Govt playing fast and loose with investors
Even as the State was reeling under the shock of Posco’s announcement last month that it was freezing its project, Vedanta declared last week that it would soon shut down its lanjigarh refinery plant. The problems of Posco and Vedanta are the same: non-availability of raw materials. Naveen Patnaik’s Government had promised both the companies through MoUs that it would give them the required raw materials for their industries. But it didn’t keep its promise. In Posco’s case, the Government was a double-crossing weasel. It recommended allotment of the Khandahar iron ore mines to it but, at the same time, supported the passing of the MMDR Bill in Parliament which mandates that all mines have to be auctioned. Patnaik was even publicly praised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his support in passing the Bill. When the Modi Government was desperately seeking BJD support for the Bill in the Rajya Sabha where it is in minority, Patnaik never bargained with it to make an exception for Posco on the ground, among other things, that it had already recommended its case before the Bill was introduced in Parliament. That was a fatal mistake on his part. Now, he is lobbying hard to grandfather Posco from the MMDR Act. It is like a man killing his father and then pleading for exemption from punishment on the ground that he is now an orphan. Even a crocodile would find his tears for Posco far more pretentious. As for Vedanta, his dolorous incapacity to provide bauxite from an alternative source has forced a running plant to finally close down after a prolonged period of fitful operation. The Patnaik Government’s perfidious U-turns on MoU promises make it guilty as hell. Companies like Jindals, Tatas, Essars and a host of others are having serious raw material problems which the Government is unable to solve. The proper word for our Government not keeping its promises is betrayal. Who on earth will do business with a serial betrayerIJ Honour and commitment mean nothing for Patnaik’s Government. It is tumbling down headlong into the moral sewer. The horrid truth is Patnaik now regards the MoUs, signed in his salad days, as his misguided detour into industrialisation of the State. That is why he is deliberately Delphic and noncommittal in his assurances to the investors. The entire decision-making machinery has seized up for this reason. Repeatedly elected to power via Hobson’s choice at the ballot box, Patnaik is viscerally convinced that keeping the people permanently poor is politically rewarding and moral too.
Bankers’ committee meetings:Talking shop of hearing-impaired
The 140th meeting of the State level Bankers’ Committee (SlBC), a forum of bankers and Government officials to sort out their problems, held last week went the way all the previous 139 meetings had gone before. The Government side, usually headed by the Finance Minister or the Chief Secretary, routinely wails that the banks take more deposits from the State than they give loans here for economic development of the people. This puts the banks in an indefensible position of taking our money for giving loans in other States. The bankers, no slouch in counter attack, point out that recovery of loans in the State is so bad (as if it is any better elsewhere) that giving more loans will be risky unless the Government helps them in their recovery effort. It is here that the Government pretends that it has not heard what the bankers have said or mouths some platitudes that amount to nothing. Both sides skirt the real issues that hamper enhanced flow of credit to the State. The entire meeting looks as if it is a talking shop of the hearing-impaired. An SlBC meeting is supposed to find solutions to the problems facing the banks and the Government. But no worthwhile outcome comes out of it. It ends with each side requesting the other to show better results next time. The SlBC rigmarole has been going on for the last almost four decades without any impact on the State’s economy. Sometimes, depending on who leads the respective sides, sparks fly over their high expectations from the other. Generally, however, the meetings are no better than time-passers for both. The expectation that the SlBC will harmonise opposing interests for economic growth of the State is pure hogwash. But there is one redeeming feature. When Finance Ministers like Prafulla Ghadai and Pradip Amat speak at these meetings, participants invariably get cost-free cure for their sleep disorders.
Mr Sabyasachi, perception matters in public life
When the media was shrieking, Opposition parties were braying for his resignation and, most important, the public were outraged over the death of 26 babies in the first five days (add five more with each passing day) at the Sishu Bhawan in Cuttack at a distance of barely 20 kilometre from the capital, not visiting the hospital at the very outset was definitely an insensitive act on the part of the Health Minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak. It beggars belief how an otherwise perceptive Minister failed to appreciate the gravity of the tragedy daily unfolding with all its lurid details. With woeful lack of facilities at the underfunded and overstretched Sishu Bhawan contributing to the death of so many infants, the Health Minister should have been the first to be seen at the scene of tragedy. A quick visit to the hospital would have shown him as a concerned and caring Minister ready to tackle the situation with all the resources at his command. But he failed to gauze public anger over the tragedy. His conscience and inner judgement let him down. He didn’t consult the book of common sense. By not going to the hospital on day one of the tragedy, he displayed a crassness few knew existed in this decent Minister. In the process, he not only broke the heart of the bereaved parents but also of the people as a whole. The Government was widely perceived to be apathetic and even cruel. It would have been far better, and braver, on his part to dash down to Cuttack, mere half an hour away, to be alongside the loved ones of the dead children. Had he stood by their side and shared their pain, he would have been seen as a man of conscience and compassion. Quite why he didn’t do that is really bafflingIJ The next time the Minister displays such utter insensitivity, the perception of this Government as heartless and uncaring will move definitely one step closer to reality.
Wrap up the idling inquiry commissions, pronto
Is not it time to ask the judicial inquiry commissions to stick to the timetable and wrap up their idling inquiriesIJ Ordinary people think that the retired judges heading these commissions view their assignments as gravy trains without any destination. The train goes on and on and on at its own languid pace. No good has ever come out of these commissions and no good will ever come in the future. But it costs the taxpayers whacking sums of money. My immediate thoughts are how many toilets can be constructed in schools out of this wasted money. The commissions routinely ask for extensions and the Government routinely grants them. The inquirers cling to their assignments like bees to a honeypot. They have a huge financial interest to drag out the process for as long as possible. The slow-moving gravy trains must stop, period.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)
