— ✍️ Dr. Madhusudan Nag & Shakuntala Ghadai
On August 28, western Odisha celebrated Nuakhai, the harvest festival of new grain. Families cooked the season’s first rice, offered it to the deity, and shared it with neighbours on kurei leaves. Across villages, people exchanged Nuakhai Juhar. Migrants returned home, and communities felt whole again—if only for a short while.
As Kerala observes Onam this week—with ten days of school holidays and three days for offices—the contrast is stark. In Kerala, a festival is a season of governance. In Odisha, Nuakhai was reduced to a scheduling fix.
Nuakhai is a two-day festival: the first day for preparing and sharing the new harvest; the second—Basi Nuakhai—for extended visits and community greetings. Yet the state did not declare two consecutive public holidays. Instead, an extra day was offset by converting a September Saturday into a working day.
For many, this meant little. Students in Bhubaneswar and other towns could not travel because exams and training sessions were scheduled around the festival. Migrant families faced similar constraints. The one time they longed to be home, the system made it harder.
This official indifference is not new. For decades, the state has projected Puri’s Jagannath as the emblem of sāḍe chāri crore (about 4.5 crore) Odias. Politicians invoke the phrase to build a singular identity around one deity. Rath Yatra gets state patronage. Jagannath temples are built with government support. The cult is promoted as pan-Odia, “the god of all Odias.”
But this push has a cost. Western Odisha’s traditions are sidelined. Nuakhai—central to agrarian and tribal life—remains under-recognised. This year’s holiday arrangement only reinforced what many in western Odisha already feel: that their culture counts for less.
The neglect is not only cultural. Nuakhai is also a missed opportunity for governance. It is the rare moment when migrant workers come home from brick kilns, construction sites, and textile mills across India. Villages fill with people. Families reunite. Communities are at their most cohesive.
This is when the state could act. Nuakhai is a policy window—a chance to:
Register migrant households for welfare schemes;
Update ration cards, pensions, and insurance in one sweep;
Enrol youth in skills programmes or issue MGNREGA job cards.
But Odisha has done little. Year after year, the government lets the moment pass. Nuakhai remains ritual, not rights.
Meanwhile, in Kerala, Onam has become governance itself. Successive governments, regardless of party, use Onam as a season to deliver welfare and dignity.
Government employees receive festival bonuses and pension advances;
Families get Onam kits—rice, pulses, oil, spices—through the PDS;
Kudumbashree runs a “One Lakh Jobs by Onam” campaign linking women’s groups to work and training.
Onam comes with ten days of school holidays and three days for offices. This allows people to travel, celebrate, and access state benefits. In Kerala, Onam is not only about culture. It is about justice, dignity, and redistribution.
Odisha, by contrast, has reduced Nuakhai to a calendar adjustment.
The state could have chosen a different path. Even with limited resources, a Nuakhai stipend of ₹500–₹1,000 for returning migrants would have honoured their contribution and helped register them in welfare systems.
A Nuakhai Skills Fair at block headquarters could have brought banks, government desks, and job schemes together. A Nuakhai Mela of crafts and organic produce could have supported local livelihoods. Most importantly, Nuakhai week could have been used to conduct welfare audits—updating ration cards, linking health insurance, and renewing pensions while migrants were at home.
But Odisha’s government has failed to see this. Instead, Nuakhai remains invisible in its policy imagination.
Why does this neglect continue? The answer lies in cultural hierarchy. The coastal traditions of Jagannath have been elevated as the defining face of Odisha. Western Odisha’s agrarian-tribal culture has been left at the margins.
Politically, this matters. Under Chief Minister Mohan Majhi, the BJP wants to consolidate power across the state. But treating Nuakhai as a token holiday sends the same old message: that western Odisha’s identity is secondary.
Nuakhai is more than a harvest festival. It is an annual stitching together of community life: migrants return, families gather, and the rural fabric renews itself. For the state, it is the perfect time to extend rights and welfare.
Kerala has shown how festivals can be used as governance platforms. Odisha, by ignoring Nuakhai, shows how cultural bias and administrative inertia waste that chance.
If Odisha wants to honour all its people—not just in rhetoric but in action—it must treat Nuakhai not as a token but as a policy window: a moment of dignity, recognition, and hope.
Only then will the first grain offered to the deity represent not just harvest, but justice.
About the Authors:
- Dr. Madhusudan Nag is a Senior Researcher at MANIT Bhopal and holds a PhD in Economics from the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala.
-Shakuntala Ghadai is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala. Her research explores gender, migration, and rural livelihoods in eastern India.
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