Opposition parties crying wolf all the time
Nowhere an incumbent gives his challenger an equal opportunity. It is for the challenger to defeat the incumbent by dint of his valour, strategy and hard work. Why should Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik oblige the opposition parties by deferring his welfare schemes until after the civic polls are overIJ The willies the two main opposition parties are getting are down to their own pathetic condition. The Congress, in particular, smells a rat in everything. Its frustration is understandable because its immediate future seems to be darker than its recent past.
With the party’s crown prince vanishing into ether without a trace, the party’s State leaders are just drifting along rudderless. The grizzled leaders of the traditionally fissiparous party don’t appear to have much confidence in the leadership of the newly-appointed president. For his part, Prasad Harichandan has the unenviable task of mobilising a bunch of greybeards whose sell-by dates are long over. Young leaders are leaving the party in droves. Following an innocuous egg-throwing incident in February, sixteen student leaders of the party are still incarcerated without the top leaders doing anything about their release.
The party is struggling hard to rediscover its mojo of yesteryears. Harichandan may be getting comfort from the fact that the hour before the dawn is the darkest and his party is in that darkest hour. The BJP, on the other hand, is in a tearing hurry to cover a lot of ground it has lost in the recent past. But it continues to be a top-heavy party with little grass-root penetration. The Bhubaneswar-based leaders are adept at holding Press conferences, participating in TV debates, sitting in 10 to 5 dharnas and marching to the Governor’s office to hand over memoranda. Their weakness is the albatross of unacceptability hung around their neck before the rural people.
The recent success in enlarging its membership is due to what its political rivals derisively say as the missed-call party’s impersonation of a mass-based party. On the other hand, the BJD is widely seen as spreading its net far and wide through a flotilla of scattershot low-value welfare schemes for the poor. like a red rag to a bull, they provoke the two opposition parties to react very aggressively. But, as they say, if you cry wolf too many times, large chunks of your credibility will go down the drain. All over the world, ruling parties enjoy a head start over their political rivals. Prasad Harichandan and Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo may not like it, but that is the way the cookie crumbles.
In law enforcement, BMC is poor country cousin to BDA
The Government’s decision to transfer the task of demolishing unauthorised constructions from the BDA to the BMC shoots its objective of keeping the capital city clean and beautiful in the foot. After years of shilly-shallying, the BDA had finally taken its job seriously. A beginning had been made by them in assembling the infrastructure to take on the violators and action against them had indeed started recently. At such a time, transferring the job to the BMC negates all that has been done so far by the BDA to rid the city of the transgressors. The BDA is an apolitical body, not much susceptible to political interference. It is headed by a senior bureaucrat chosen by the Government.
He is not at the beck and call of the meddlesome politicos. He can take hard decisions with authority derived from set rules and regulations. The BMC, on the other hand, is a democratically elected body sharply divided on party lines. Its decisions are based on party political considerations. Its very composition hampers it from having the stubbornness that is required to clear out the illegal constructions.
The weaknesses in the BMC’s constitution are aggravated by the present Mayor’s irresolute character. He can’t decide whether to cross a road much less take stern action against illegal constructions. His dismal record in collecting holding tax from thousands of evaders is just one small example of this ineffective geezer’s inglorious period in office. He is nobody’s idea of a good Mayor. His administrative incompetence and widespread failure in all aspects of the corporation’s functioning are all too evident. His record in the city’s uglification will remain unbeatable. To expect such a wishy-washy numpty to take stern action against unauthorised constructions is like asking for the moon.
Police Commissioner’s fatwa to landlords: A Gestapo in the makingIJ
Police Commissioner RP Sharma has issued an order that all landlords in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack must furnish detailed particulars of their tenants to the concerned police stations or face a jail term of six months and fine of Rs 1,000. This order has been issued with the lofty objective of making the twin cities crime-free. We don’t have an idea about the number of landlords in the two cities, but a figure of plus-minus two lakh would be a safe guess.
What will the Commissioner do if they fill up the forms and send them to the police stationsIJ In this connection, I remember having read in the papers recently about the Commissionerate police bewailing lack of funds to send notices by post to 6,000 traffic violators detected by CCTVs installed at the AG Square alone. A request by them for sanction of five lakh rupees is pending with the Government. On top of the funds crunch, manpower shortage is our Commissioner’s constant grouse.
Does he have the necessary money and manpower to cope with the huge work load his new order will createIJ He may not have the cupboards to store them much less the resources to act on the information provided. Nobody quarrels with the idea, but let the Commissionerate not degenerate into Himmler’s Gestapo. With the kind of information in police hand, it may be recipe for hideous misuse.
Was deceit ever more grotesqueIJ
Before the Central PSUs dumped the scheme, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s idea of helping the poor through his Aahar scheme was pure Bollywood. like a latter-day Robin Hood he thought he could tap into the deep pockets of MCl, RSP and Nalco for funding 75% of the cost of the cheap meals. Patnaik was smart enough to think that the large Central PSUs would bear the hefty subsidy burden while he would be reaping the political dividends entirely by himself.
When top BJP leaders of the State saw through his self-serving game plan, they pulled the rug from under him. The BJD’s think-tankers were left high and dry when their plans to plunder others’ resources to promote their political fortunes went terribly awry. As for the party’s lachrymose leaders who can’t stop welling up over the Centre’s heartless denial of succour to the famished poor, the less said about their high-falutin wail the better. They have no platform other than the fable they constantly spin over the Centre’s unfair treatment of the State.
They would be better off if they take their blinkers off and look around at what is happening in other States. Jayalalithaa, the pioneer of the cheap meal scheme, made the cash-rich municipalities and corporations in her State bear the burden of subsidy in running the scheme, Tamil Nadu and other States are proud enough to operate the cheap meal scheme from their internal resources rather rattle a tin can for funds.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)