ABANDON VICTIM MENTAlITY AND DElIVER, MR DAS
With a face more deadpan than usual, BJD Chief Whip Ananta Das said last week that the all-party Assembly Committee failed to get appointment to meet either the Prime Minister or the Railway Minister to hand over to them a memorandum demanding more funds for improvement of the State’s rail infrastructure. With the pungent smell of grievance-mongering, cleverly cloaked under a sense of hurt, he said the memorandum was prepared but non-availability of appointment prevented the Committee from going to Delhi. leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra immediately disputed Das’ claim that the memorandum was prepared, saying, had it been so, he would have certainly come to know about it. In any case, why was the memorandum not submitted through postal services if the appointments were not available, he asked. BJP State President KV Singh Deo said our Resident Commissioners in Delhi could have met the authorities to hand over the memorandum on behalf of the Assembly Committee. Whatever may be the party political points our leaders make at the drop of a hat, a cross-party demand, unfortunately, couldn’t be placed before the right authorities at the right time. When everybody knew that the Prime Minister and his entire Council of Ministers would remain extremely busy for the US President Barak Obama’s three-day visit to the country in the last week of January and that would be followed by an intense campaign for Delhi’s Assembly elections, expecting anyone of them to meet the members of our Assembly Committee was really like asking for the moon. In any case, why was the memorandum prepared so late, if at all it was preparedIJ Preparations for the Railway Budget start nearly three to four months before it is presented in the Parliament in the last week of February every year. It is too late for any Railway Minister to accommodate demands of a State if they are made as late as in February. As the voluminous Budget document gets ready to be printed, it is preposterous to expect that the Minister will treat our demands as a ‘stop press’ item meriting last-minute inclusion. The dead-eyed Chief Whip really wanted to stir up a new pot of grievance against the Centre. It doesn’t require much decoding to figure out that he intended to add the no-appointment episode to his party’s bitty list of grouses against the Centre. But it is high time he abandoned the victim mentality and got real. Nursing a made-up grievance is a sham and self-serving line of argument which, if swallowed, is harmful for the State’s self-respect, the cornerstone of the BJD’s founding philosophy. Das should stop playing his party’s anthem of Central neglect so brazenly and so phonily.
WUNDERKIND DASBURMA IS BITING MORE THAN HE CAN CHEW
The extravagantly monikered Employment and Technical Education and Training (ETET) Department, a specially-created outfit with the mission of ‘improving employability of youths’ is, by no stretch of imagination, a great, or even a noticeable, office of the State. When such a department, either on its own or on behalf of the more appropriate Revenue Department, sends notices to as many as 25 private engineering and management colleges about their grave violation of laws relating to conversion of land and the more serious offence of trespassing on Government land, college authorities are more likely to mark those notices with the stamp “to whomsoever it may concern” and go about their business as usual. Why the Revenue Department which has the necessary legal powers and the administrative machinery to enforce the land laws against the errant institutions didn’t come to the frontline of the battle is really a mystery. The ETET boss, the wunderkind Minister Sanjay Kumar Dasburma, has probably not heard of the adage “fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. Otherwise, his department would not have embarked on the impossible mission of setting right land law violations with such gung-ho enthusiasm. The Revenue Department, far wiser in land matters, knows the real difficulty in navigating the minefields in those areas. As these institutions are built, owned and operated by entrenched political powers, influence peddlers and deep-pocketed moneybags, sending unarmed soldiers to the battlefield can only be seen as yet another manifestation of the Naveen Patnaik Government’s policy of ‘willing to strike but afraid to wound’. Why is Dasburma sticking his neck outIJ Is he so underworkedIJ The nearest equivalent to this situation is a college principal sending notice to his student to explain acts of serious criminal offence instead of asking the police to arrest him straightaway. The swashbuckling Minister has certainly bitten more than he can chew. I can’t understand why Dasburma is so naive as to serve as cannon fodder in an unequal war being fought in an unknown territory.
HOW POlICE are DEPlOYED is MORE IMPORTANT THAN HOW MANY ARE EMPlOYED
Police Commissioner RP Sharma said last week that the recent spurt in the city crimes is due to unfilled vacancies in his force. But the seasoned Commissioner should know, better than anyone else, that what matters is how his forces are deployed, not how many more are employed. It is always possible to do more with less. Shortage will be there as long as it is relative. The Commissioner is playing the manpower shortage card as deftly as a card-sharp plies his trade. If he remains fixated on helmet checking, complaints about his competence will be a thing of the future. His tireless dedication to stamp out the last helmetless biker from the city streets is truly a wonder to behold. Turning the helmet-checking squads into revenue-generation centres is an innovation Dr Sharma has probably taken a patent on. If his forces are running from one crime to another like fire tenders rushing from one fire to another, how can he afford to waste his manpower in keeping vigil on this softest of all offencesIJ Misplaced priority in deployment gives the impression that the Commissionerate police are probably overstaffed. Serious crimes happening at frequent intervals have put the confidence of the townspeople in the leadership of the Commissionerate police on the line. The high-visibility, constable-on-the-beat system has been given a burial. Now that CCTV cameras are in place at many intersections of the city, will the Commissioner redeploy his helmet-checking Johnnies to do the more critical job of crime prevention and controlIJ
ARE WE ABOUT TO SEE THE ASSEMBlY’S FIRST SESSION REDUXIJ
The first day’s events in the Assembly have put paid to our hopes that the Budget Session will function orderly and be different from the anarchy of the last session. Viewers felt déjà vu as disorder and walkout happened right in front of them. leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra started speaking parallel to the Governor’s address and, after some time, walked out of the House along with other members of his party and of the BJP. His headlong rush to start uncertainty in the House functioning is feared to augur revival of the chaotic first session. It looks as if a camel can more easily pass through the eye of a needle than our Treasury and the Opposition parties reach a modus vivendi on how to run the House peacefully and orderly.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)