OrissaMatters

Suchismita Pattanayak

India is a democracy. Democracy depends upon informed participation of citizens in control and management of the affairs the nation. For informed participation it is essential that the citizens should be able to receive, perceive, interpret and share information. Audio reception of information would not help; because there could be such information, which should need juxtaposition with related information and with relevant documents as otherwise the same information may mislead. Newspapers and journals, which are important sources of information are usually available in print ad one must be able to read in order to receive information through the print media. Another important source of is the internet through which news portals are available. But again, to receive information through the news portals, one is to read. Indian constitution has made provisions for statutory audit of government expenditures so that the peoples can be informed of how the administration executes its responsibilities. The statutory audits are conducted by the Chief Accountant General and the reports thereof are placed before the Parliament and the respective Assemblies and then the citizenry is expected to watch the official actions on these reports. But to do this the audit reports and action taken reports are to be read. In order to help people receive whatever information they need to evaluate official action in depth, Right to Information Act has been framed and enforced in India. But to know as to which would be helpful information in this regards and to know as to what information emanates, one is to read. On the other hand, watching administration is not the whole thing in life of a person and in life of a nation. People must know the history of their land to understand how the society has evolved so that a better society may be built up. They are to read history. The same is in respect of tradition and culture and literature and Laws. The same is also applicable to areas of industry and agriculture, trade and commerce; cooperation and civil administration. So one is to read to rise to become a responsible citizen for making the country a better place to live in.

Illiterates cannot read. Therefore illiteracy needs to be eliminated. Schools have the most major and relevant role in this respect.

Despite planned approach to eliminate illiteracy, literacy has not grown as expected.
Orissa may be cited as an example.

An average of figures indicated by various agencies indicate that 70 per cent of Orissa’s Schedule caste and Schedule Tribe people constituting 43 percent of her population are illiterate. 30 percent of OBC that constitutes 50 percent of Orissa’s population is also illiterate.

Incentives like midday meals and free textbooks etc are failing to stop the flow of school dropouts.

WHY IT IS SO?

Unemployment and lack of the scope of employment of parents is the most major cause of children of school-going age not at all going to schools and dropping out of schools. The ever-increasing numbers of child labor is indicative of this.

In most of the cases, poor children act as babysitters in their huts at the behest of their parents who in search of daily wages acquiesce into drudgery or in search of food, rush into jungles leaving the tiny kids in the care of elder babies. This unavoidable babysitting pushes children of poor families into illiteracy in rural areas.

It is also remarkable that lack of confidence in children of poor families is also a factor of illiteracy. The poor children are often not encouraged to mingle with school children belonging to advantaged families. Thereby a sort of inferior feeling gets injected into their psyche and they fail to acquire courage to aspire for education. This negative trend also spreads illiteracy.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF THE TREND CONTINUES?

Unless this trend is stopped, Indian democracy will be in serious doldrums. As the children shaken by the feeling of inferiority would grow, the psychological gap between them and the advantages children will grow. India can never be a country of equals at least in feeling for the country. It would end up in class wars.

On the other hand, democracy will never get informed participation, as most of the major citizens, bereft of ability to read and receive and analyze information relating to nation building, shall limit their activities to casting their uninformed votes. So majority participation in Indian democracy would be unconcerned participation and that would never be good for the country’s health.

Educated people can manage their hearths and health by themselves without being dependants on the state on every occasion, which the illiterate people can’t. As the global scenario indicates, state role will be diminished in societal management. In that condition, educated people may overcome hurdles and manage themselves. Uneducated people will perish and consequently become the society’s worst detractions.

So, it is time, the advantaged people must address themselves to elimination of illiteracy and for availability of education to all.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

In this respect, Schools have the best role to play.

The Society should encourage the schools to educate their pupils to cultivate fellow feeling for the disadvantaged children.

Every student should be encouraged to adopt a poor child of his locality to literate him or her. As age factor would eliminate the communication gap between them, it would give a positive opportunity to educate the disadvantaged child.

Schools may make this essential role of a student a part of examinational incentives so that every student who makes a child of his locality literate would be rewarded with higher marks are certificates of excellence. What the mid day meals etc are unable to generate – in study aptitude – the students of the schools can do, even as they shall be, thereby, growing as responsible citizens, highly concerned for fellow beings of the society.

The schools, on the other hand, can press its faculty and library to help the environment of mutual trust and cooperation grow in the field of education.

Holidays and vacations may be best used for generation of contact between the school and the members of the society and a collective endeavor to make every body educated may be generated for all round development of all.

But would the planners and intellectuals interact and help how the process should be formulated?

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Residents of government quarters in both the sides of Mahatma Gandhi Marg spanning between the Assembly junction and the Railway station roundabout in Bhubaneswar are deeply disturbed due to use of amplifiers by demonstrators who gather in the boulevard in hundreds and in thousands every now and then to voice their protests against unrelenting misrule.

The residents have been demanding for a ban on demonstrations and / or protest gatherings on MGM or in the boulevards in deference to their right to peace and tranquility. And conscious as they are of the adverse impact of noise pollution that the demonstrations generate, they are absolutely justified in raising this demand.

Public demonstrations and protest rallies are not the only events that bang the boulevards here; but also this is the place where state level ceremonial parades take place to the crippling of free movement of the residents as and when required by the authorities. So, the residents are really disadvantaged.

The Government quarters flanking MGM are of highest types and occupants thereof are high placed official functionaries except a marginal few from media.

No wonder the government has decided to oblige them by promulgating a permanent ban
on demonstrations and protest rallies as per demand of the concerned residents.

The Home Secretary is eager to locate an alternative place where demonstrations may be allowed.

Reportedly a high level team is pressed on the job. Nothing could be more laughable and ludicrous.

Were the boulevards flanking MGM ever earmarked as the places for the aggrieved public to offer their demonstrations that now the government is planning to change?

What sort of a government is in power now? Why it is so confused?

Are the demonstrators rushing to Bhubaneswar streets daring scorching sun or showering clouds or chilling cold waves for a dating with administration so that they should be expected to offer their proposal decently in a designated place?

Peoples are thronging MGM boulevards to voice their protests against lack of probity in administration, against loss of direction in administration, against injustices they are subjected to under administration, in a nutshell, against misadministration.

They are coming to break law on records on the roads of the capital city in order to show the government that they have no more any respect for the laws of the land as the same do not help the peoples but act as umbrellas to protect the exploiters and the enemies of the peoples.

One is to see to believe how enthusiastically peoples are breaking laws and jumping into police vans after administration arrests them; no qualms, no remorse, no repentance. This happens when peoples perform patriotic duties oblivious of repressive measures the government may take.

The Country is theirs and that is collapsing under continuous misrule by commission agents in possession of posts of power. Therefore the protest rallies, therefore the demonstrations.

Is the government expecting that the peoples who gather to register their protests through civil disobedience would obey official orders to demonstrate their protests in a place directed by the government at a far away distance from the State Secretariat?

If the government feels it would happen then here is a government that seriously lacks in sense of proportion.

Peoples will never honor any order that would restrict their rights to voice their protests against misrule.

Therefore, instead of making a farce of its own order, it would be better for the administrators as well as for democracy to dismantle the Indira Gandhi Park and to restore it to its previous position of a democracy points.

When Capital of Orissa shifted to Bhubaneswar, the ground where Indiara Gandhi Park now stands was earmarked as the democracy point. It was reserved for democratic activities. The State Level ceremonial parades on occasion of the Independence Day and the Republic Day were taking place on this ground. When eminent leaders were addressing the peoples they were doing that on this ground. Prime Ministers beginning from Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi had addressed the peoples on this ground only. Similarly Leaders of Opposition beginning from the legendary communist leader A.K.Gopalan, who was the first recognized Leader of Opposition in India to the present leader of Opposition L.K.Advani had addressed the peoples on this ground. Leaders neither in power nor in the opposition benches of Parliament but in hearts of every Indian like Rajaji had addressed the peoples from podiums on this ground. This was the ground where aggrieved peoples of Orissa were voicing their concern and demonstrating their protests against bad governance and this was the ground from where peoples of Orissa were receiving informed signals to change administration in their State.

J.B.Patnaik, under whose rule in nineteen eighties, this ground had been umpteen times used by the peoples of Orissa as their lunching pad to send salvoes of protest against corruption and misadministration, had wanted obliteration of this excellent point of vigilant participation of the general public in democracy. The opportunity came to his hand when Indira was assassinated on going back from Orissa after delivering her last speech on this ground. His coterie proceeded immediately to destroy this ground of immortal memories and to extinguish every possibility of its future use by the vigilant public against misrule. In the name of creating crescent lake, profuse money was spent to remove soil from where now the water pool of BDA Nicco Park stands and to dump that soil on this ground to build up Park landscape. Money was looted both the ways; but the loss was nothing for the government to bother. Indiara Gandhi Park emerged on the deathbed of democracy on this ground.

Now when the government is planning to obstruct people from expressing their vigilant reaction on misadministration by putting a ban on use of the MGM by demonstrators, it would be better for officials to note that the government that had then declared to have ceremonial parades in the Kalinga Stadium or in a ground to be named Janata Maidan following conversion of this ground to the Indira Gandhi Park is not keeping to its decision and on the contrary, it is causing the parades on MGM as hinted to above.

So, it is time, the mischief behind creation of Indira Gandhi Park be reassessed and steps be taken to demolish it in order to restore this ground as the democracy ground where peoples as before would address and be addressed in matter of vigilant participation in democracy. It would be rather a befitting tribute to Indira who had delivered her last public address here.

The Forest Park is quite near to this spot and is enough to accommodate the visitors of Indira Gandhi Park.

Unless it is done, any attempt to deny peoples the right to voice their protests against misrule or to air their warnings to their government on basis of vigilant participation in democracy would be futile and lead to confrontation which would be dangerous to democracy.

So, demolish the Indiara Gandhi Park with Indira’s statue kept in tact to witness democratic participation of general public in keeping on leash an errant administration.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Hon’ble Chief Justice of India has termed “debatable” the issue of applicability of the Right To Information (RTI) Act to members of top judiciary.

Ever since the Supreme Court Registry had turned down an application in matter of disclosure of properties of Judges under the RTI Act, the issue has been simmering.

The Hon’ble CJ was once of the view that Judges being constitutional authorities could not be subjected to RTI act.

But again, to utter discomfort of all who love democracy and like to rely on judiciary, there are judges who in circumstances have contributed to creation of an environment that has made thinking minds in many spheres comprising even eminent jurists to say aloud that there is a necessity to make judges accountable.

The judges should place before the public very clearly the details of their properties and there should be every facility for the public to know how far their incumbency in judicial position affects their property position.

In this country the criminals are now ruling the roost and that with ever more rising ferocity. This is indicative of only the one factor that has dragged India to such sorry state and that is failure of administration of law.

So people to whom their country is more important than any other phenomenon has a right to know as to who of the public functionaries assigned with administration of laws has failed and how, where, under what circumstances and whether or not willfully.

Knowing and watching property position of judges would be helpful in this.

Plutocracy has already eclipsed our democracy and it has its tentacles in the guise of functionaries in all the organs of administration. So it is urgent for patriots to dig out as to who is a tentacle of plutocracy in which organ of our disadvantaged democracy.

Judiciary should cooperate in this and therefore should never shy at the RTI Act.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Notwithstanding different and rival geographical nationalities, human society has now become ‘global’.

A single factor is responsible for this. And, that is ‘industry’.

Industry has only one aim. That is ‘profit’.

Profit has two types of ‘utilization’.

When private operators – individual or corporate – own Industry, the profit goes to personal coffers for benefit of the private operator. When ‘Society’ owns Industry, profit goes to the State Exchequer for utilization in social welfare. The former phenomenon has its philosophical base in Political Economy of Capitalism and the later in Political Economy of Socialism.

Socialism as a social science has developed in seeking end of uncompensated exploitation of natural and human resources by private profiteers and with its emergence it has ushered in confidence in human beings for continued freedom from oppression.

Oppressive forces have conspired against the new order and their planted agents have sabotaged socialist countries from within in aggressive attempts at extinguishing the latest political light that shows ways for utilization of industrial profit in cause of social welfare instead of getting stored in the black chambers of individual coffers. And to their preening best, they have unilaterally declared that the world is now unipolar!

But what has happened to this unipolar world?

Amusing it is to note that the principal architect and highest leader of the unipolar world, US of America is in quagmire due to excesses of capitalism!

Anne D’Innocenzio, Business Writer of Associated Press gives glimpses of this when on Apr 29, 2008 he informs:

“Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.
“To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother’s dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms”.

The position is so precarious that policy-makers representing the Group of Seven free-market democracies after meeting in Washington have pledged “to purge capitalism of the excess that caused the latest crisis in financial markets” and “to finish much of the groundwork within 100 days and the rest by year-end”, reports Brian Love, European Economics Correspondent of Reuters on April 13, 2008.

But, quoting Geithner he says, it is “hard to do, complicated to figure out how to do it well”.

But capitalism cannot be purged of its excesses.

Notwithstanding lexical meanings, it stands for “competition to grab profit”.

In the perception of the profit grabbers, competition ushers in free-market and free-market upkeeps democracy. So to them, democracy is synonymous with free-market.

In a free-market the operators never compete to share the profit with the peoples or to pump in the profit to the public exchequer. Competition takes place only in order to generate more and more profit and to grab the same for personal use by the operators of industries.

For an instance, Mukesh Ambani’s 27-floor skyscraper tipped to be the costliest home in the world now under construction at Malabar Hill of south Mumbai attracts attention.

It is on records before Judiciary that the plot on which the house is being built belongs primarily to an Orphanage over which the Maharashtra State Wakf Board claims to be the custodian.

The state government’s steps to cancel the deed that has helped Ambani occupy the Wakf land was stayed by the Mumbai High Court in October 2007 and now the Supreme Court has rejected a plea against the HC order with observation that the HC is competent to decide the case.

Without any prejudice to judiciary’s role in the matter, it can safely be said that had industrial profit not been grabbed by Mukesh as personal property such a naked exhibition of individual opulence mocking at the wretched existence of majority Indians could not have mattered on the soil of India.

The judiciary can nullify the land transaction deed but cannot intervene in exhibition of opulence howsoever that may mock at the people of India perishing under poverty.

This unrestrainedly displayable opulence is a strong factor of industrial competition facilitated by free-market economy.

This competition therefore is competition amongst industry owners and traders to amass personal wealth by maximizing exploitation of natural and human recourses of the country where they operate.

Thus, when a small number of individuals amass huge volume of wealth, like the top 20 ‘rich Indians’ having amassed wealth equivalent to earning of 30 crore of (middle class) people of India as reported by PTI quoting Reserve Bank of India’s former Governor, Bimal Jalan on Jan 25, 2008, citizens of the citadel of capitalism, USA, as reported by AP, “are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates” to “meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills”.

It is not known as to what is perceived by leaders of free economy as “excess” of Capitalism that the imperialists want to purge out within 100 days; but this precarious condition to which the people have been pushed into is certainly an outcome of the excesses of capitalism.

And the situation is so very precarious, because any attempt to save people from unbearable cost of living would be resented to by industry owners as thereby the the quantum of profit they fetch may be affected, the policy makers also express fear that the purging would be “hard to do”, even “complicated to figure out how to do”.

What would happen if they fail to do what they want to do?

India has examples to offer.

She had, on her soil, in the past, around six hundred persons who were Kings and Emperors who had been exploiting the people and the soil to their personal advantage and displaying their opulence in form of massive palaces, even in tombs for their spouses like the Taj. They had made bards sing their glories and made poets write scriptures equating them with Vishnu, the celestial Lord.

Where are they now?

They are no more the Lords. No more the moving Vishnus.

People of India under guidance of the Communists, who, in many kingdoms had raised armed revolutions against the kings and emperors, at the summit of freedom movement, dethroned them and threw them into the dustbin of time.

That would happen, for sure, again in respect of owners of Industry all over the world if individual opulence remains its creed than welfare of human society.

Therefore, it can be said that the decision of Group of Seven Capitalist countries at Washington to purge the excess of capitalism is perhaps the last hope for their survival.

The sooner Indian Industry and advocates of free economy understand this phenomenon, the better for them that would be.

Termination of Nepal kingdom under leadership of the Communists is perhaps the last warning to private cofferists to understand the truth that notwithstanding who owns industries, profits are the creation of community and if community is denied to have necessary benefits out of that, whatsoever office stands on the way, the community must throw that away.

If immediate rescue from the quagmire is the aim, for the capitalist seeking their system purged of excesses of capitalism, Gandhiji’s Theory of Trusteeship, if adopted whole-heartedly, may grant them a temporary reprieve.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The Chief Minister and his cabinet colleagues are briefed by bureaucrats to show how the State has been paying attention to well-being of working class, which they may vouch for from podiums on occasion of the May Day.

I am not going to details of that.

I am not going to say how the number of unemployed persons has increased many folds and how industrial workers in Orissa are not receiving the minimum wages as prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act.

I am not going to say how more and more persons from different parts of Orissa are entering into the category of bonded labors and leaving their respective homes and families in search of avenues of livelihood in neighboring and far away States.

I am not going to show how victimized workers of various factories have been spending decades in labor courts in Orissa because of absolute inadequacy of labor courts vis-à-vis profuse rush of complaint and referred cases.

I am not going to say how labor officers, all over Orissa, after failure of conciliation, are abandoning all the cases in adjudication stage even though the same cases are based on their respective reports and leaving the tortured and illiterate workers to defend their respective stands against victimization all by themselves to the total advantage of touts and the employers.

I am not going to say how newspapers and NGOs are looting the State exchequer hand-in-glove with the official functionaries in the guise of awareness campaigns against child labor and I am not going to show how private employers having caught attention for torturing child labors under their employment have not been punished for their pernicious offenses in any case during Navinraj so far.

I am going to show you some pictures of how under the scorching sun and unbearable dehydrating heat the unorganized workers categorized under the law as casual labor are blacktopping Bhubaneswar roads with boiling liquid bitumen sans shoes on their feet, sans any apron on their body, sans any mask on their nose, sans any protective glass on their eyes, sans any drinking water in their workplace. Mark them.

If, as human beings, you feel that human beings should not be treated so inhumanly, rise to the occasion and take the authorities to task for having shown such blatant disregard to human life.

Let Navin Patnaik, the autocratic chief of the mischief of democracy in this part of the globe be warned that when the labor of Orissa reduced to a state of inanity by his pro-rich administration has the courage to kick at the hot bitumen with their bare feet under the scorching sun just to elk out a day’s living, what would happen if they decide one day to deal with whosoever is responsible for their present predicament.

May Day stands witness to victory of labor over exploiters.

Starting from the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 the exploiters have adopted innumerable Ravi Shankars to pacify the exploited all over the world. But the victory march of labor is surging ahead. Whatever welfare measures are drawn up and codified in any part of the globe are because of inherent ability of labor to unite against exploitation.

Against this backdrop, again you may peruse the pictures that show how workers are exploited in broad daylight in Orissa and you may advise the present rulers not to make a farce of May Day, but to cogitate if the workforce goes on being thus neglected, what would happen one day.