Baijayant Panda takes great pride in being called ‘Jay’ for the expression looks anglicised and fanciful. He has ensured all his political friends in Delhi address him ‘Jay’. It’s also a fact that Jay is smart and suave and fairly articulate. His late industrialist father Bansidhar Panda, who rose from rags to riches with both skill and luck, was helped by legendary Biju Patnaik during the former’s toughest struggling period. Bansidhar remained a hardcore businessman and enjoyed huge political patronage. Bijubabu trusted him.
When politics and philanthropy turned Bijubabu pauper, Bansidhar offered to buy over his historic Kalinga Tubes at Choudwar, the little industrial township that visionary Bijubabu had literally developed into a ‘Manchester’ of India. By the late 1950s, Choudwar had several industrial units.
The Jindals of today too made their big money from trading in steel tubes t he Kalinga Tubes manufactured. Elderly people say the patriarch of the Jindal family OP Jindal would keep waiting for days on end to lift his quota after paying up in full. So was the demand for Kalinga tubes as a monopoly item those days.
In the late 1960s, Bansidhar Panda came up with his ferrosilicon and silicon metal plant in Raygada. Before the ordinary people of India could even know an entity by the name ‘IMFA’ existed, Bansidhar had become a millionaire. The demand for his products was huge.
He was one of the very few who made silicon metal in the world. Bansidhar, a technology expert, was also a very clever businessman. He even got his power tariff reduced to virtual zero by persuading the authorities to agree to the huge benefit in the name of promoting industrialisation.
By the time Baijayant grew up into his teens, he was the son of a very rich man. Unlike Biju Patnaik, the Pandas are not known for big charity and magnanimous generosity. Bijubabu loved and supported the senior Panda beyond limits and stood by whatever he proposed or came up with. In good time, Baijayant took over the reins after studying somewhere in the USA.By the mid-1970s, Bijubabu had become the most-adored Odia statesman, particularly after the Emergency period ended in 1977. Though poised to win continuously until he lived, his extreme sense of secularism cost him dear in electoral battles in the mid-1990s. So, except once in 1990, Bijubabu couldn’t capture Odisha ever again. When he was Chief Minister in the early 1960s, the senior Panda took maximum advantage from him to become an entrepreneur of repute.
Much later in the early 1990s, the Panda family took best advantage again by grabbing Rajya Sabha member seats. The Pandas, having benefitted earlier by the Congress leaders, shifted loyalty and joined Bijubabu’s brigade when the legend was back in power.
Bijubabu sold his flagship Kalinga Tubes to the IMFA group en bloc, plant machinery and the entire landed property which is a big township by all standards with fabulous houses, bungalows, guesthouses, schools, club facilities, movie theatres, parks and more.
No one knows for what price the senior Panda struck the deal, but given Bijubabu’s whimsical nature, people say it was given away for a song by today’s market value. The Pandas set up a huge chargechrome plant on the land. Naveen Patnaik emerged as boss in the late 1990s after Bijubabu’s death in 1997. The Pandas kept the no-nonsense Naveen very happy by constantly citing ancient family relationship, which was not wrong. Naveen too gave in return for loyalty everything the Pandas needed for self aggrandisement. Their OTV was given unconditional support to flourish.
Naveen has his own style of choosing people to support him. Rightly, he chose a highly-skilled, honest, hardworking bureaucrat, rather than a politician, to assist and guide him on all critical matters.
Baijayant was dismissive about this imagining that elected politicians are much bigger in stature and they be treated with greater respect by belittling bureaucrats.
Baijayant, despite having been exposed to the wider world, had failed to recognise that the rulers in the developed countries like the US, the UK, France and Germany trust bureaucrats more than the politicians who are less skilled in statecraft and hardly versed with the rulebook.
Apparently provoked by some political crooks, Baijayant virtually challenged Naveen for his choice of advisor eventually to be axed one day. Baijayant incidentally had been exposed as an MP who served his business concern more than the State.
He even diverted rail projects to benefit his company rather than the poor people of Odisha stranded due to lack of rail communication.
He joined the BJP he fought all his life and lost to an ordinary Odia actor which proved he had no charisma of his own. He could not figure out once that the Naveen magic alone ensures victory to the politicians no matter what stature the candidate has attained.
‘Jay’ apparently imagined his leading media outfit OTV would carry him along and have all adversaries finished. But his wealth and media house eventually failed to keep him hauled up. Some reporters of his channel have just landed in big legal trouble for spreading false, filthy videos about a young woman MP. ‘Jay’ made wild allegations against the move to be grilled ferociously by the public.
In a fit of uncontrolled rage, he compared the Odisha and Maharashtra police to that of Pakistan’s thereby infuriating the people of India. People from all quarters and domains are grilling him for his ‘Pakistan in India’ remark. Ordinary folks and intellectuals from across the country say ‘Jay’ better migrate to Pakistan to lead a happy life there.
Only recently, ‘Jay’ had allegedly incited one reporter called Abhijit Mazumdar to make derogatory remarks about the Odia community. The fool was nabbed and put in jail. But ‘Jay’ disowned him then. The poor reporter rotted in prison without help.
