The attempt of the Naveen Patnaik Government to muzzle the voices of millions of farmers and teachers, constituting a major force to reckon with at a grassroots level, may not augur well for the ruling BJD in the panchayat polls due in February next.
The Navanirman Krushak Sangh’s (NKS) scheduled mega rally on December 14 was foiled with a calculative approach by the Government by misusing police. While the NKS’s two prominent leaders were arrested two days before the rally was to be held in the city where thousands of disgruntled farmers were to join to air their grievances, on December 14, all the entry points of the city were sealed and the farmers coming to join the rally were detained on a mass scale to prevent them taking out a procession from the proposed High-tech Square to the lower PMG. The Government was virtually scared as there is no denying of the fact that the present scenario of massive farmers’ agony and frustration against the Government has reached a point of explosion.
The nonstop suicides of loan-stressed farmers, distress sale of crops, corruption in paddy procurement, distress migration and not fulfilling some genuine demands like hike in paddy MSP, proper estimate of crop loss and disbursement of compensation, crop insurance, inclusion in social security schemes like pension etc coupled with the difficulties due to the demonetisation have led to a situation where the poor farmers are feeling to have left high and dry. On the contrary, however, the Government is insulated by its complacency of having done a lot for the farmers and boasting of having won awards from the Centre for its achievements.
Even as his Government took a hard stand against the farmers, harassed and roughed them up and did not allow them to hold a rally on Wednesday last, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik concurrently did not refrain from his political gimmick of asking the Centre to take steps for easing the woes of the farmers in the rural areas due to the unavailability of currency notes as a result of demonetization in the country. Earlier Patnaik had held meeting with top officials and Ministers and talked with the district Collectors over videoconferencing to ascertain the situation after note ban and asked the banks to pump sufficient cash into the rural belt.
The mismatch is glaring. While the farmers reeling under various hardships and seeking to assert their democratic rights are forced to go back with the use of brute police force on the one hand, on the other, the CM has been into a serious stocktaking of the farming sector to show his concern for the distress of the farmers.
The teachers have also taken to the streets again with similar demands and in similar style what they have been doing for last many years. It is understood despite their confusing divisions and categories that the Block Grant teachers, contractual teachers, Gana Shiksaks and Shiksa Sahayaks, besides similar other groups in teaching profession, are demanding a common thing, ie, job regularisation. The Government with least concern for the ground realities in the education sector in the rural belt and for that matter for the sufferings of the teaching community looks to be in a mind to continue the education system anyhow and solve the problems which have taken gargantuan proportions of late through a piecemeal approach. The Government, therefore, has been just assuring the agitating teachers for the sake of assurance without having the interest and resources to assuage their sufferings and that of the millions of students under their custody.
It will not be wrong to say that the BJD Government has been trying to run the education sector by tightening its purse string and therefore has failed to ensure quality and discipline in schools and colleges across the rural and far-flung areas. It has been hoodwinking the teachers all these years and adopting a dilatory tactic to ignore the issue in the long run.