CAPITAlNOTES

MINISTERS ARE NO lONGER OUT IN THE COlD

Half a dozen top-level IAS officers, specially selected by the Chief Minister to fast-track infrastructure development for the ensuing Nabakalebar, have failed to deliver the goods. They held innumerable review meetings and asserted umpteen times that everything would be completed in time when, in reality, the opposite was the truth. Their cocksure overconfidence amazed even our usual blowhard politicos. When it comes to filling the media space with hot air, the top knights of our bureaucracy can even give our career politicians a lesson or two. But the boot of truth finally hit the crotch of bluster. The six musketeers could no longer fool their guardian angel, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. Patnaik, who normally remains impassive as if he is permanently posing for oil portraits, saw the horizon fast darkening. He replaced the dead ducks with four young Ministers to haul the stalled projects. They were ordered to camp in Puri and hit the ground running straightaway. But such chopping and changing exposes Patnaik’s back of the envelope thinking. Nabakalebar has been uppermost on his mind for quite some time past. What was the level of his thinking and planningIJ He preferred to remain content with the optical illusion created by his specially appointed high-powered taskforce until he got a punch in his eyes. like the messy Brahma Parivartan, Nabakalebar festival, too, would have been an unmitigated disaster had he persisted with his mythology that officers do a better job than Ministers. Ministers, out in the cold throughout his Chief Ministership, are now back in circulation. The problem with Patnaik is that, like a slow-witted child, his learning process is very slow.

IIM IN SAMBAlPUR: BORN OUT OF POlITICAl CONSIDERATION, NOT INTEllIGENT CHOICE

Finally, IIM has gone to Sambalpur. The decision has nothing to do with the suitability of the place but everything to do with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s political calculations. An extremely heightened sense of self-interest has become the new piety under his current political dispensation. With the BJP focussing its attention on western Odisha for a political comeback, Patnaik has to counter their move by gifting something very special to the region. And what better gift can he think of than an IIMIJ Officially, of course, he drones that the IIM in Sambalpur will be the answer to regional imbalance. Who is he kiddingIJ Nothing can be more perverse than this spurious argument. He has still kept the headquarters of the Western Odisha Development Council (WODC) in Bhubaneswar even after 14 years of its formation way back in 2001. The body, founded exclusively to economically regenerate western Odisha, has become, for all practical purposes, a rehabilitation centre for the unelected and unelectable BJD politicians. Devolution of power to it is a myth. Its activities are mostly cultural. Its budget is peanuts. But still Patnaik says his heart is bleeding for western Odisha. His crocodile tears are an out-and-out insult to every honest crocodile living anywhere in the world. When even the office of the WODC could not move to its area of operation and, on the admission of its Chairman himself, there is no plan for shifting it from Bhubaneswar in the near future, what was the logic in planting a high-profile IIM in that areaIJ See the condition of the Central University thrust on backward Koraput. Because of its remoteness, the first Vice-Chancellor stayed put in Bhubaneswar throughout her tenure of five years, going to the university only when dignitaries from Delhi visited it. Its various departments have only skeleton staff. Such was its pathetic condition that when the VC retired there was no professor available to take over from her. The present substandard condition of the Burla Medical College gives a preview of the sorry fate in store for the IIM. The site lacks everything that an iconic academic institution needs for its functioning and growth. Other new IIMs in Visakhapatnam, Nagpur and Amritsar are far better located. Even Bhubaneswar does not have the facilities these non-capital cities have. In a backward State like ours, facilities should be clustered, not scattered. Patnaik twisted every parameter he could and ignored many others he could not to have the institute in Sambalpur. But the site for an excellent educational centre like IIM should never have been selected out of party political consideration or even through political consensus. The site should have been an intelligent choice based on pure merit. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen in the case of Sambalpur IIM. The BJP’s claim of paternity of the IIM establishes beyond doubt that politics played a decisive role in the site selection. Whatever may be the merits in the rival parties’ paternity claims, the IIM will surely be a polio child right from its birth.             

CONGRESS AND BJP MIlKING PUBlIC MOOD OF ANGER OVER SCREWED-UP BRAHMA PARIVARTAN

After the horror of cack-handed Brahma Parivartan, it is now open season on the Government, the Chief Temple Administrator and the delinquent Daitapatis. All of them find their place in the rogues’ gallery. Public have become the lynch mob. They are on the boil and in no mood to forgive anyone who desecrated the sacred ritual. The Government is complicit in the sin and, what is worse, seems to be protecting the sinners. As more and more grubby details of the cock-up emerge, public cry for bloodlust gets louder and louder. The daily soap opera speculation over what went wrong and who did it fuels a desire to see the guilty skinned alive. The incredible getaway of the transgressors is a standing affront to faith. The Congress and the BJP are determined to milk this public mood of anger. They know they will not get another opportunity this golden to arouse the masses. They have, therefore, decided to go for the jugular. The Congress’s one-day bandh on Friday last week and the BJP’s week-long demonstration from the end of this month are aimed at cashing in on maximum political advantage for them. Hoist the sails because the discontent wind against Naveen Patnaik’s Government is blowing. That is rule number one in politics.

TRANSFER OF PRINCIPAl ACCOUNTANT GENERAl AMAR PATNAIK: A THORN REMOVED

The transfer of Principal Accountant General (PAG) Amar Patnaik to Kerala demonstrates, if demonstration is indeed needed, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s clout with the Centre. The PAG was an insufferable pain in Patnaik’s neck. He dug out a wide array of egregious irregularities and illegalities to shame Patnaik’s Government publicly. His scathing reports offered grim snapshots of the Government’s wilful malfeasance, corruption and favouritism. The word ‘tormentor’ in the CM’s dictionary simply says ‘see Amar Patnaik’. With the CM stalling appointment of lok Ayukta to monitor corruption in his administration, the PAG filled that void with exemplary zeal. He was definitely someone we needed more, not less. Apologists of his transfer may say it was a routine shift consequent upon his promotion from AG to PAG. But, had the Centre wanted, he could have continued in Bhubaneswar to hound Patnaik more. As if the damage he has already inflicted was not enough, he threatened to audit the Nabakalebar expenses, the biggest financial black hole of Patnaik’s Government. That threat was the proverbial last straw. Patnaik invoked the undisclosed provisions of the ‘secret deal’ between him and the Modi Government to get rid of the PAG. New price, of course, will be paid by way of the BJD’s support for the NDA Government’s long-delayed and much-troubled land Bill. But no price is too great for stopping the PAG’s relentless exposure of skeletons in Patnaik’s cupboard. Taming the CBI and removing the PAG show Patnaik is never luckless. Men in power make their own luck, rightIJ