Today is the first day of the Asian athletics event at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar. The Wednesday’s opening ceremony proved beyond doubt that magnificent people’s events can happen in Odisha with shortest notices. The glitter and glamour displayed in the evening confounded critics and cynics alike.
Odisha grabbed the opportunity of hosting the big event when Jharkhand backed out at the last moment. Forward States like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu or Kerala did not dare volunteer to save India’s face only because of the short preparation period of ‘90 days only’. Interestingly, the Naveen administration picked the task card coolly to prove that the ‘Asian event’ was no big deal.
The Odisha administrators came together as a fabulous team and finished everything perfectly to the last brim and border quite on time. The near-primitive Kalinga Stadium was transformed into a world-class athletics arena in flat three months. Coincidentally, India’s chief Sports administrator Injeti Srinivas has extended all support to the State organisers. This incomparable country administrator from the Odisha IAS cadre has made the sports environment in India highly conducive and productive by dedicated efforts at making the Sports Authority of India absolutely efficient and transparent. Sports masters across the country say another ‘Injeti Srinivas’ is unlikely to happen in near future unless God desires.
Not surprisingly, the visiting guests from abroad and within are likely to be curious to know why or how Odisha appears so fit and fine against Modi’s bitter portrayal of the State as one of abject poverty and misery. Hence, the realities better be told:
• Odisha is the only State to have doubled farmers’ income in the last ten years.
• From a grain-deficit region, it has become the third biggest contributor to the Public Distribution System.
• Agriculture credit has increased 25 fold.
• Dramatic drop by 25 per cent in rural poverty levels.
• 80 lakh poor people have gone above the poverty line.
• Mission Shakti has 40 lakh happy women in its fold.
• One million tribal girls are given education scholarship including three lakh put up in comfortable hostels.
• Infant Mortality Rate has slid down to 40 from 90, which is far better than the national average.
• Three million mothers are benefitting under the Mamata scheme.
• Most encouraging fact is that more than half of the panchayat leaders are women.
Over 700 athletes from around 45 countries would participate in 42 events, 21 each for men and women. This is the third time that India gets to host the event. Delhi got it in 1989 and Pune in 2013. So-called forward States like Kerala, Gujarat and Punjab or Haryana could not muster enough courage to bid when Jharkhand fainted at the last moment. Odisha just took it on without worry or anxiety as the local authorities considered the event as
child’s play!
The winners of the Bhubaneswar Asian meet will compete at the World Championships in london between August 4 and 13 this year. The mammoth task was over with methodical planning and closely monitored execution by working a little overtime and being on the overdrive. The administrators from all domains put in their best to make a dream come true. All this has been possible because Odisha is not as poor, backward or incapable as the kind PM has religiously been tainting it.
With a complete international makeover, the stadium is now studded with Olympic-standard synthetic tracks, most modern player facilities, state-of-the-art lighting systems, superb practice grounds, tracks and spectator comfort. The remarkable process of transforming the stadium has been visually chronicled for posterity. The video is available publicly so that potential sports organisers will be able to learn failsafe techniques for holding big events.
Five athletes from Odisha have found place in the 95-member Indian contingent: Dutee Chand, Srabani Nanda, Amiya Mallick, Purnima Hembram and Jauna Murmu. Amiya, Srabani and Dutee will be competing in the 100-metre sprint, 200-metre run and 4×100-metre relay events. Jauna will compete in 400 metre hurdles, and Purnima will try to grab a prize in the heptathlon event.
Odisha is not lagging behind at all; it is surging ahead. The opposing political painters are only portraying the wrong picture. The people of Odisha are simple and learning to fight for their rights rather late. They trust the Naveen mystique as recognised by the India Today. They are aghast that Chhattisgarh is heartlessly sucking away scarce Mahanadi waters in summer and releasing the overflowing rainwaters in monsoon from their clandestinely built barrages and minor dams. Thus, the neighbouring State keeps gifting Odisha severe droughts in summer and huge floods during the rains. Modi is doing precious little to resolve the national impasse despite repeated appeals for legitimate help.
Very amusingly, the two Odisha-born Union Ministers have shown monumental cold responses towards the grand Asian event in Bhubaneswar. Jual Oram, who was expected to sit around with the sports authorities of Odisha day in and day out, has finally said he has prior appointments elsewhere; so he can’t be present at the big show. Dharmendra Pradhan, who is a Rajya Sabha member from Bihar, may turn up; it seems much against his will, only because it’s a great national event and his absence would be blatantly conspicuous. The tribal leader who loves to be called ‘Jewel’ instead of his real name ‘Jual’ has turned indifferent to all good things happening in his home State because his party bosses do not want him to speak good of the BJD Government. Insignificant success in the last panchayat elections has made the BJP central leaders very optimistic about capturing Odisha in 2019. The fact that the BJP has no big face to attract votes and that infighting is getting more and more severe is purposefully kept hidden from the party bosses though the true visuals and the sounds are difficult to keep away from the eyes and ears of anyone.
Atal Bihar Vajpayee, as PM, managed the BJP like a perfect statesman. But it looks as if Modi takes pride in being partial and partisan. Maybe, he is under pressure from the party strategists to do so. Jual claims to be an aboriginal tribal who is forest-based and lives with nature. But his own people say he cannot walk barefoot, hold the bow-arrow rightly, even distinguish a hare from a rabbit, sleep well on the floor of a thatch-roof house without windows, and travel on a public transport bus as an ordinary commoner. Only recently, he was seen swallowing merrily ethnic tribal food along with a fellow non-Odia party leader before the television cameras in a tribal household. All this to prove that he is still with the poor people! The innocent ‘forest man’ has been riding luxury sports utility hatchbacks for long, the cabin air-conditioner hardly turned off. Dharmendra is a nice guy, but he apes Modi so mindlessly that the listeners lose patience and begin to suffer from the drudgery too soon. His harangues therefore not only irritate audiences, they mostly turn counterproductive for their big party.
BJP leaders are brazenly cold-shouldering the Odisha organisers too glaringly. What Modi should have opened yesterday with pride, Naveen did decently with humility. The Asian event is of course proving to be a grand success. Modi instead chose to land in Israel, the compulsive international tourist that he has turned with a vengeance ever since the moment he became PM.
*Some frontline BJP chatterboxes may not know that the founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, was born in Calcutta this day in 1901. The Jana Sangha, founded in 1951, was the precursor of the RSS, and much later the BJP, which was born after the Janata Party, disintegrated in 1979-80. Mookerjee was a true nationalist with a great vision. BJP leaders of today don’t seem to have learned much from the founding father. This notion could have been dispelled if only top BJP leaders had shown up at the Kalinga Stadium on July 5.
The Asian event has begun too well; it is expected to conclude impressively on the July 9. But the fact of BJP masters having ignored the event on grounds of political rivalry will remain recorded in pages of history, and very unfortunately so.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)