THREE UNClE TOMS HANGING PICTURES IN THE CITY
Overflowing garbage, chaotic traffic and pell-mell construction are the pus seeping from the ulcers of our visibly decaying city. The three musketeers assigned to look after the city are actually its worst nemesis. The garbage guard, aka Mayor of our city, urgently needs vision transplant. He is always in a quandary like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of a car.
He just doesn’t know which way he should move. And when he does, he ends up as a roadkill. The city’s civic amenities are nil to non-existent. Garbage, sewerage and potholed roads are like sores, open and weeping. What he, ever the actor, tom-toms as his achievements are actually his PR stunts. The BMC’s more evil cohort is the Police Commissionerate. Always cribbing about its understaffed and underfunded existence, it really doesn’t know what to do with what it has already got.
The Commissioner is so helmet-drunk that his other proclaimed priorities are no better than hypocritical cants. His drivelling philosophy is: Traffic depends on the good sense of the people, and crimes will eventually plateau out. With this policing credo, citizens wonder if the Commissionerate’s much-trumpeted commitment to fight crimes and keep public order really runs deep in them. Six candles may have flickered brightly on the New Year day on its birthday cake, but hardly anyone wished it happy returns. But the holy of holies in our city is the BDA.
If you are looking for the exact meaning of the word incompetence, the dictionary would simply ask you to see the BDA office. Its Kafkaesque existence baffles human reason. Its vision of making Bhubaneswar a ‘world-class city’ has actually ended up in making it as attractive as an overflowing spittoon and, that too, in double quick time. Its laissez-faire approach to building construction will slingshot the new city to the ranks of the most ancient and disorderly cities in the whole country. All in all, it really requires a leap of faith that Bhubaneswar’s aspirations to become a ‘world-class city’ will ever be the triumvirate’s raison d’être.
A SlICE OF HISTORY WIll BE MISSED
Donating his ancestral home Anand Bhawan for the purpose of converting it to a museum and a library is undeniably an act of great munificence on the part of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The gift of more than half an acre of prime land whose present market value would be in excess of five crores is rare in the contemporary times when we find greedy politicos a dime a dozen. Notwithstanding what his gnarled critics blather about his real motive in remaking himself as a philanthropist when his horizon is darkening over his possible involvement in various scams, Patnaik’s high-mindedness will not be lost on anyone. But his swansong appearance at the birthplace to meet the 73-year-old caretaker Basant Senapati, had it happened, would have been the icing on the cake. Senapati served for 57 uninterrupted years at the Anand Bhawan.
He started his job with a monthly salary of Rs35 in 1958 and ended it with Rs7,500. Even in the midst of opulence, he lived the life of a hermit. He had fewer amenities than even prison inmates. His spaniel-like loyalty was an asset beyond price. The photograph of Patnaik, his brother and his nephew along with Senapati inside the Anand Bhawan on the day it was handed over to the State would have adorned the proposed museum where photos and other belongings of the late legend would be on display. Possibly, a slice of history was lost. A thought for the old faithful should have crossed Patnaik’s mind. However, nothing detracts from his magnanimity.
TRY MOVING A DONKEY WHEN IT WANTS TO REMAIN STATIONARY
Creating the corpus fund of Rs300 crore for returning the money of the investors in the chit fund companies serves no purpose unless the groundwork is done by the Government for carrying out the task. Justice RK Patra of the Patra Commission of Enquiry said it loud and clear last week, without any ifs and buts, that the database work is yet to start.
How much more forthwith he would have been in his commentsIJ He made a loud noise as quietly as possible. But it was actually a scathing indictment of the lackadaisical functioning of the Government. It doesn’t require much decoding. BJD spokesmen, however, say that the commission is not complaining. In crassness stakes, we have world-beaters in these Johnnies. The party’s TV faces Shashi Bhusan Behera and Baisnab Charan Parida, are tripping over each other to convince us that Naveen Patnaik’s Government is dead serious in returning the looted money.
Close to ten lakh affidavits are lying with the commission without being processed. The hideous callousness of the Government in providing it the necessary manpower and infrastructure baffles belief. In a similar situation, the Justice Shymal Sen Commission which was constituted by the West Bengal Government had finished its database of defrauded investors in record time. Around 17 lakh depositors had filed claims with the commission of whom 83 per cent invested less than Rs10,000. The Sen Commission recommended that the Government sell the assets of the Saradha Group and return the money to the small investors. By April 2014, the commission had refunded money to 4 lakh depositors who had invested less than Rs10,000. If this could be done in a State known for its anarchical functioning, why our Government, braying good governance from every rooftop, can’t show similar urgency in refunding the moneyIJ
OERC AND ATE: THE CASE OF A SNOOZING POODlE AND FEROCIOUS ROTTWEIlER
The ongoing smackdowns between the Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) and the Appellate Tribunal on Electricity (ATE) over the issue of hiking power tariff rates from 2007 to 2015 have reportedly forced the State Government to approach the Supreme Court for a bailout. Several of ATE’s orders to increase the tariff rates have been ignored by the OERC on the ground that it has filed an appeal in the apex court to stay the orders. But the stay was never granted. As a result, the ATE has criticised the ‘unfair conduct of OERC who are ‘bent upon violating all our directions given in our every judgment’. Such criticism of a regulatory body in such withering terms is indeed very rare. At heart of the dispute between the Reliance-managed discoms and the OERC is the computation of distribution loss suffered by the former. Whereas the discoms say the loss is 32 percent, the latter pegs it at 21 per cent. Unless this is reconciled, the quantum of loss suffered by the discoms can’t be ascertained and, hence, an upward revision of the tariff rates can’t be approved by the OERC to compensate them. The question is why the distribution loss can’t be ascertainedIJ It is here that the level of intelligence, skill and professional competence of the officials manning the OERC and that of Reliance Infrastructure come into play. Quite frankly, it is an unequal battle.
The latter employs a battery of highly skilled chartered accountants, lawyers and engineers who are adept in exploiting every loophole in the contracts and law to extract maximum, even unfair, advantage for their clients. The OERC, on the other hand, is stuffed with lacklustre officials whose services are considered most expendable by the Government.
Their low morale, obsolete skills and ropey professionalism render them unsuitable to argue their cases before the experts of the private sector player. In such a battle, the ATE has no option but to agree with whichever side convincingly puts across its case. There may be merit in the OERC’s case, but it is a laden-footed giant pitted against fleet-footed elves. In the battle of wits, the OERC is a no-hoper. No wonder, Reliance, known for setting the industry standard for profiteering, is going to get an avalanche tariff arrears said to be around Rs4,200 crore!
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com. (M) 9437962121)