GRIEVANCE-MONGERING IS A FAIlED STRATEGY
Central neglect is a totemic issue for the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). Naveen Patnaik has made it a long-running theme of his Chief Ministership. In the 10-day Jan Sampark Padayatra, he asked his party workers to shout slogans against Central discrimination as loudly as they can. He has installed an all-pervasive culture of Central injustice. Anything the Centre does is grist to his grievance-mongering mill. In fact, he has made the State a professional grievance-monger. But beneath the surface there is a mass of his administration’s sluggishness. We too often come across news that the Central funds have returned unspent. Be it NREGS funds, health funds or the latest Swachh Bharat funds, the story is the same. Naveen Patnaik’s Government has a terrible record of not utilising Central assistance. Maybe, it is the BJD’s strategy not to use the Central funds so that they can cry endlessly against Central neglect which is the founding principle of the party. But the BJD’s old chestnut of grievance-mongering no longer fascinates the far greater range of people with a rising educated class in it. Some statute of limitation should apply and the 15-year-old record can’t be played forever. We are being derisively referred to as serial whingers on an industrial scale. Central neglect is the reddest of all red herrings and a politically motivated cover-up of the Patnaik Government’s serious failings. The new generation finds the reheated gruel distasteful and wants the BJD to be a force for development by activating the indolent bureaucracy. The present vogue of administrative listlessness is the Patnaik Government’s dieback disease. But, again, one gets the administration he deserves. If Patnaik remains phlegmatic, you can’t expect his administration to be energetic. It is actually a case of the blind leading the blind. Result: the State’s development remains stuck in neutral.
HAS CONGRESS PARTY lOST ITS WIll TO lIVEIJ
Both in power and out of it, the Congress has always been a fractious party of virtually warring tribes. Some say it is the party’s high command’s deliberate policy of keeping its ambitious leaders in check by encouraging factionalism. Here is how the party really works. If OPCC president Prasad Harichandan is to be believed, Jharsuguda MlA Naba Kishore Das was called by Rahul Gandhi to meet him in Delhi for consultations when the party was in the midst of organising a Jagaran Yatra of its workers in Angul. Das led a group of four MlAs reportedly to plead for Niranjan Patnaik’s rehabilitation, his brother Soumya Ranjan Patnaik’s re-induction to the party and, of course, his own case of getting the Chief Whip post. His visit caused a firestorm of speculation over some members’ leadership ambitions. Why did Gandhi call Das to Delhi at such a crucial timeIJ When the prospects are indescribably bleak for the Congress, why should some MlAs leave the Jagaran Yatra and go to Delhi for consultationsIJ Rahul Gandhi needs to understand how deep a pit his party is in. When Harichandan is soldiering on as the horizon darkens for him, asking four MlAs to come to Delhi is yet another manifestation of Gandhi’s inept leadership. As for Naba Das, he is at the centre of all Delhi-bound delegations. He is a lobbying machine of awesome dimension. He will not rest in peace until he gets the Chief Whip post. Even after Tara Prasad Bahinipati said, of course with riders, that the last Assembly session was his swansong as the party’s Chief Whip, Das is not satisfied. He wants to seal the deal with a firm assurance of the high command. The more he openly denies hankering after the post the more he secretly tries for it. He certainly didn’t go to Delhi to discuss with Rahul Gandhi the temperature to cook mutton. He would swim through vomit to get that post. He is a chancer of hideous proportions. Is the Congress party doomed to continue wondering why the BJD is in power and not themIJ
SOUMYA RANJAN PATNAIK: DICTATING TERMS TO BATTERED CONGRESS
A section of the Congress wants expelled party leader and founder of Aama Odisha Party Soumya Ranjan Patnaik back in the party. Patnaik demands his pound of flesh by insisting that those who expelled him must first realise their mistake. If the dire Congress takes him back, Patnaik will definitely ask for a suitable position in the party. He feels he has not got his due commensurate with his pedigree, education and standing. He thinks he is genuinely meritorious and deserving while most members of the Congress are conspicuously neither. Patnaik is also feeling restless as time passes him by. He is already on the wrong side of sixty and yet he has achieved practically nothing in politics. He doesn’t consider his success as a media grandee as an achievement because he had all along planned his media business to midwife his political career. The tragedy is that he is now a successful media mogul, but politically he is in a doghouse. In reality, Patnaik’s ambition of achieving too much political success too early in his life was a problem. In pursuit of that, he has hopped from one party to another. Party loyalty is not his brand. Further, Patnaik is not a grassroots leader. He has friends only in the top echelons of any party he joins. These shortcomings have come in the way of his political ambitions. Now that the Congress is in the doldrums in the State, Patnaik will be certainly asking for a price to join it. And why notIJ He has resources no one else in the party has. His powerful mass media empire is like AK 47 rifle and he has his fingers on the trigger. But he has one great mountain to climb. Somehow, he is not on the right side of Rahul Gandhi. If Gandhi understands realpolitik and takes Patnaik back into the party, maybe the moribund Congress will get a kiss of life. But the high command is not known to bend under pressure. Will Rahul Gandhi break free from tradition and take a leap of faithIJ
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)