Let this column not be taken as a sponsored one by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). Having been keenly watchful of hundreds of events, the inference drawn is that any other political outfit could not have done any better in 23 years of stable administration. The BJD Government has done numerous things for the people that deserve praise. These are roads and electricity to all villages, jobs for the rural folks and big investments by national and global corporate giants to set up shops to employ many. On the flip side, quite a few political rogues have occupied centre-stage, those that cannot define poverty or development or wouldn’t know indices of any kind of human development. Most of these guys are plain lumps of flesh gifted with loud mouths only. The selection of Pramila Mallick as Speaker seems to have not gone well with people as she had been entangled in some ‘dal scam' in the past with a brother having pulled unethical strings to make easy money. The Balbantray fellow is also a public irritant for his role in minerals exploitation.
There are also some bureaucrats who have been occupying critical seats for more than seven to eight years. Many District Magistrates are not shifted at all, which is construed by people as matters of vested interests which though are not necessarily so or proven as yet. All the same, people are putting two and two together. Officers glued to seats for long be shifted immediately as the issue of transparency has been diluted. The bureaucratic machinery has been purposefully empowered by the restless, impatient Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to keep nearly the whole political gang at bay. Bureaucrats have been instructed to keep the so-called people’s representatives under control, away from Naveen's glare as he has persuaded himself to believe that except a miniscule number, the rest of the political community is a bunch of thugs or pinheads.
Truth is that a scheme like the Biju Swasthy Yojana is proving to be a boon. But unfortunately it is meant only for the branded poor, not all categories of the demographic spread. Most significantly, quite a few important cities, townships, suburban locations, hitherto rated abysmally low for being garbage yards, have been transformed into posh places attracting huge crowds from all over including overseas. Places of worship of all faiths equally have had facelifts through grand beautification measures, which have pleased all. Puri, the temple town on sea, is now comparable with any such global counterpart with terrific tourism potential. The capital city Bhubaneswar has been declared one of the smartest cities of India though the inner lanes and by-lanes are still in primitive state without good roads and other smart facilities.
Just to substantiate claim of BJD having done really well, one can take the example of the transformation of the filthy sewer-grade Taladanda Canal of Cuttack now transformed into a heavenly waterway finer than the river Thames of the UK capital London.
The BJD Government has done countless things for the people which is good enough reason for envy expressed by the outwardly-advanced States like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat, where only short-lived populist schemes come and go.
The BJD government, not wholly free of blemishes though, would score over all governments that have ruled Odisha ever since Independence. The Janaki Ballav Patnaik administration was a make-believe stable government with manipulations being at the highest level as much as corruption. Thugs intruded into the machinery which JB Patnaik let go by looking to the other side to keep government from falling. As already made clear severally in earlier articles, a family of a relative of Patnaik amassed immeasurable wealth by grabbing precious mines for songs and abusing connections to even grab land of other less powerful people by crude intimidation methods.
Lastly, the Congress party in Odisha is still an abstract idea only. The noisy BJP in the State is no better. The BJP front-liners seem to have been instructed to keep the battle lamp burning only to remain live in the minds of the masses. Though the BJD for some small reasons has lost popularity insignificantly in some pockets of the State, it is still way ahead of all other competing political outfits that have neither the number nor the face to project any creature as Chief Minister.
What the BJD has done in 23 years with its share of tiny blunders, no other parties have ever achieved nor are likely to achieve as long as the simple, reticent, no-nonsense go-getter Naveen Patnaik is fit and kicking.
