ROCKETING ONION PRICES: DAMODAR ROUT IS GUIlTY UNTIl PROVEN GUIlTIER
The three ministers who exhibited total lack of coordination among them in procurement of potato after the success of the Potato Mission in March this year are once again fighting like ferrets in a sack over the procurement of onion. The State produces four lakh tonnes of onion against its requirement of three lakh tonnes. Yet, onion prices are going through the roof. That is because our farmers are forced to sell onion to traders in Andhra Pradesh and MP for lack of cold storage facility in our State. In a repeat of the March wrangling among them, Agriculture Minister Pradeep Maharathy blames Cooperation Minister Damodar Rout, whose department is responsible for cold storages, for not providing adequate storage facilities. Rout, finding it difficult to retaliate against the formidable Maharathy, rounds on the lightweight Food Supplies Minister Sanjay Dasburma for not procuring onion from the farmers in time. As a result, we have a curious case of plentiful production of onion but acute shortage in the market, making people pay for it through the nose. Maharathy says he is only responsible for production and not storage and distribution. Rout says nobody consults him before the storage problem arises. Poor Dasburma, squeezed between the two heavyweight Ministers, glosses over the problem by cooing - what else he can do - that everything would be sorted out soon. The first time the problem of coordination happened, we thought it was a one-off. But when it happened for the second time, one can’t help pinpointing the blame on Rout for not doing what he should be doing. This man is like dysentery in a marriage party. By not providing enough cold storage facilities to the farmers, he is guilty as hell. He is the proverbial missing link. Instead of playing his part, he blames others for the problem. He has an irritating tendency to be too clever by half. He is a professional controversialist and revels in making his Ministerial colleagues squirm. There is no mess quite so bad that Rout’s involvement can’t make it worse. He vitiates collective responsibility with every piece of disparaging comment coming out of his blubbery lips. His vintage wildness flares up whenever he perceives he is being belittled. The needler probably needs professional help for his increasing fretfulness and obstructionist attitude. The dirty family secrets he was darkly referring to when the coordination problem was raging were direct digs at the way the Government is being run by the Chief Minister. Is the Big Brother watchingIJ
HARICHANDAN’S JUMBO-SIZED TEAM: TOO HEAVY TO TAKE OFF
To everybody’s surprise and murmurs of madness, OPCC president Prasad Harichandan has finally rolled out a team that probably represents the entire human species. All castes, creeds, religions, age groups, regions, genders, factions, thoughts, sentiments and all others which we don’t know are represented in his team. The OPCC’s Nabakalebar is awfully crowded. The size illustrates the depth of Harichandan’s muddled thinking. Even after accommodating everyone in his faction-ridden party, he wants to add a few more to satisfy the left-out. The plenary team is an archetypical case of elephantiasis of the party’s top hierarchy. Only a leader unsure of himself will try to please everybody. Frankly, does the depleted party have that many leaders to find a place in the top echelonIJ The bloated team is fated to go the way the dinosaurs have gone before. Invoking the great god of full representation as justification for his unwieldy team Harichandan has already positioned himself alongside the OPCC’s disgraced past presidents. Even during his entire tenure of presidentship, he will not know all the members he is leading. His mammoth team will forever remain in the first gear and never gain any traction. The overstuffed hierarchy will be the party’s ailing heart.
BHUBANESWAR AS SMART CITY: THE SHIP IS READY BUT WHERE IS THE CAPTAINIJ
Bhubaneswar is leading the race for selection of Smart City. If selected and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik doesn’t change his mind as he did in case of IIM, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will get Rs 200 crore in two years to expand and strengthen the city’s infrastructure. But is Mayor Anant Narayan Jena up to the taskIJ His record suggests otherwise. If you listen to Jena, he will amaze you by rattling off development schemes with a glibness taken to Himalayan heights. A blizzard of ideas and plans will overwhelm even the most gnarled sceptic. He is unstoppable in his rapid-fire narration of schemes which are not even at the conceptual stage, much less on the drawing board. He might have gone to an animation movie and seen spanking clean city streets, but he will rhapsodise before the people that the BMC is planning such excellent roads for the city. His idea of beautiful Bhubaneswar is pure Bollywood. A windy rhetorician like him is hard to find in contemporary civic administration. In his second term, he has become even more insufferable. To illustrate the point, just look at the wretched condition of roads in the lanes and by-lanes of our city. Roads are literally crater-like killer potholes sewn together. Garbage collection is more publicised than actualised. But Jena boastfully declares in every meeting that solution to the citizens’ problems is just a phone call away. His description of the civic amenities is so rosy that one can almost touch the flower itself. His promise of a neat and clean city is shoddy fiction. His assurances travel at lightning speed while his action is still searching for the shoes. Make no mistake – Jena is no good custodian of the city.
MlAlAD FUND: A WEll-MEANING SCHEME IN DIRE STRAITS
The startling disclosure by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) that a staggering amount of Rs 326 crore remained unspent out of Rs 809 crore sanctioned under the MlAlAD scheme during the five-year period from 2009 to 2014 shines a spotlight on how the whole idea of enabling our MlAs to spend money on small but important works of urgent importance is in dire straits. The fact that 40 per cent of the funds could not be spent is truly a sad commentary on the implementation of the scheme. Against this background, the demand of the MlAs to increase the funds from Rs 1 crore to Rs 3 crore looks ridiculous. Apart from pointing out how a huge amount of money remained unspent, the CAG report makes scathing comments on the money that was actually spent. MlAlAD fund has been used for office expenses like printing of flyleaf, payment of telephone bills, electricity bills, fuel bills and such other sundry expenses. Representatives say there are too many restrictions on utilisation of the MlAlAD funds which is why the progress is so tardy. But if they want, as too many of them want, construction of religious places, Yubak Sanghs, ashrams and mutts, which is specifically banned under the scheme, we can’t find fault with the restrictions. By no mangling of the words such constructions can mean development expenditure. The dead hand of the bureaucracy is another reason for the scheme’s slow progress. Whatever may be the reasons, a truly well-meaning scheme is currently draining into the sand. The Department of Planning and Coordination which supervises the scheme is headed by a Minister who, by all accounts, is a spineless nonentity. One can’t recollect her having said or done anything worthwhile ever since she was given charge of the Department. Her laidback style and idea-free approach presage the scheme’s dark future at least in the near term. like fish which rots from head down, we can see the problems of the stricken scheme originating from the very top. Its objectives are severely derailed with the nonchalant Minister not knowing anything about how to put them back on the rails.