PATNAIK TAKING ODISHA ON A JOURNEY TO NOWHERE
Does Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik have a blueprint for taking the State a few notches above its present position as the poorest State of the countryIJ Granted that he inherited the State in a terribly backward condition; but he has been the Chief Minister for the last 15 years. That is a long period to bring about a noticeable change. But there is no available evidence to show that Patnaik has any plan of action to lift the State out of its economic wretchedness. He has let his Planning Board rest in peace. It has not met at all for the last eight years and has met only once during the preceding three years. After only appointing the Deputy Chairman, Patnaik never constitutes the full body. The Planning and Coordination Department is not a great office of State in his scheme of things. The Development Commissioners are file-pushing bureaucrats with the vision of dead goats. At the national level, the erstwhile Planning Commission was giving the direction in which the country’s economy should move forward. Its successor NITI Aayog is doing the same thing under a different name. But economic dunce Patnaik has visceral hatred for planning, either way. His Government prefers to work in a territory without maps. Nothing better illustrates his Government’s unplanned meandering than its sickening explanation for shortage of electricity every summer that power generation didn’t anticipate the surge in demand. The bureaucratic Johnnies never appreciate that infrastructure is the GDP multiplier. Development is in the dead hand of utterly unthinking and visionless bureaucrats. Its beating heart is completely flatlined. No direction, no goals, no roadmap, no template, no monitoring of progress, no periodic assessment, no corrective action: this is how the State is floating around aimlessly. This is compounded by Patnaik forever learning how to learn. He keeps himself immersed in day-to-day running of the administration. There is no development energy animating the activities of the State. Patnaik is not a progressive leader but a shrewd election campaigner who has mastered the dark art of winning elections. He is currently surfing a shallow wave of popularity by his scattershot approach to removal of poverty. You would have to be a lunatic to think that he is hauling the State out of its real poverty. His languid and directionless pace of development would leave the State permanently at the bottom of the country’s economic ladder.
NEAR-DEATH STATE OF KHORDHA-BAlANGIR RAIlWAY lINE: CONGRESS AND BJP ARE COMPlICIT, BUT BJD COMMITTED THE CRIME
A lot of pots and kettles are flying around these days on the subject of who is responsible for the enormous delay in construction of the star-crossed Khordha-Balangir railway line. leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra, because his party is out of power both at the Centre and the State, wildly swings his axe at the incumbent parties for the delay. Clever BJP leaders spare the Centre and heap all the blame on the State. BJD leaders, as is their wont, play their victim card to near perfection. But it is an unforgivable delay of 20 years since the project was announced in 1994-95. Both the national parties were in power at the Centre for 16 years out of it, the BJP for six years and the Congress for ten years. The Congress can claim credit for the project because its Prime Minister Narasimha Rao approved it in 1994-95. But Manmohan Singh did precious little for the project during his entire 10-year period of Premiership from 2004 to 2014. Year after year, his Government kept it on life-support through financial drip feed. In between, Vajpayee was the Prime Minister for six years from 1998 to 2004. He too did little to fast-track the project. It was only during the last one year of Narendra Modi’s Premiership that a new financial mechanism was devised for completion of the project. Despite their egregious neglect, the Congress and the BJP can still claim some credit for conceiving the project and taking concrete steps to complete it. But what was Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik doing for the last 15 years that he has been in powerIJ Except faintly bleating his protest against Central neglect, his role in the project is next to nothing. Acquisition of land which is the State Government’s primary responsibility was never attempted with any degree of seriousness. In fact, land acquisition is Patnaik’s Achilles heel. So many projects, Posco being the most prominent among them, have bled to death for lack of land acquisition. Many power projects are stuck because of this problem. For years together, funds allocated in the Railway Budgets lapsed due to non-availability of land. To cover his own failing, Patnaik, with years of practice, plays the victim card with consummate skill. His lax attitude and blame-shifting mentality have inflicted incalculable damage to the State’s economic interests. Which doctor can help the patient if he has lost the will to liveIJ
TARA PRASAD BAHINIPATI: COMICAl BUT NOT HYPOCRITICAl
Congress Chief Whip Tara Prasad Bahinipati must be wondering why his colleagues are gunning for him. He has wasted no opportunity in climbing the Speaker’s podium to highlight his party’s points of view. He may be lacking the verbal articulateness of his colleagues, but he certainly has a colourful way to make his point. like the demonstration of Asha Karmis, no Assembly session would be complete without the spectacle of Bahinipati’s podium-climbing acrobatics. Few have mastered the art to such perfection. He thinks there is no better way to demonstrate his fight for his pet causes than by physically exhibiting his antics. His swashbuckling disregard for parliamentary procedure and bare-knuckle approach to issues make him a species apart from rest of the legislators. But nobody can question the genuineness of his sincerity and the intensity of his passion. He is always a rebel with a cause. Why then are his colleagues plotting his secret assassinationIJ Not the one to mince words either, Bahinipati has himself provided what he thinks is the reason. ‘I don’t have mining money like others, and that is why I don’t visit Delhi often,” he said in a brutally frank manner. The Jeypore strongman may be rustic in a lot of what he says and what he does but he is not hypocritical like many of his colleagues in the fratricidal party. The scheming dozen who went to Delhi to campaign for his removal provided a textbook definition of hypocrisy when they said on their return that their visit was merely a courtesy call on the high command. As long as they treat the public like fools, Bahinipati will continue to have his usefulness in the party for his robust integrity which, unfortunately for him, is not visible to the present leadership. Removing him, a combative and steadfast leader, from the post of Chief Whip would be bad optics for the Congress. Bahinipati should also take a few precautions to ward off the evil spirits. From now on, he should stay in a Vastu-compliant house and consult his President more often on the Grah Nakshatra.
TEACH THEM A lESSON IF THEY DON’T lEARN IT VOlUNTARIlY
The High Court’s dismissal of the petition filed by the father-son duo against their suspension from temple service by the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration should serve as a warning to all the larger-than-life Daitapatis. As if he anticipated the High Court’s order, Badagrahi of lord Jagannath had already toned down his flamboyant rhetoric threatening trouble during Bahuda if the Chief Administrator persisted with his ‘Hitleri’ attitude. It is good that the heavy breather has learnt the lesson on his own. Otherwise, he should be taught one. There is widespread public perception that an influential coterie of senior Daitapatis is living it large on money cleverly leeched from innocent devotees through methods explicitly barred by law. But they fancy themselves to be above the law. Their outrage against the temple administration is wholly manufactured for their self-promotion. The sooner they meet the full force of law, the better. Their divine right to create nuisance must end, once and for all. There is no better time than now to take the bull by the horns.