DGP’S HYSTERIA OVER EGG-PElTING INCIDENT
On the scale of 0 to 100, the hysteria created over Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s car being hit by eggs stood at incredible 500. leading the frenzied delirium was none other than Sanjeev Marik, the DGP himself. Even the Secret Service agents guarding Obama on his visit to ISIS-controlled territories will find Marik’s paranoia excessive. He displayed uncontrolled outrage over a simple egg-pelting incident as if it were some kind of a terrorist spectacular. He started hallucinating that the protesting youths were armed insurgents executing a violent overthrow of Patnaik’s Government. He immediately exercised the nuclear option by suspending two policemen, promising to do more after a detailed investigation. He instructed the Bhubaneswar DCP to be personally in-charge of the CM’s security. His drivelling order means: let the citizens of Bhubaneswar suffer but not a single egg should come anywhere near the CM’s carcade. But he didn’t stop there. In a wild exercise of despotic power, his police have charged the dozen arrested youths with attempt to murder for just throwing eggs, showing black flags and blocking the road for five minutes. Much of the fuss the DGP is making is actually froth. His sycophantic behaviour is so saccharine that it would send even a rhinoceros into a diabetic coma.
FUNCTIONAl AUTONOMY FOR POlICE: A STIllBORN INFANT
The Odisha Police Bill 2015, presold as a path-breaking piece of legislation which will give our police the much-needed autonomy to function without any political interference, is actually a giant con trick. The Supreme Court’s order to give a two-year fixed tenure to the DGP has been incorporated in the Bill. But it has been subtly emasculated by inserting a provision for his transfer to lateral positions (say DG, Training or Home Guard) if the Government so desires. Secondly, the State Security Commission, to be headed by the Chief Minister, will be heavily loaded with Establishment figures who are his faithful subordinates. The two outsiders in it will be his handpicked persons via the fig leaf of the Governor’s nominations. The worst thing about this commission is that the leader of Opposition doesn’t find a place in it. With a the commission stuffed with toadies and a DGP kept constantly on his toes, the much-trumpeted police reforms will remain a stillborn infant. Trust Patnaik to body-block any attempt at salami-slicing his absolute political control over the police. He is not the reform-minded liberal he likes us to believe but a power-hungry autocrat, both in his mindset and style of functioning. That is why he has to play the role of the new-age Natawarlal by making a show of enacting reforms while keeping all the strings in his hands. The Police Bill has substantially eviscerated the Supreme Court’s order to improve police functioning. It is a textbook case of fake autonomy.
KHORDHA-BAlANGIR RAIlWAY lINE: A POlIO CHIlD FROM BIRTH
The ridiculously derisory provision of Rs10 crore made in the budget for construction of the Khordha-Balangir railway line exposes the Government’s mock concern for this vital project. In late January last year, just three months before the Assembly and the general elections, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced, with a showman’s flourish, that his Government would provide land free of cost and meet 50 per cent of the project cost of the 289-km long Khordha-Balangir railway line planned two decades ago with a total cost now escalating up to Rs2,000 crore. As a political pork barrel, the announcement was absolutely genius. Harried over demands for High Court Benches with hints of adverse electoral fallout for his party, he was desperate to make some grand announcement which would be a cast-iron vote winner. But the paltry budgetary provision confirms that Patnaik’s populist proclamation was no better than an election-time porky. He has made similar token provision of Rs30 crore for the Rs3,200-crore Biju Express Highway that will run through southern and western parts of the State. At this rate of budgetary allocation, construction of these two crucial projects will continue for all eternity. Patnaik is either joking about these projects or joking about the people. You can take your pick.
SEPARATE AGRI BUDGET OR SEPARATE BOOKlET FOR AGRI BUDGETIJ
The fable the Government spins around its separate Agriculture Budget has its origin in the budget for the year 2012-13 when what it actually did was to prepare a separate booklet on the outlay for the Department of Agriculture. With elections due in May 2014, 2012-13, the budget was the last budget of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to exhibit his pro-farmer credentials. An attractive booklet detailing all the plans, schemes, facilities, subsidies and services in the agriculture and allied sectors was prepared and a spurious excitement was created by showcasing it as the Government’s first-ever separate agriculture budget. Patnaik’s thumping electoral success in the Assembly and lok Sabha elections was ascribed to his innovation in conceptualising and executing the idea of a separate agriculture budget. But, in reality, prosaic details in the insipid budget documents were presented in an attractive format and trumpeted as bleeding-heart Patnaik’s pro-farmer vision document for making Odisha an agriculturally prosperous State. Its apologists say that the State getting recognition for excellence in food grain production in 2013-14 is down to this separate agriculture budget. But such an award was received in 2010-11 too which predates the introduction of the so-called separate agriculture budget. Nothing can whitewash the tragic reality that the State faces, for as long as one can remember, an acute shortage of potato, onion, fish and egg. But Patnaik looks at it differently. What matters to him is what works for him, politically. If his presentational skill could bring him such spectacular electoral triumphs, why should he do anything elseIJ After all, politics is about ends, not means. So, the drumbeat about a separate agriculture budget continues. In Patnaik’s regime, importance of agriculture has always been more propagandised than materialised.
FACING lAND PROBlEMIJ HAVE FAITH IN ROUTRAY’S MAGICAl POWERS
Just as even a stopped clock is right twice a day, so our Revenue Minister Bijayshree Routray, himself under a cloud for his acts of skulduggery, is spot on in saying that allegations of land grab in Jharsuguda by ex-Speaker of the Assembly and current Chairman of the Western Odisha Development Council Kishore Mohanty are a very serious matter and would be probed. Action would be taken if illegality is found in the probe, he promised. But what happened to the far more serious charge of fraudulent use of premium Government land allotted to his wifeIJ The Minister’s doctor-wife was allotted a plot of land in one of the toniest parts of the capital city for construction of a nursing home. Instead, they constructed a sprawling bungalow on it and continue to use it for their residential purpose. When the media went after him hammer and tongs and the news of Government verification of land use was in the air, he swiftly prepared a board carrying the legend ‘Charitable Dispensary’ and had it fixed on the gate to proclaim that the land and the building are indeed being used for nursing home purpose. Routray’s street-smart move impressed even the normally unflappable Chief Minister. With such a talent available in his Cabinet, why should he choose anyone else to probe the Ghangapatna land scandal involving some of his party’s influential membersIJ Routray has again pleased his boss by pursuing the Ghangapatna land grab case to oblivion. He believes that once the media stops barking, nobody would remember the fraud cases, howsoever serious they might be. It has proved true in his own case. It has been confirmed in the Ghangapatna case. So, why should Kishore Mohanty worryIJ He should have faith in Routray’s ability to pull off magical alchemy. All that he has to do is to cool his heels when the master con artist is at work.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)