OrissaMatters

Orissa observed Martyrs Day in a state level function in the premises of the Legislative Assembly with Governor Muralidhar Chandrakant Bhandare and Chief Minister Navin Patnaik recalling Gandhijis supreme sacrifice in the cause of freedom.

Organized by the Information & Public Relations department, the function was also addressed by the departmental minister and witnessed by members of Orissas Council of Ministers, MPs, MLAs, available freedom fighters and eminent invitees.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

It has always been a matter of happiness for me to watch in younger generation the eagerness for development of Mother Orissa, though some misguided ones amongst the youngsters are yet unable to accept that the present government run by Navin Patnaik is the most disgusting obstacle to development of the State post-independence.

In Navins misrule natives of Orissa are most disadvantaged whereas non-Oriyas have most benefited. Younger generation Oriyas, in rising numbers, are getting marked for their eagerness to change the scenario.

But in eagerness sometimes one becomes too rash to retain power of reasoning and squanders away valuable energy in non-issues. Therefore, addressing to peripheral issues should be discarded and fixation of priority on the clamant issue should be encouraged.

The clamant issue concerning Orissa is restoration of faith in the massive majority of our people in the Motherland.

Let us cast aside braggadocios and admit the reality that Navins misrule has dragged us to.

The reality is Oriya cultivators are distress-selling their paddies, Oriya girls are distress-selling their bodies, Oriya females are distress-selling their babies, Oriya males as bonded workers in far away provinces are distress-selling their capabilities, Oriya students are distress-leaving their studies, Oriya intellectuals are distress-selling their qualities even as in rural households, overwhelmed by lack of income avenues, people are thriving on mortgaging or distress-selling their ancestral properties.

How much percent of which segment are such degraded is not relevant; relevant is the fact that these are parts of the menace that has engulfed more then 99% of Oriya families as a whole.

Use of debit as well as credit cards in purchasing consumer items, notwithstanding presence of banks in every remote corner of the state, according to a survey covering last financial year in respect to Orissa is only 0.13%. Out of the credit card users, 95% are defaulters and the real income of credit card companies come from penal interest paid by the defaulters. I had interviewed a bunch of Credit Card recovery supervisors of various Banks stationed at Bhubaneswar in August last year. The above calculation is based on their versions as per recovery records with them.

Bank Cards, specifically the Credit Cards are suggestive of their users belonging to higher income groups. If the size of this group is so abysmally small and the volume of defaults so alarmingly high, there should be no exaggeration in saying that less then 0.13 % of our people are at best capable of addressing to their consumer needs, even though their credit cards often collapse due to default in repayment.

This had led me to take a survey of consumer patterns in stationary-cum-ration shops of Bhubaneswar. I had limited my survey to shops under Unit-1, Unit-6 and Unit-4 areas. I was astonished to see that all of the shops had long lists of monthly consumers. The term monthly consumer means, a person takes goods on credit through out the month and pays the accumulated price at the end of the month, mostly after getting his /her salary.

The people who make ready cash payments are hardly one in a thousand and they are mostly non-Oriyas.

I checked up with Sub-Registrar of Bhubaneswar and found, that 97% of the people who have purchased independent or apartment houses within last two years are non-Oriyas and the people who have sold away their lands and / or buildings are all Oriyas by birth.

This being the condition of Oriyas in Bhubaneswar, condition of our people in remote areas can be well guessed.

A search in these pages will reveal how the welfare funds have been looted during this regime. Administration has become ugly in every respect.

And, in such conditions, faith in the Motherland is naturally declining. It is therefore urgent to resurrect the faith of the people in the Motherland by making the Motherland relevant.

If we are to do this, we are to compel the government to see which action can resurrect the relevance of the State.

In that direction, three steps would be necessary. One, stoppage of land and mining allocation to non-Oriyas; two, provision or redistribution of land to every landless and marginally landed Oriya family with a ceiling at 5 acres and three, provision of irrigation to every inch of land. Within a decade our people shall have enough funds at their disposal to spread into any industrial activity on the strength of our own State.

Unless this is done, the days of future would be more turbulent and more violent.

Frustration of the commons cannot be capped. Mayhem would be a must.

And in the penultimate phase, electoral politics shall not stand with the capitalists, because howsoever unscrupulous be a politician, his or her survival in power shall depend on the majority and the majority shall always be the neglected / ill-treated commons.

Industry cannot save Orissa; only agriculture can. Priority cannot be put on two things at a time. Hence, let us forget everything except agriculture at the moment and let us employ all our force against all other activities than agriculture. Instead of draining out rivers to industries, let our priority be fixed on irrigation to every inch of land.

This must be the minimum target. After this is done, we can pay attention to development in other fronts.

Let the fellows who enjoy being sycophants of Navin and who believe that such sycophancy helps them having their sway on the Chief Minister by using which they can do some good to Orissa (a tact that they call positive approach to administration) pay their specific attention to this and test if they can succeed in prevailing upon him to correct the wrongs he has so far done to Orissa.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

In accepting the highest civilian honour of France, The Officer of the Legion of Honour, chief mentor of Infosys, N R Naryanamurthy, whose contribution to Indias excellence in IT world is unreservedly recognized by the motherland, has made a farce of Indian constitution by contravening it on the Republic Day.

The Legion of Honour is the highest civilian title of France that was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 by way of asserting his nationalistic superiority. Some other countries of aggressive background have also established orders or titles of their own in their own imagined honour and in order to make propaganda of their self-proclaimed superiority. Aware of this design of imperialistic countries, the Constitution of India has put a blatant ban on entering into this trap by any of the Indians. Article 18(2) of the Constitution of India has clearly promulgated this ban by saying, No citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State.
It is therefore a shame that Narayanamurthy has failed to honour Indian Constitution in his eagerness to honour the symbol of France superiority.

He should have refused the France offer of the Officer of the Legion of Honour with appropriate words in apprising them of our constitutional position; but he has perhaps no inclination for that.

When the Prime Minister has rendered the Preamble of our Constitution inconsequential by ushering in imperialism, when the central cabinet has made a farce of our Constitution by showing, as in the nuke deal matter, that instead of remaining answerable to the Parliament it can take it for granted and treat it as nothing but an approver of its actions, when the Supreme Court makes a farce of our constitution by making people feel that the government is not subordinate to the Parliament, what to speak of Narayanamurthy contravening Article 18(2) of the Constitution on our Republic Day!

Mother India, save yourself, if you can. We are more apt in betraying you than protecting your honour.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

India is now a plutocracy.

Our democracy is discarded under the carpet of the rich; it is now run by the agents of the rich, for the benefit of the rich.

Democracy is a system that belongs to the people, run by the people for the benefit of the people. When people have no role except accepting whatever decision is clamped on them from above, how can democracy survive?

All the political parties in India are controlled and run by coteries, not by collective wisdom of their cadres.

When in Congress a single person Sonia rules the roost, BJP is remote-controlled by the RSS.

Except the left parties, all the rest of the political parties are in fact personal outfits of aggressively ambitious and often unscrupulous autocrats.

And the left parties, in the guise of democratic centralism, have become so much Secretary-centric that initiative of individual members as well as base level branches no more attracts attention.

When the scenario in party level is so bleak, the Parliament has also been dragged down from the position of the rampart of sovereignty to a position of acquiescence to Government actions. Prime Minister Man Mohan Singhs treat of Parliament as a mere approver of his action, howsoever anti-nation be it, as in the case of nuke deal, is a pointer.

When our democracy has thus crumbled, our mind goes to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose words ignored, this deterioration has occurred.

On October 23, 1938, in National Front, Vol.1, No.36, he had said, If the individual members (he had said of Congress which meant the peoples political organization) lack initiative, the committees which they will form will also lack dynamism. In that event, democracy may prove to be a failure.

Emphasizing on dynamism of organizational committees of political parties in the base level for success of democracy, he said, If the initiative has to come from the top and not from the bottom, democracy may be well nigh reduced to totalitarianism.

How correct was he!

If you want your democracy back on track, hear him even now.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown�s hint to Knighthood for Sachin Tendulkar got a ready test of Indian taste in a debate on CNN-IBN show: Face the Nation, where desirability of English language in India also influenced the discussion.

A panel comprising historian Ramachandra Guha, former BBC correspondent Sam Miller and senior journalist Swapan Dasgupta enriched the debate on whether or not the knighthood to Sachin could be interpreted in the light of imperial / colonial hangover.

But the debate eventually went beyond the knighthood issue and embarked upon English elitism.

The show promoter�s website, IBNLive.com, reported on Jan.22, 2008 that the question on importance of English language became so hot that Guha had to admit that elite Indian�s anglicized manners and overdependance on English as principal medium of expression rather expose its inferiority complex, though, he said, �we should recognize that no relationship between a former empire and a former colony has been as harmonious as ours with Britain�. Miller preferred to observe, “The issue probably is not about colonial hangover anymore, but it is much more about a wider Western hangover, if you want to call it that�, even as Dasgupta, concluding the discussion had to comment that the �importance of English may have begun something as colonial but today the language is linked to economic advancement and opportunity. And that is something, which is very practical�.

This prompts us to observe that the panel has totally failed to focus on the real importance of English in Indian life.

We, in The NEWS Syndicate, had cogitated deeply as to whether publication of orissamatters.com in English would not adversely affect our commitment to everything Oriya; and, deliberately had decided that Oriya nationalism would not be affected by expression in English as thereby we would be duly acknowledging the invaluable contribution of English language to our freedom from English yoke.

Expression in English is neither indicative of our colonial hangover nor inferiority complex. It refurbishes our recollection that we had used this language to convince the majority of English speaking people as on why the English must leave our land.

If the British crown had to quit India notwithstanding knowing that thereby the Sun of its Empire would set forever, it was because of three principal factors: (one) methods of non-cooperation and non-violence as used by Gandhiji as weapons of his movement for freedom, (two) more and more of Indian commons and intelligentsia accepting Marxism as their creed and rise of matching communist militancy addressed to supplement Gandhiji�s movement in progressive prospective and (three) use of English language against the English Empire.

But had we not used English language as our medium to make the commons and lords of the English land apprised of our determination for self-rule, despite the active role of the first two factors, British Parliament would not have decided to quit India so soon. Had that not happened, the freedom movement would have been further prolonged. We would not have unfurled our free Flag in 1947. And, what could have happened after Gandhiji, had the British not quit in 1947 cannot be said for certain at this point of time. So, to say the least we owe our freedom from the British yoke to a large extent to English language.

This is why I had decided to admit my son to an English medium School. This is why The NEWS Syndicate, in deciding to float Orissa�s first online portal, had decided to make English the medium of expression in orissamatters.com.

So, English to us is not a foreign language; but is a friend. The British PM�s offer of Knighthood to Tendulkar may be refused by him or rebuked by Indians in the light of perception over imperial / colonial hangover. But, role of English language in India�s life should be kept above all questions.