Every year there is a big hype by the Government about tree plantation in Odisha during rainy season. But only 1% of the saplings may be surviving and rest dies due to inadequate care, cattle eating them, some people using them as fuel for cooking. There is a big scandal every year regarding this plantation festivals and photo sessions for media.
The amount of money spent every year would have developed a rainforest in the State; but alas! Centuries-old trees are cut for development work without proper replacement of trees as per rules. Most of the contractors for road and bridge making and tree plantation have political connections; no one can touch them. Instead of underground electricity supply, we cut trees just before cyclones.
Odisha has become number one in many bad things like killing of elephants, tigers, wild boars, pangolins and peacocks. Corruption in every field, PC and commission will ruin our State in a short time. The Forest Department is defunct. It has to be streamlined and handed over to local tribal people as a source of employment. All apartments must be forced to grow at least ten medium-size trees in their campuses.
People are crying for the wrong steps of bringing Odias from outside by luxury bus, trains and aero-planes without a second thought. After spreading the virus and killing some, they have started going back to their previous places of work as the Government has no such schemes for employment. Like India, Odisha too will become second or third in the corona positive ranking.
A chaotic situation has prevailed in our State with an empty treasury due to distribution of freebies. Only one politician from the Congress is speaking the unpalatable truth about mismanagement and corruption which are seldom published in local newspapers, which are for advertisements and not for constructive ideas. Most of these newspapers are owned by politicians.
The money collected at the Puri temple must be used as it is being done by the Tirupati trust for constructive measures like education institutes and hospitals. The Government must get itself detached from all temple managements and leave them to trusts. We are not interested to know how many tonnes of gold are there in the Jagannath Temple or they are real or fake. What happened to those thousands of silver bricks seized by police in a very old ashram in Puri a few years back? Corruption in the name of God and religion is bad; people are aware of it.
(The writer is a senior citizen in Bhubaneswar and a former SAIL executive)