HARICHANDAN HAS A MOUNTAIN TO ClIMB
After what looked like an eternity of dither, the Congress high command has finally appointed Prasad Harichandan as president of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee. The job of Harichandan’s life begins now. He will be heading the party at a time when it is completely torn asunder by internecine rivalry. The job will certainly be a minefield for the cherubic-faced Harichandan. Holding together the fissiparous leaders of his party is an uphill task. All his predecessors in the recent past have perished trying to accomplish the impossible task. Harichandan will be lumbered with leaders with outsize egos and tremendous capacity to mess up his plans to rebuild the party. The ABC of a successful party is unity and selfless dedication of its leaders and members. But nobody in the Congress party is able to read the script properly. How the 50-year-old Harichandan will get the cooperation of the old fossils in the party is anybody’s guess. The Patnaik Parivar, the Jena duo, the Biswal brothers and the assorted snipers and moaners will go at him at frequent intervals. The old fuddy-duddies will be dismissive of any initiative he takes to forge unity. At every step of the way, he will get self-serving advice from the grizzled veterans. All the presidents before him have clucked loudly against disunity without actually laying the golden egg of unity. In particular, Niranjan Patnaik and his more incompetent successor JayadevJena have together left the party dead in the water. But Harichandan is a thought leader and he has the intellectual acuity to comprehend what the stricken party needs for its revival. For the time being, two cheers for Harichandan seem to be in order.
NAVEEN PATNAIK’S AUSACIOUS MOVE
Even the most gnarled critic of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will marvel at the boldness of his action in cancelling all lands, houses and flats allotted by BDA, CDA and Housing Board under the discretionary quota. His decision to unleash the Vigilance sleuths after those who have taken property by filing false affidavits or by giving misleading information has surprised everyone in the opposition parties. His image as a ruthless slayer of dishonest practices is glowing at the moment. Whatever the leaders of the Congress and the BJP may say about the real motives behind his bold decisions, Patnaik is unquestionably seen in the public as an uncompromising leader singlehandedly fighting against the corrupt and the crooked. Cynics may say that it is an image makeover exercise by Patnaik when the CBI and the Supreme Court are fast zeroing in on him. Again, he will be no more successful in getting back the properties than he was in recovering fine of Rs 58,000 crore from the miners for excess mining. Patnaik’s critics say he is clever enough to know that the Government’s cancellation order will certainly be challenged in the courts and the cases will drag on for eternity. But, at the moment, people hail Patnaik’s bravery in going after the high and mighty for their blatant land loot. Whatever may be the outcome, Patnaik has certainly burnished his image as a resolute fighter against the corner-cutting buccaneers.
lEGISlATIVE COUNCIl: A HUGElY EXPENSIVE WHITE ElEPHANT
Newspaper reports say that the Government is actively considering a proposal to establish a legislative Council in the State. If true, there can’t be a more retrograde step taken by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik during his entire period in office. He himself has an unequal track record of showing utter distaste for the legislative proceedings. From the way he seldom attends the Assembly to curtailing the number of days it must sit in a year, it is a mystery how he has developed a fascination for a legislative Council. Patnaik-watchers say he has other motives for having the Council than his love for democratic debate and discussion. Accommodating his party men, who have no cosy sinecures at present, is uppermost in his mind. The Council, as an unelected and unaccountable body, is the right place to park the ruling party’s cronies. But the point is can the poorest State of the country afford the luxury of an expensive, superfluous and largely impotent CouncilIJ Only seven out of 29 States of the country have the upper house and nobody knows what its members are really doing. Has our State reached that level of prosperity that it can splurge whacking sums of money on a wholly unnecessary legislative CouncilIJ It will not make a scrap of difference to our lawmaking process. It makes absolutely no sense to revive this relic of a bygone era. To accommodate a large number of favourites at a tremendous cost to the taxpaying public is the height of madness. If this is the level of Patnaik’s thinking, I guess he badly needs professional help.
CM’S lETTER-WRITING HOBBY
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s ‘skill with the quill’ is often talked about in the public with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour. Whenever the State has a problem, he writes a letter to the Centre, mutters some abracadabra and hopes it succeeds. That is the only thing he can do because he lacks none of his father’s dynamic intensity. Nobody in distant Delhi can hear him bewail from the eastern extremity of the country. Nor could he make the mainstream media interested in the State’s problems. So, he writes a letter and hopes it works. What planet is Patnaik living onIJ He can write letters in his ten lifetimes, but nobody will give a damn to them. That is not the way things work in a federal polity. look at the way how Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu continuously badgers the Union Ministers in person for funds and facilities for his State. Does Patnaik need a bomb under his chair to act boldlyIJ By writing letters he pretends to be working for the State’s interests and the Centre also pretends to be helping the State. His letter-writing exercise serves no other purpose than justify his party’s manifesto slogan of Central neglect. Patnaik can no more fulfil his objectives this way than turn base metal to gold. The leader of a regional party has to be demanding, assertive and forceful which Patnaik is self-evidently not. No wonder, the State has remained stuck at the lowest rung of the development ladder and there is no foreseeable end to our gloom as long as the quill-wielder remains in office.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com.
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