Only a couple of days ago, Modi paid kind of a whirlwind visit to Odisha, believably under pressure from the horrendously helpless local saffron brigade without enough ground to position firmly on. The local leadership, after exhausting all their horribly ineffective tricks to turn the BJP cadres a force, begged the only charismatic face to materialise in Odisha.
Aparajita Sarangi, with some acceptable history to her credit earned from respectable postings granted by the Naveen administration when she was a senior bureaucrat, is now being projected. She has come as a bolt from the blue. She too couldn’t keep the tempo high as she blundered by saying Naveen had never inspired her one bit; she has been incredibly electrified by only Modi while serving the Union Government during a deputation stint. Now no matter how much pleas both the portrayed faces, Dharmendra and Aparajita, may make about their being together for the common cause, the one-upmanship battle is visible. Big strategist guys including Bijay Mohapatra and Dilip Ray have deserted the fold, and no one big enough has stepped in to talk sense to restore harmony in the witless local community.
Modi has realised just too well by now that Naveen is truly an invincible leader. Not surprisingly, therefore, he has been heavily briefed and tutored to behave well in Odisha and speak gentler words than before when he was in a world of fairytale hysterics due to sudden elevation to Premiership. He was made to understand that he was so charismatic that even stones and pebbles became live to vote for him. So, Modi kept on making wild, boastful talk. His marketing managers painted him as a former humble ‘Chaiwala', whose only aim was to make every Indian wealthier by at least fifteen lakh rupees as he would dig out the enormous amount of black money on foreign locales. Unfortunately, he failed to do that as he could not even find a thousand dollars of black money anywhere outside the country. Further, he failed to generate the twenty million jobs for the youth which he had promised. He, on the contrary, took India behind by a decade or so by the mad demonetisation one fine midnight.
The ‘Article 370 scrapping' promise was not taken seriously even by a school kid. BJP boss Amit Shah’s crude techniques of intimidation and threat slowly began to backfire, causing deep wounds across the saffron bulk and body. Modi, who spent a whopping 14,840 million rupees on his insane, mostly-futile foreign tours, has irked the Indians further.
Furthermore, the Modi-Shah duo’s extreme love for the wealthy corporate entities has sent all the negative signals down the line. People have already come to know that the BJP-led NDA Government is here to amass funds to survive for always by making tall promises. Despite repeated warnings about mass displeasure in Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the Modi-Shah duo remained arrogantly smug and screamed to the nation that the BJP is here for always. The party was simply kicked out of Punjab; and recently from the rest three indicating people of India have actually lost faith in the party primarily due to its non-secular approach on every issue. It is known that Shah and RSS secretary Bhaiyaji Joshi agreed there was anti-incumbency against party sitting MLAs. The campaigns to drum up support for building a Ram temple in Ayodhya were also not taken well by the people. The Hindi heartland strongholds are gone forever. Excessive boastful rhetoric and some of the bizarre pro-Hindu schemes had caused terrible anti-incumbency sentiments and disenchantment among the masses who craved for real communal harmony.
For all this, Modi came a perfect gentleman and never uttered a word about anything politically unacceptable that the Naveen administration had caused to the people. Naveen received the Prime Minister showing utmost dignity as the latter is the nation’s chief executive. But as the saffron strategists may have hammered into Modi’s head, he had to mention, for only mentioning sake, several aspects of bad governance in Odisha without citing any concrete example or naming any particular individual player. He was extremely cautious about not stirring up any hornet’s nest lest that should boomerang at him to cause irreparable damage at a location considered an anti-BJP bastion.
Modi was tricky in promising the skies by saying he has brought with him a basket of projects worth nearly fifteen thousand crore rupees to give Odisha a big facelift in development. Naveen Patnaik too was smart. He promised all necessary land and other infrastructures to put up the dream projects. Modi said unless east of India is developed, the country cannot improve the quality of life of masses. He used a great deal of innuendos to blame the Odisha administration pointing to field-level corruption and the chronic bribery problems as if only to please the helpless local BJP fraternity so as to keep its fighting morale intact.
Just prior to Modi’s visit, Telangana CM KCR had come on a courtesy visit with a view to forming a robust anti-BJP-Congress third front. KCR virtually looked upon Naveen as a political demigod who moved his people with some magic power difficult to figure out. Naveen gave him all assurance of help but made no binding promise because he knows he does not require much outside help. Modi went upwards to vomit the same stuff in Khordha and vanished from there. The disenchanted BJP cadres of Odisha stayed back gaping in utter confusion as to what went wrong with Modi who did not even launch one simple missile at Naveen.
The just-concluded Hockey World Cup in Bhubaneswar has left Indians in a frenzy of pride and glory because the show the Odisha administration put up is nearly impossible to replicate for the supreme-class parameters set already. Modi should have been in Bhubaneswar to welcome and bid goodbye to the record sixteen super-grade world teams. He did not even pushed Union Minister Jual Oram to the scene for Oram’s home district is considered the breeding ground of Indian hockey.
Modi was thrilled to see the crowd in Khordha, imagining the BJP is very popular in Odisha. He did not seem to make out the fact that any Prime Minister makes people so happily curious as to congregate at his or her meeting place. Modi must have realised by now that Naveen could come one in handy when the BJP with a much smaller number would seek help from regional parties the BJD.
Some great events of 2018 that need to be known by all:
India’s team won the 2018 Blind Cricket World Cup at Sharjah beating Pakistan.
The Maharashtra Government put the plastic ban in full effect from June 23.
Mithali Raj became the first Indian cricketer to score 2000 T20I runs during the India’s Women’s T20 Asia Cup tournament in June this year, Indian women’s cricket team captain Mithali Raj became the first Indian cricketer to score 2,000 runs in T20I, a feat that hadn't even been matched by a certain MrKohli either.
Dipa Karmakar became the first Indian gymnast to clinch a Gold at a global event
Sonam Wangchuk, the character behind Amir Khan’s role in ‘3 Idiots' for his exemplary contribution to science in Ladakh; and Bharat Vaswani, a psychiatrist won the Ramon Magsaysay Award
Sunil Chhetri became the third highest scorer in the world at the Intercontinental Soccer Cup
India got its first-ever all- female Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team.
Indian Air Force gets its first 24-year-old woman fighter pilot Avani Chaturvedi who flew a MiG-21 Bison, which possesses the highest takeoff and landing speed in the world.
Vikas Sathaye, a Pune-born engineer, was a part of the team that won an Oscar for Science and Technology. His and his team’s innovation ‘the ShotoverK1' used in movies such as Dunkirk and Guardians of the Galaxy among others.
World’s first thermal battery plant was built in Andhra Pradesh.
And finally, in August, the world’s first-ever battery plant was unveiled in Andhra Pradesh. It has been manufactured by the Bharat Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Private Limited and is aimed at increasing energy production by the means of renewable resources.
Happy New Year!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)