Orissa, with its two thousand years old heritage has a glorious past. But its present is not as bright. With its poverty rates at 47%, it has become the poorest state in India according to the National survey Sample, 2007. Although nearly 36% of its land is forest while 58% is for agricultural. Nearly 4% of the country's population live here with the largest number of Scheduled Tribe (22.21%) and scheduled caste (16.20%) communities

Economically its western regions are the most backward. Unreliable rainfall, recurrent droughts, floods, and cyclones etc, besides illiteracy & ignorance, adversely affect its economy. For lack of irrigation facilities, people here depend mainly on non-timber forest produce (NTFP). However, heavy rains also adversely affected the NTFP business