there has been persistent increase in distress Migration of labourers to outside. Odisha remains one of major suppliers of migrant workers along with Bihar, UP, MP, Rajasthan, Assam and WB. A sizeable work force of the State, about 30 lakh vulnerable migrant workers, are working outside the State and data shows that this number has been growing in recent years. Advantageous migration as such is a boost to domestic economy through remittance but distress migration is undesirable. Covid-19 has very well exposed the vulnerability of migrant workers.

Globally, India is featured among top 10 agricultural producing countries such as China, Brazil, Russia and USA. Odisha lags behind in application of technology in comparison to other agricultural producing States. Data on Agriculture-notes-for-state-psc-exams”>Agriculture economics shows that there is very less Percentage of people engaged in agriculture in the developed countries but here the percentage is quite high.

The Census data 2011 says the number of tribal cultivators has reduced by 10 percent while the number of STs in the Population of agricultural labourer has increased in the same rate. The tribal mobility in search of opportunities to non-tribal areas has also increased.