The lawmakers of Odisha are exerting a great deal of pressure on the concerned authorities to have their undeserving Rs 1 lakh plus spending money per month increased immensely. Their most unreasonable demand is based on the fact that Maharashtra, Delhi and Telangana lawmakers get much more money. Rightly, like in most other federal States, less than one per cent of the lawmakers, obviously elected by guile or machinations, are considered poor. The majority have turned filthily wealthy only after being in politics.
In Odisha, until the late 1980s, MLAs and MPs were entitled to a comfortable frontline seat in most of the State-managed human transport buses. Ordinary passengers without access to bus officials would prostate before the simple-hearted lawmakers to grant them the two seats for medical or student admission emergency purpose travel. Lawmakers of all categories would be a regular sight in OSRTC and ORT buses of yore. Whenever lawmakers landed in Bhubaneswar for Assembly sessions, they would be put up in two tiny-room facilities with a toilet and lavatory across a little courtyard. These houses now contain peons and errand runners drawing salary from the State exchequer after grabbing the job mostly by bribing or sycophantic methods. The MLAs, until JB Patnaik happened to become Chief Minister, were a pitiable lot in the sense that they would keep begging for monetary help from wealthy contractors or businessmen, for whom they may have lobbied for out-of-turn allocation of jobs by upward bribing Ministers with good quality big-size fish or top quality ghee. MLAs would celebrate for days on end if a Rs 30,000, nearly interest-free loan was made available to buy an ubiquitous Ambassador or a Fiat car for making comfortable personal travel. Lawmakers of Odisha were so impoverished as to beg better-off friends and acquaintances for a good meal at popular roadside restaurants called ‘Dhabas’.
All the same, this status kept them humble, sober and fittingly functional as people’s representatives. They listened to people to alleviate their woes.
During the JB Patnaik rule, lawmakers were indoctrinated into making illegal money in whichever way they could with a condition to keep quietly supporting the boss. The regime encouraged debauchery, bribery and all kinds of daylight robbery tricks by inducting shameless, low-integrity street-level traders and vendors into the fold or make him member of the executive through manipulative elections. However, Janaki Ballabh Patnaik had unmatched mastery over the Sanskrit language, scriptures and mythologies as much as history and manipulative diplomacy. He was also a highly admirable visionary keen to put Odisha on the map of industrialised India. So, his mega project of one thousand industrial units across 1,000 days at a whopping 1,000- crore rupee budget bore impressive results in the 1980s, which were indeed primitive by all standards. That is one of the big reasons why corporate giants like Tata, Birla, Jindal and more jumped at expanding business in Odisha. Countless local youths too came up with anything that crossed their minds with support from the bankrupt-to-be State Financial Corporation. Trawlers and prawns those days had turned household words. A few of the trawler guys are filthy rich today with vibrant hotels or bigtime trading houses or by having acquired political power. One small-time supply contractor-vendor was promoted to a bigtime Minister overnight only because he could raise bribe money without feeling shame. MLAs were kept happy by being given the long rope to facilitate extorting money from business people and even employees for ordinary favour of transfer and posting. MLAs were monarchs in their constituencies and they decided the contractors for public jobs invariably for a bribe or bizarre personal services. More hurting, low-wrung municipal and panchayat representatives too rode expensive fancy vehicles bearing plates of identity as if they were monarchs.
Bad times befell JB Patnaik with horrific events to defame him for life and he was ousted most unceremoniously just before the Super Cyclone of 1999 pounded the coast and killed thousands of people. Naveen Patnaik, having been initiated into politics, took command of the impoverished, devastated State around this time and systematically began the process of transforming a poverty-stricken region to a respectable food and power-surplus State. He picked the base trick on day one: ‘reduce the rank political class to impotency by simply clipping their wings permanently’. This moved hearts of the masses. Rest is history known to the whole world. He has taken adequate care to keep the notorious politicians tamed and controlled like white rats. Only a few handpicked administrators with proven efficiency and integrity guide him on critical issues as is customary around all regimes including great democracies only to ensure Constitutional blunders don’t occur.
Lately, the people all over the country are raising ear-splitting voices of protest against political servants making crazy laws to benefit themselves out of proportions so as to be able to loot the masters’ coffers. Unfortunately in 2018, the Supreme Court dismissed a PIL challenging the perks, including pension and travel allowances, given to former parliamentarians only because the Government placed the sentimental plea that to live in dignity, lawmakers, both incumbent and former, need a respectable salary. No one knows, perhaps except God, how the apex court Bench couldn’t figure out that lawmakers are expected to nurture a grand spirit of voluntarism as rather than seek mercenary privileges. Further, allowing guys having been through a five-year picnicking experience should not be entitled to anything more than a pat on the back or a kick up the physical system. During incumbency, a sustenance allowance of Rs 10,000 only per family member be given to individual lawmakers apart from travel and other unquestionable allowances, healthcare expenses included. Big fancy cars and big houses have to be a huge ‘No No’. Ordinary, uneducated guys having grabbed votes by guile or splurging stolen money are allotted huge palatial bungalows which is a sore issue for the masses. Similarly, fallen or failed or disgruntled politicians are being put in charge of public bodies in the ranks of ‘Minister of State’ with fat salaries, travel expenses and a personal security officer with absolutely sub-zero threat perception. This has not gone well with the masses at all.
Naveen Patnaik is by now invincible in a way. There should not be any fear to direct lawmakers to spend all time in constituencies to be rated by the electors. While in the State capital, a single-room facility may be allotted to keep their minds focused on the distressed people they represent. Only Ministers may be allowed three-bedroom houses, never sprawling bungalows. Naveen has to take this critical call rather seriously.