The heartrending ‘Bulbul fight’ is of course a grave crime. For that matter, animal torture, sacrifice and such other unforgivable activities have not stopped due to a casual approach by enforcement agencies. But lawmakers are expected to know the basics. Pramila Mallick, an MlA and a former Minister, was seen enjoying the bulbul fight at a function she proudly inaugurated. TV channels caught her on camera and rightly did everything to sensationalise the issue. A law-illiterate lawmaker, she kept saying garbage to have herself pinned down but reorganised self a little later to bluff that she had warned the bird fight organisers to let the birds free.
Incidentally, movie celebrity Salman Khan is still in big trouble for having killed a rare blackbuck. The bulbul is also a rare Scheduled 4 species protected by law. Similarly, MP Baijayant Panda has been accused of flying his helicopter over a sensitive forest area too close. He is untouched until now, despite the fact that law is blind to all. lately, the DFO has arrested one nondescript Krushnachandra Sahu just to demonstrate that law is still ruling. But the inaugurating lady legislator is still roaming the streets and the corridors of power without fear. It may be recalled here that her worthy brother Khirod Mallick has been put in jail for duping thousands of poor people of money.
*The legislative Council idea is still not digested well by the opposition parties of Odisha which have declined to support the ruling BJD on the move. The Congress had mooted the proposal five times in the 14th Assembly only to be rebuffed by the ruling party with the plea that the Assembly was adequate; a council would be redundant. Now, the same ruling party has suddenly discovered the beauty of a legislative Council and is hell-bent on one in place. The Assembly expenses every year run beyond 510 million rupees.
A legislative Council would cost at least 180 million with nearly one-third of the Assembly strength at public cost. Intellectuals who can perform like statesmen are normally handpicked for the ‘Upper Chamber’ which exists only in seven States including Karnataka and Maharashtra which the Odisha study team intends visiting to learn everything and come back as experts. Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu &Kashmir, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh are the other States with legislative Councils where not much public benefit has been achieved on record except keeping unworthy politicians and their cronies happy.
People must know that a ‘nobody’ had recently climbed up to the Chairman’s seat at the State Coir Board of Odisha. Believably, he has been removed to bring back dignity to the seat. This man is a servitor at the Jagannath Temple who makes good money from pilgrims and running business outfits outside the temple activities. If such characters are chosen to occupy the seats in the proposed legislative Council, the fate of Odisha is just doomed.
*Agriculture Minister Maharathy, while addressing a ‘student BJD’ congregation at a college, exhorted the young mass to defy law, decency and rules and beat up senior police officials and misbehave with Ministers no matter what their rank or age. Unfortunately, TV cameras captured the horrible scene and held talk shows to get popular opinion. A young BJD spokesperson kept struggling in vain to protect the crime committed by Maharathy. The spokesperson is, therefore, equally guilty of misconduct as the ‘targeted offender’. Pradip Maharathy had brazenly roared at the gathering that he had beaten up Anadi Sahu, the then SP of Puri, and pulled off Minister Sriballav Panigrahi’s dhoti while he was taking salute at a Republic Day parade, all this in the 1970s. Sane people say Naveen will not have Maharathy punished. He needs controversial members of the political executive to appear a greater saint than he is.
A highly-disturbing news just in hand is that Odisha farmers are the poorest in India with only 47 rupees per capita daily wage to live on. The Maharathy-managed agro activities can improve only if he stops throwing dialogues from his Jatra script writer’s pages and gets down to doing things for the suffering farmers. He claims to be a farmer himself. But he does not care if the poorest farmer community becomes extinct due to perpetual poverty.
*A stupidly dramatic ‘countdown’ has begun in Odisha: The Nabakalebar festival fast approaching. It looks as if a Nabakalebar festival is going to be celebrated for the first time in history! The best part of the whole matter is that the people are being gifted with great roads, great terminuses, best water and power supply systems and, above all, a magnificent facelift of the temple town of Puri. But not much is being talked about the quality of works, the contractors engaged and the financial bungling occurring beyond public glare.
The town is now a garbage yard. The Works, Municipality, Public Health, telephone, high-speed data transfer fibre-optic, electric and sewerage agencies have never maintained minimum coordination between them. Each came alone and dug up the surface and damaged the other subsurface cables, water pipelines and other cables and more. The sewerage system, first of its kind in the State, is in disarray and can never become functional unless reconstructed wholly yet again. Now that the countdown is made public, the hurry to finish work is even madder and more public money than normal is being squandered by rogue contractors and officials.
Paradoxically, the biggest event of Nabakalebar is a secret act conducted by a few blindfolded Daitapatis. Hence, the biggest show is done in complete dark. More interestingly, the Daitapatis, who are expected to be told in divine dreams where the Daru (the Neem tree to become timber for making the figures) with all its heavenly characteristics, are still in a state of confusion as to how to bluff well to move the gullible millions. The Daitapatis, who live life king-size defying all prescribed austerity, will only hoodwink the whole world with big lies.
Today’s Daitapatis are meat-eating, drink-loving, money-hungry one-month-long servitors whom the temple administration is forced to keep happy by bribing. No one knows how they will carry out their drama this time when the festival is hyped like mad, as if the heavens will come falling down. Hopefully, less than one and a half million people will set foot in Puri to let everyone live and function in peace. Puri becomes hell during all big festivals. Astronomical sums of money are being spent on basic infrastructure.
But the core problems like the plastic garbage and noisy, dangerously polluting diesel auto-rickshaws are not being considered as greatest menace to life and health. Puri has been declared as a National Heritage city. There is great opportunity to bring in at least a thousand electric autos and cars to make an impressive beginning. The Centre would back the project for sure and learn from the experience. The city would become silent, free of toxin and superbly eco-friendly. The Mahaprasad looks devalued in the synthetic package. All drains in Puri are clogged beyond repair. The beach is one of the dirtiest in the world. The local service givers are probably the worst in conduct and behaviour. The priests are a ruthless, looting lot. The authorities fit to fix offenders in a minute take years to crush them as political masters keep overriding them for populist benefits.
*The best news of the decade is that the US authorities have warned Pakistan of dire consequences in case there is any terror activity in India during President Obama’s visit. This creates a great opportunity for Modi to persuade Obama to have Dawood Ibrahim picked from his luxury house on Clifton Road in Karachi. If they could get to the hole of Bin laden’s hiding and the untraceable dwelling of Gaddafi, picking up Dawood should be child’s play. In a TV interview, former President Musharaf, while in hiding away from Pakistan, said the ISI provides special security to the dreaded terrorist in Pakistan. But he, while in office, had denied Dawood’s existence in the former West Indian Moslem-majority region.
Although Obama’s visit on the Republic Day would cost the nation dearly on the money front, the country would grab great mileage in terms of being the master of Asia as an ally of the US. Never in the history of Independent India has any US President agreed to be chief guest at the greatest state show, especially in times of terror. That is some achievement by Modi, who was denied visa to enter the US until he became PM. The Modi administration has made a very heartening decision to throw big tax evaders in jail. If Modi means it, he is a great statesman. But if a hype only, Modi is heading for trouble.
*let’s wait for Naveen to remove plastic garbage from the Odishan soil and Modi to put a dozen powerful tax-evading billionaires in jail. That would be enough to prove that the ‘rule of law’, undermined for long, is back in place to improve the quality of life of the common masses.
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)