Very amusing events keep occurring in Odisha. Brilliant young brains, having been tipped by some political heavyweights, are finding egg-pelting great fun. Seemingly, these guys are unaware of the grave fact that eggs are today enjoying the highest prices in decades at 72 rupees a dozen. Around this time, there is big concern about little students being deprived of even a single egg in their midday meals across a week. So, eggs are considered cheaper than roadside stones and pebbles when it comes to insult political executives.
The National Food Security Act-guided subsidised grain and kerosene providing document, known as ration cards, is strictly meant for the poor. It may be recalled how the scarce State land, doled out to the affluent State servants and several other wealthy ‘paupers’, had caused a State-wide outcry for violation of the ‘doctrine of public trust’ enshrined in the Constitution by the executive, particularly the successive Urban Development Ministers. The Chief Minister put his foot down and assigned the job of inquiry to a stubbornly difficult bureaucrat, who did his job well disconcerting several colleagues, judges and rogue journalists with a strong recommendation for cancellation of allotments to unworthy beneficiaries who lied to the authorities to occupy precious lands for songs. Now, there is talk of the recommendation having been merrily diluted and kept away in an unseen shelf to gather superfine dust until moth and termite devour the document to remain live forever.
*Odisha is known for abject poverty despite immeasurable natural resources including an enviable 480-km coastline. The successive Governments since 1936 have done precious little to ensure that people have perpetual access to sustainable, qualitative livelihoods. Most unfortunately, except for Madhusudan Das, who fought for restoration of Odia pride on the fronts of language, cultural glory and entrepreneurship for signified livelihood, no other political colossus ever considered livelihood as a high priority. They glorified Balijatra without supporting small and medium-scale industrial activity based on appropriate technology meaning manufacturing activity solely based on local raw materials and technology. Agriculture should have been the focus as cultivation of grains, vegetables, oilseeds, sugarcane and fish farming are all part of the Odia culture. The big factories like Nalco is fine because of monopoly status in the market, but most of the other mega industrial adventures are destructive as they suck away water, destroy life-supporting ecosystems and degenerate youth communities to bad spending habits. Food farming takes a beating, and next generations are bound to suffer beyond limits. Organic farming is only on the lips which no one hears and books which hardly anyone reads. By harping that Odisha is rich in resources does not mean inevitable exploitation of them. To dig out metal ores, whole vast forest surfaces are being gone. The State policies protect only timber trees as if that is forest protection. All trees that give shade, fruits and medicines are precious. Similarly, all age-old popularly consumed agro products, tested over millenniums, are healthy and life-enhancing.
*The Odisha Government has declared that rural development is a top priority programme. They would focus on concrete houses, roads and potable water in all villages. Though not expressly said, sanitation should be implicit including water and toilets. Study shows that most toilets in the rural households are causing more damage than before because the toilets are darker and much filthier than open fields and people are not taught about the benefits of sunshine on defecating areas. Toilets without adequate water facility ares like throwing rural communities from the frying pan to the fire. Nowhere the Government functionaries, both at the top or the field level, highlight at least a quality tube-well. No wonder, worms and other water-borne health problems have risen in incidence. The fertile-headed planners keep putting up public goods and IT facilities like mobile towers. Consequently, the youth, blinded by the publicity glare on the television, keep the mobile phone as a second heart without which life would go only to talk more than necessary, listen to cheap vulgar music and plan things that make them effectively unproductive. The study further discovered that rural youths are more politically provoked than their urban counterparts because enough idle time is available. Agro fields are lying barren because there is not much prospect of earning big to afford luxury. The State has to incorporate some enticing activity that can bring back the youth force back to the village cravingly.
The greatest sin the State has committed is indiscriminatingly permitting greedy builders to grab grain fields for housing projects. All over the world, grain fields are low-lying lands that serve as basin for floodwaters. Because of this one unforgivable sin, love and respect for agriculture among village youths is gone forever.
The second terrible thing the State executive has done is opening liquor shops in every rural shopping area and permitting country liquor sale. Youths including spoilt young women are seen craving for alcohol on most ordinary occasions where congregations occur. Thus, grain is gone, health is gone, and culture and character are gone. The High Court ruling that no alcoholic beverage shop should be seen within a distance of 165 feet of any highway has been ignored. Rehabilitation of alcohol vendors can be done by themselves. So, rural development is not only roads, toilets and water as the plan is projected. The foremost thing that the planners have to ensure is building awareness among the beneficiary communities as to what’s being made available. That is why most simple villagers remain ignorant of benefits that are passing by them. More than eighty per cent of the Government extension officials steal salaries for shirking work only because the poor innocent villagers do not know their rights and entitlements. For all this, not even most magnificent health insurance gifts are known to them, let alone crop insurance which is a much more complicated matter.
*People do not know that the Government is bound by law and ethics to make all people schemes and projects popularly known to the potential beneficiaries. So, it is critically important that the Council of Ministers, the local self governance functionaries and the administrators dance to the same tune keeping in mind the common objective alike. Then only meaningful rural development can happen. Mere concrete houses, roads, six month-dry water supply facilities and a shrill call for toilets whose hygiene standards are not enforced would not make the rural folks happy or healthy.
*Most elderly citizens who are logically inclined to evaluate moves and steps by the Government would believe that crying for a Bharat Ratna for Biju Patnaik would not make him any the larger in stature. On the contrary, his soul would groan in pain for the ‘Ratna’ has already lost its value after a cricketing entertainer got that most undeservedly. Secondly, begging for a special status is also a mean way of projecting the State. There is virtually no concrete logic in asking for the beggarly status; the State is neither hinterland nor without valuable resources in hand. The people are lazy out of whom Ministers are made. The Ministers who constitute the Executive behave like slaves before the administrators because they have never picked the skills of statecraft or governance. Most of them have bagged seats in the legislature by bluffing the public and subsequently by amassing public money to use that in turn to buy votes by guile and keep the vicious circle live forever. The administrators, due to their industry and hard work during youth, have managed to get lofty jobs in the systems. So, they know the basics, particularly the ‘rulebook’ and they convince political boss better. That’s why Odisha has become a glaring case of ‘bureaucracy’ because ‘democracy’ cannot happen unless people’s
representatives acquire knowledge and skills to overpower civil servants.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)