Orissa - Bangalore of Manufacturing

Orissa has abundant natural resources and a large coastline.
- It contains a fifth of India's coal, a quarter of its iron ore, a third of its bauxite reserves and most of the chromite
- Rourkela Steel Plant[7] was the first integrated steel plant in the Public Sector in India
- It receives unprecedented investments in steel, aluminium, power, refineries and ports. India's topmost IT consulting firms, including Satyam Computer Services, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), MindTree Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Infosys have large branches in Orissa. IBM, Syntel, Bosch and Wipro are setting up development centers in Orissa
- So far, two of the S&P CNX 500 conglomerates have corporate offices in Orissa, for example, National Aluminium (2005 gross income Rs.51,162 million) and Tata Sponge Iron (2005 gross income Rs.2,044 million).
- Posco of South Korea which has agreed to construct a mammoth $12 billion steel plant near Paradip port, It would be the largest single investment in India's history
- Arcelor-Mittal has also announced plans to invest in another mega steel project amounting to $10 billion.
- Russian major Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Company (MMK) plans to set up a 10 MT steel plant in Orissa too.
Reliance Industries (Anil Ambani Group) is putting up the world's largest[citation needed] power plant with an investment of US $13 billion at Hirma in Jharsuguda district
Vedanta Resources’ 1.4 million tonne alumina project in Kalahandi district is the largest investment in aluminium. Vedanta has also announced a $3.2 billion dollar huge private University project on the lines of the Ivy League Universities, which is unprecedented in the history of education in India.

The Central Government has agreed to accord SEZ (Special Economic Zone) status to eight sites in Orissa, among which are Infocity at Bhubaneswar and Paradip. But all these plans are facing massive resistance from the people of the state who mainly depend on agriculture for livelihood. Some vested interests are pushing ahead projects of Mittal, Tata, Vedanta, Birlas causing many human rights violations. In the state setup industrial estate Kalinga Nagar 13 men, women and children were shot dead because they were opposed to a factory on their land. In Jagatsinpur police and armed goons attacked villagers proteseting peacefully. Crude bombs were hurled at an assembly of elderly women also. In Kashipur three tribal people were shot dead by police because they were opposing an aluminium factory on their lands. On 6th November last year 50,000 farmers joined hands to take over Hirakud dam for a day and stop diversion of water to industry.

Infrastructure development

Although Paradip is Orissa's only large port, the coastal towns of Dhamra and Gopalpur are being developed into major ports as well. The government of India has selected the coastal region of Orissa, stretching from Paradip in the north to Gopalpur in the south, to be developed as one of the five or six Special Economic Regions (SERs) of the country. The government of India and the state government of Orissa would work together to erect world class infrastructure in this region along the lines of the Rotterdam, Houston, and Pudong regions. This would stimulate further private investment in petrochemicals, steel, and manufacturing. A recent Morgan Stanley report forecasts that Orissa would be flooded with massive investments for manufacturing related activities in the same manner that Bangalore had attracted software investment in the 1990s. The scale of the investments in Orissa would, however be much higher. As of July 2006, the total planned investment in the state is a whopping $90 billion. This includes some investment in research, education, hospitals, roads, ports, airports, and hotels. There are many multi-state irrigation projects in development, including Godavari River Basin Irrigation Projects.

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