Orissa Matters

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

BIJU Patnaik was the tallest man of Orissa during his days and he was the only man in politics whose foes were also his admirers. I was one of his admirers because he was a man who had dedicated respect for his critics. I had exposed his corrupt practices threadbare in the media; but he was never irritated. Rather, he had given me the impression that he appreciated the same.

He even had the magnanimity to come from the Assembly, when it was in session, to its outer gate to witness as I was putting to fire there a copy of the Industrial Disputes Act as that was carrying the mischief of a carte blanche given therein to the Government to render the Conciliation Officer’s recommendations inconsequential by deciding not to refer a worker’s case against management to a Labour Court or Industrial Tribunal for adjudication. I feel sorry to say that his son Navin Patnaik, incumbent Chief Minister of my State, has made this great man a posthumous political disease from which Orissa needs relief if democracy is to be kept in good health.

The two latest instances of the mischief are Biju Kandhamal Yojana and Biju Gajapati Yojana,for which the state Exchequer is being forced to cough up funds. These are of the same genre as is the existing exchequer eater Biju KBK Yojana.

In these two new designs, every Block of the two districts of Kandhamal and Gajapati would get Rs.1.5 crores each from the state revenue for injecting into the minds of the most illiterate, undernourished and gullible inhabitants of those undeveloped areas that it is Biju whose posthumous grace is being available to them through his son in the form of basic amenities.

The CM has kept a set of words like “dreams of Biju Patnaik” to attire these State funded works for their use as political traps to catch voters. Everybody knows, though an alien to Orissa, he could become its Chief Minister, when after Biju’s demise, his sycophants shrewdly cultivated the common man’s obituary sympathy for his family to grow into ballots in his favor in the immediate elections that followed. And, he knows that as long as the peoples are kept befooled by coinages like “dreams of Biju” matching every possible State funded welfare programme getting named after him, there should be no difficulty in goading the gullible voters into his support. This is why Navin has been forcing the State Exchequer to fund projects named after his father.

No doubt, Biju was a big man with many fans. But he was such a man who had more foes than fans in Orissa. He had made many of his fans become foes because of his practice of corruption when in power. As here in these pages we have shown several times, once successful in hoodwinking gullible people of Orissa to grab power, he was soon being marked for contempt against the peoples and all-round corruption and the people of Orissa were not taking rest till terminating his tenure. Records of election show that once elected, he was being turned down at least twice in elections in Orissa. So naming welfare programs after him like the three noted supra is nothing but misuse of State exchequer by the incumbent Chief Minister for self and family glorification, which read with the September Order of the Supreme Court against UP CM Mayawati’s statue building spree, is illegal.

Glorification of players of power game at the expense of the State Exchequer is a disease that has affected democracy in India. The name of this disease in Orissa is Biju Patnaik.

Democracy needs be saved from it.

Filed under: actionscript, Editorials, history, judiciary, law and order, media, news, orissa, oriya, politics, Uncategorized Tagged: | biju gajapati yojana, biju kandhamal yojana, biju kbk yojana, biju patnaik, democracy, kbk yojana, mayawati, navin patnaik, orissa, orissa government, supreme court of india