The Hockey World Cup has begun on a magnificent mode. The Odisha hosts have set new world standards that are difficult to keep up in later events as the International Hockey Federation chief confesses.
The World Cup is certainly not an Odisha event. It is a global event; and India is its proud host. Odisha only came forward courageously to hold the colossal event as no other State contented for it. Only recently, Odisha had rushed to the rescue of the BJP-ruled Jharkhand which bid to win but chickened out just months before the D-day. No other BJP or any other regime also had the guts to save the face of India for the Asian athletics championship in 2017.
Earlier, Odisha had proven its supremacy in the domain of sports event hosting by organising world-class hockey events in the lines of IPL. Hence, the Hockey World Cup is on now with the grandest opening. Incidentally, the enigmatic Chief Minister played hockey as a student and, maybe for that reason, he took great pride in okaying all hockey events. That the tribal regions of western Odisha is a breeding ground for hockey and that Odisha has given fantastic hockey players to the national team are only known facts. Bhubaneswar, meanwhile, has already been branded as India’s sports capital.
The opening ceremony has been an eye-opener for the rest of the world of sports. That Bhubaneswar could ever be a venue for a global event was unthinkable a decade ago; but the stubborn desire to achieve made things happen as the administrators on the job dedicated all skills and perseverance to making the event truly memorable and of a class beyond compare.
The hockey fever shall remain until December 16. Sixteen countries will be striving to excel for the world cup, India being the most favourite for the team is in great shape and there are Odisha boys ready to display skills and prowess at home. Most people expected Prime Minister Modi, Union Sports Minister Rathod and BJP president Amit Shah to grace the occasion and greet the guests from all over the world. More hurting is Odsha-born Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan too didn’t show up. Jual Oram, the other Union Minister from Odisha just chose to melt away in thin air. The Central Ministry bosses did not think it fit to be part of the host team lest the BJD would grab more credit than usual due to their presence. The saffron brigade has wrongly taken the global show as one of Odisha, not of India, which is a terrible pity.
Shah Rukh Khan, the matinee idol from the movie world, felt privileged to be amid the show for he has been an ardent player-captain during student days and considers hockey as a great game of grit and skills played across seventy nail-biting minutes of excitement for the speed and super skills that the game demonstrates. After soccer, hockey is considered as the fastest and most exciting game now played by most developed nations that have never been part of the British Empire.
The Central Ministry bosses never stood by Odisha except for lip services and the routine help and support that a State is normally entitled to. If the event had happened in Gujarat, the entire Ministerial community would have pitched tents at site to only doze off for a while for nonstop slugging across days and nights alike would have gone on to make the event a respectable one.
The BJP is passing through stressful times as Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are more likely to slip away from its fold. That is going to usher in a kind of disaster for the Modi-Shah duo touted as the best political strategist on Indian soil. Modi is still popular in a limited manner. The ‘chaiwala' trick has long ceased to be. There shall not be one single sympathy vote cast in his favour for his over-hyped humble beginnings. And Shah is considered a crude talker without any sense of niceties. His rhetoric lacking decency has not changed one bit in years and his tone hasn’t taken any twist so far. The people of India except the mad saffron followers simply keep off his sight and sound.
The BJP is struggling like mad in Odisha to make a rock bottom-level entry into the political domain by winning a visible number of seats in both the Parliament and the Legislative Assembly by hook or by crook as it is popularly known that the BJD is virtually invincible and has hardly any anti-incumbency factor as yet. In fact, the B JD’s rating is getting higher than before for a number of popular projects and events like the Asian Athletics and World Hockey championships. For all this, the Shah team is having all stones turned lying wherever, irrespective of location, and machinating more vigorously than ever before to snatch seats from the BJDost. The poll pundits, however, indicate that the BJP has no chance as it does not have a local icon as face of the party to lead. So, an Odisha-born Union Minister with help from some party workers around employed all tricks to entice a power-prone woman administrator to leave behind all professional glory that she has gathered over the years and join the saffron fold, dangling the bait of the Chief Ministerial post of Odisha before her. IAS officer Aparajita Sarangi, married to an Odia IAS officer Santosh Sarangi of her batch is the woman to fall prey to the saffron tricks. Ms Sarangi is known as one of the best administrators from the State cadre by proving mettle during stints as Mass Education Secretary and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Commissioner. She is known for the much-awaited uniform for teachers and beautifying the face of important city locations with art and crafts. Then, she vanished from the scene on Central deputation to be nearly forgotten. Now all on a sudden, she is back to be a political big wig in a rather difficult community struggling to make a dent. She had eleven long years to go as an officer. There is slender chance that some people may imagine she is giving up a lucrative as well as glamorous profession to serve the suffering humanity. It seems she has been specifically trained to say, after joining the BJP, in the presence of party president Shah, “I want to work for people on a very large scale. Politics is the only platform which provides this kind of opportunity for me. The party’s motto and leader made me choose BJP, which not only assures development but ensures speed in development.” What is probably not known to her is that the BJP has no ground-level cadre to carry the people with it and the State fold has no unity. There are at least four factions each with a chosen figure to become Chief Minister. The overall picture projected is that Dharmendra is the Odisha face and the fittest CM candidate. Dilip Ray and Bijay Mohapatra have consistently hammered the chosen guys as useless and are on their way out. Dharmendra has no constituency of his own though he is frantic to dislodge Naveen Patnaik, least knowing that it is difficult for him to win a seat easily. The party bosses have probably realised the truth and suddenly chosen Aparajita, a woman of substance and spotless bureaucratic track records. All the same, what every saffron super-brain fails to figure out is the improbability of having a decorated bureaucrat win political battles easily. Many Aprajitas have already come and gone biting dust in the poll arena. Even if Aparajita manages to win a seat, the BJP has no other to boost the number. Maybe, Aparajita will have nothing much to lose if she is beaten down, but her repentance will not restore her bureaucratic glory ever again. She seems to have missed out on the fact that the BJP is just not popular enough to win seats in Odisha as of now.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)