GAJAPATI MAHARAJA DIBYASINGH DEV: THE ONlY lANDlORD IN A CROWD OF REAl ESTATE AGENTS
The face-off between the Shankaracharya of Puri and the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has mercifully ended with the Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingh Dev personally meeting the Shankaracharya to invite him to attend the coming Rath Yatra along with his disciples. It all happened just before the last year’s Rath Yatra. The Shankaracharya had strongly disapproved of the practice of some servitors taking devotees on the chariots to touch the deities. That enraged the servitors who used to make a killing through the practice. They were hell-bent on settling their score with the Shankaracharya. They influenced the SJTA Chief Administrator (CA) to invite only the Shankaracharya to attend the Rath Yatra and not his disciples. That departure from the centuries-old customary practice incensed the Shankaracharya, who, in protest, chose not to attend the festival at all.
The CA at that time, who should have seen the game plan of the servitors, did nothing to stop the deviation, for the first time, from the time-honoured custom and practice preserved in the history of the Rath Yatra. Also, nothing has been done by him since then to assuage the hurt feelings of the Shankaracharya. His handlers in the Government did a pretty good job of pretending that it was all a matter between the two warring parties in the pilgrim town. Almost a year passed without the Government making any amends for its stupidity. Only when the Shankaracharya publicly vented his anger a few days back did good sense dawn on the real powers behind the SJTA. They wanted the SJTA to restore dignity that is due to the Shankaracharya. But the CA still dug in his heels and didn’t go with the Gajapati Maharaja to invite the Shankaracharya to attend the Ratha Yatra.
However, the reverential courtesies extended by the Gajapati and the penitential language used by him moved the Shankaracharya and were sufficient enough to melt away the frozen relation. He definitely is an exampler of how things should be handled in fraught situations. He is an object lesson to the posturing peacocks sent out by the Government to serve as CAs of the SJTA. By inviting the Shankaracharya to attend Rath Yatra along with his disciples, the Gajapati has shown guts which the CA, in the first place, should have shown last year. But he was too much in the headlock of some self-enriching servitors to do what was right and customary. The differences between the two are like those between a chalk and cheese. The Gajapati is permanent, but the CAs are birds of passage. He is the landlord while others are like real estate agents. He is the one who has the permanent stakes. He is most distressed when anything goes amiss in the hallowed Rath Yatra. Only the mother cries for the child, not the babysitter. For him, everything relating to the Jagannath Temple is a matter of faith, not reason or argument and certainly not expediency or one-upmanship.
HOW MANY COOKS ARE TOO MANY COOKSIJ
last week we saw a number of Central Ministers and other top BJP leaders trooping into the city to megaphone Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s achievements during the year he has been in office. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday, Petroleum Minister Dharmandra Pradhan on Tuesday and Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday held Press conferences to gloat exultantly over Modi’s numerous accomplishments up and down the country and even on the world stage. Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram was banging the drum solo in western Odisha. labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya chose the week to inaugurate the local ESIC hospital to give, as it were, a concrete proof of the Modi Government’s achievements. The party’s Odisha in-charge Arun Singh also contributed his might by singing from the same hymn sheet.
But the BJP says all this is just the beginning. The punchline in the party’s advertisement “Yeh to shuruaat hai” says it all. More than 4,400 meetings have been planned over the next few days in districts, blocks and even villages where the Modi Government’s achievements and messages will be squawked to the people. The massive campaign has raised the publicity level so sky-high that even Jayalalithaa would find it difficult to attain. Is the law of Diminishing Returns no longer workingIJ Does the party’s think tank know that overdoing anything can also spoil it at timesIJ This brings to mind senior BJP leader lK Advani’s comments in April last year that Modi is a ‘brilliant events manager’. Modi was not Prime Minister then and Advani was largely seen as a lone wolf critic of the former with a political axe to grind. But from the huge bandobasts the BJP has planned to celebrate Modi’s first year in office, we guess the patriarch was probably not wide off the mark in his comments, whatever might have been his motives.
IIM SITE SElECTION: A TEXTBOOK CASE OF HOW NOT TO DO THINGS
Even after 15 years in power, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s inexperience is growing by the day. Union HRD Ministry’s five queries on the infrastructure and other facilities in and around Sambalpur, currently frontrunner for the IIM because of Patnaik’s new-found love for the city, have exposed how self-indulgently he takes decisions even on matters of compelling importance for the State. The history of site selection is a history of how his addled mind works. First, he recommended Bhubaneswar as the site because of its obvious advantages and infrastructural facilities. A Central team visited the site and concurred with the Government’s recommendation. When everybody thought it was game, set and match for Bhubaneswar, an almighty mess was created by Patnaik by his thoroughly kneejerk response to a routine letter from the HRD Ministry forwarding a memorandum submitted by a Sambalpur-based body demanding the IIM in their city.
The letter was merely forwarded for the Patnaik Government’s information and comments. But Patnaik went overboard and gushingly recommended the Sambalpur site in total reversal of his earlier recommendation to have the IIM in Bhubaneswar. Patnaik’s new recommendation has completely changed the weather. He knows that an IIM in Sambalpur which has no infrastructure of any kind will be a polio child from its birth. Yet on crooked political considerations he recommended Sambalpur site and is now energetically following it up. Since the jury is still out, other cities have also started clamouring for the IIM. The Centre is naturally confused in taking a decision and is looking at the case de novo. This means we can’t have the IIM functioning from anywhere in the State during the current year as planned earlier. It is an open-and-shut case of suicide. Patnaik has made a dreadful hash of a simple matter. In the instant case, he is the problem. How can he solve the problemIJ
THROWING PUNCHES HURTS YOUR OWN WRIST, MR HARICHANDAN
The Congress party’s plausible saviour in the State Prasad Harichandan is actually a politically unskilled greenhorn. He has difficulty in choosing issues that really resonate with the people. When the entire State is getting baked in 45 degree Celsius, is it rocket science for him to figure out what should be the issue he should be fighting forIJ Even the States’ political midgets like the Aam Admi Party and the TMC have demonstrated against the Government’s cruel power cuts and the way it is handling the crisis. But Harichandan chose to lambast the Modi Government’s much-fanfared achievements. He just could not bear the NDA Government hogging all the limelight. He instinctively jumped in to counter their ‘propaganda’. But does the common man get any satisfaction from his attack on the Modi GovernmentIJ
A few days before, he similarly assailed the BJD’s celebration of its first anniversary in power after the last elections. Harichandan is conning himself and others in his party into believing that reacting to what his political opponents are saying is all that he was chosen to do as the PCC chief. Instead of drawing up a plan of action of his own, he is constantly reacting to what his political rivals are saying or doing. His maniacal obsession with the clandestine deal between the BJD and the BJP has consumed almost all his waking hours. He viscerally believes that holding Press conferences to expose this top secret pact is the only way to increase his party’s falling mindshare. The Congress’ pitiful condition in the State is aggravated by Harichandan’s confused mind. Resignation of former Chief Minister and nine-time MP Giridhar Gamang from the party’s primary membership is a clear sign that the party is in a terminal condition despite the PCC chief’s efforts to resuscitate it.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)