OrissaMatters

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

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.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

With this site exposing how Buddhists all over the world have failed to honor canonical instruction for paying homage to Gurudev Buddha in the place of his birth at least once in life, as they are misled by a historical mischief placing his birthplace in Nepal, there was a short-lived but acrimonious shrill of protest in a section of global media following which a new wave of academic activities has commenced flowing with incisive interest to find out if Orissa’s claim is correct.

We are sure, the truth must prevail and the future world shall surely accept Kapilavastu of Tosala, converted to present day Kapileswar near Bhubaneswar, as the real birthplace of Buddha; because that is his birthplace.

Intellectuals who are seriously pursuing this issue are active in different parts of the glove. One of these truth seekers is Sri Ajit Kumar Tripathy, an IAS officer, currently the Chief Secretary of Orissa. He has published two booklets on Buddha’s birthplace abridging the research work of late Pandit Chakradhar Mohapatra, who was the first to revive the status of Kapileswar as the birthplace Kapilavastu of Buddha.

Produced with clarity and in eloquent English, the two booklets, while acknowledging the contributions of Mohapatra, inasmuch as the author telling us that he “does not claim any original research on the subject of birthplace of Gautam Buddha but he has arranged the materials systematically often using the same language in the book of Sri Chakradhar Mohapatra” (preface to Goutam Buddha and Kalinga), it is clear from the steps Tripathy has taken that he has gone through the findings of Mohapatra quite seriously and juxtaposing them with materials and observations of eminent scholars beyond Mohapatra, has been convinced that yesterday’s Kapilavastu is today’s Kapileswar and therefore, by systematically abridging the arguments Mohapatra in his two booklets has advanced, he has added authenticity to his finding.

Students of history all over the world would be glad to note that Tripathy’s step is a positive step towards making history arrive at the truth in the matter of Orissa being Buddha’s birthplace.

As initiator of global debate in this matter we offer our thanks to Mr. Tripathy.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Now I am not going to tell you how manufacturers of fake medicines have enjoyed political patronage when Navin Patnaik has been running the State Government.

I am not going to tell you how contractors have hijacked welfare projects under the umbrage of administration.

I am not going to tell you how with official help looters have ruined the Health System Development Project for which the State had obtained loan from the World Bank

I am not going to tell you how social auditors have held the State Government responsible for embezzling of public exchequer by persons in power.

I am not going to tell you how the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has unveiled massive misappropriation of official funds by functionaries in different departments under Navin Patnaik’s regime.

I am not going to tell you how Navin Patnaik has shown eager interest in handing over Orissa’s mineral and other natural resources to non-Oriya and even non-Indian business operators when about 70 percent of the children of this soil are perishing sans land and livelihood.

I am not going to tell you how underworld has built up nexus with the police and how mafia is ruling the roost.

I am not going to tell you of this; because, you know all this and much more.

I am going to tell you how Navin Patnaik Government is playing havoc with human life by willfully killing the Laws of the land. And, I will place only a few examples.

We all know that bio-medical waste is very harmful to human health. For its management and handling, a specific set of Rules, called The Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1998 has been framed and enforced.

Under Rule 4 thereof,

“every occupier of an institution generating bio-medical waste which includes a hospital, nursing home, clinic, dispensary, veterinary institution, animal house, pathological laboratory, blood bank by whatever name called, is to take all steps to ensure that such waste is handled without any adverse effect to human health and the environment”.

Bhubaneswar is the capital city of the State. The main hospital of this city is the Capital Hospital. It has overcrowded wards in almost all streams of human health. General Surgery to Orthopedics to Dental to Gynecology to Gastroenterology to Pediatrics to contagious diseases- every ward is overcrowded by indoor patients. It has Operation Theaters – general and departmental- minor and major; it has pathological labs and blood bank and it generates massive bio-medical waste everyday. It stands on the road traversed daily by Chief Minister Navin Patnaik between his residence and the Secretariat. His party headquarters stands adjacent to this hospital. How does it handle the bio-medical waste? The picture placed below should tell you that.

The hospital has kept broken the western side of its compound wall through which the waste is shunted out into the open space touching the public road and as rag-pickers jump on to it in search of used syringes and transmission pipes etc that find buyers in the recycling racket, the concerned staff sets fire to the waste deposits. The smoke spreads clouds of obnoxious smell all over the adjoining locality.

If this is how the bio-medical waste is handled by the Capital Hospital, I think, you can easily grasp what havoc Navin Patnaik government is playing with human health in other parts of Orissa.

But such mismanagement of bio-medical waste is not the only hazard that human society has been subjected to under the Navin regime. Deliberate massacre of civil health Laws such as the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000 (hereinafter called the 2000 Rules) and the Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003 (hereinafter called the 2003 Act) are some of the instances of how Navin has been running a nonchalantly anti-people administration.

The 2000 Rules referred to above stipulates under Rule 7,

“any municipal solid waste generated in a city or a town, shall be managed and handled in accordance with its compliance criteria and the procedure laid down in Schedule II”.

This Schedule has given elaborate instructions on how to manage and handle the waste.
But there are also prohibitions imposed by this Schedule.

In the Compliance criteria, the basic instruction in the matter of collection of municipal solid waste is stipulated with the words, “littering of municipal solid waste shall be prohibited in cities, towns and in urban areas notified by State Government”.

And, under criterion (vii), the stipulation is, “waste shall not be burnt”.

How this criterion is raped naked is discernible in the picture already placed above.

But the picture below, which is just a sample of what is happening, would show you how solid waste is littered in every busy lane of the city and allowed to lie like that sine die.

Would you like to know where the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) dumps whatever solid waste it collects?

See the picture below. It is a School premise.

See further.

In every open space between buildings of sophisticated colonies, solid waste is dumped like this by the BMC.

Obnoxious?

Leave the open space and come to the roadside. See the picture below. See how deliberately civil waste is deposited by the BMC on the side of a major road adjacent to the residence of the State Governor.

Who rules over BMC? It is the ruling coalition of Orissa, BJD and BJP. The capital city being the citadel of commission agents nothing else could have been possible specifically as at the time of election to this urban body, Navin Patnaik as Chief Minister had the advantage to use his might in favor of the coalition candidates.

To show how massive is the might of administration, the BMC, supported by the Government in the General Administration (GA) Department and Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), has razed down hundreds of shops including temples alleged to have grown on government lands notwithstanding the facts that these lands have no suitability for any other use than for what they were being used and has smashed thousands of cottages in various slums.

That the slum clearance in certain cases was carried out with a motive to free the land for allocation to mafia under different guise is strongly suspected by the very fact that affected people have recaptured the concerned plots when concerned authorities had been looking at that act of retaliation but were keeping mum lest their hidden design gets fully exposed.

The pictures below would show how the shops have been razed down at different parts of the city.

These shops constituted the life-spring of the localities. The city being a nasty nest of the rich has no concern for the lower middle class and poor people who live here and/or visit this place from out side daily in search of livelihood. The star hotels and emporiums are too sophisticated for them to step in. For them the roadside shops are the only solutions.

If the authorities were sincere in their approach, they should have regularized the shops instead of demolishing them by subjecting them to beautification programs, if any, of the city.

But the purpose seems vitiated by unannounced motives.

Aggressively avaricious persons have golden days during the present days. Givers and takers of bribe know that money shall play the magic if authorities build up kiosks on the roadsides. Demolition of existing shops on the roadsides in the guise of termination of encroachments is therefore being suspected as a facilitator program. If extrication of government land from encroachment would have been the program of the authorities, the encroachment on the most sensitive plot of land in front of the residence of the Governor could not have been ignored.

The following pictures depict just a sample of the cobweb of encroachment that the rich and powerful weave around government plots in the capital city.

The land shown in these pictures is the most valuable land of the locality standing in front of the residence of the Governor. An IAS officer then in service had acquired the prime plot in front of the Governor’s house in a dubious way. This land, marked in a government document as land for a petrol pump, was in the area earmarked for government use. He had used his official influence to convert the land to a private residential plot and he was the only person to build up a private house in the official housing zone. In three sides of this plot, in east, west and north, there were vacant government lands surrounded by roads. He soon encroached upon the eastern side and built up an extended house. A powerful politician has allegedly acquired this land after demise of the retired IAS officer and soon has set his grip over the government land lying vacant in the northern side. The method used to tighten the grip is remarkable. Official staff surrounded the land with iron grills one day and then seedlings were planted to present a picture of official care of the vacant place. As the seedlings grew, the barbed wire fences of the existing house were removed and thus the cobweb of encroachment expanded. The authorities that have cleansed roadside shops and temples in the guise of extricating government lands from encroachment have never bothered to stop encroachment of prime plots by the rich and powerful.

But the way the government as well as the BMC have willfully raped the 2003 Act is indicative only of how badly anti-people a government has grabbed Orissa.

Thousands of milkmen flocking into the capital city with cows and buffalos having made human life very unsafe by putting up cowsheds on encroached government lands in every nook and corner of the city, specifically as a number of police personnel guarding the Assembly in session succumbed to brain malaria as a result of mosquito bite, the cowsheds being the main breeding centers of mosquitoes, the Orissa Legislative Assembly took a prompt but strong decision and enacted the 2003 Act, enforcing therein a blatant ban on cow/buffalo/goat keeping in and around the municipal area of Bhubaneswar.

The Milk Producers Association, Orissa (hereinafter called Gowalas) moved the High Court of Orissa seeking nullification of this Act in their respect, with expressed willingness to shift their sites if regular allocation of land elsewhere in the city is made in their favor for enabling them to continue their trade. The High Court rejected their plea and made it clear that the 2003 Act is just, proper, legitimate and substantive in context of urban management.

In Civil Appeal No. 940 of 2006 the Gowals moved the Supreme Court of India to intervene. The State Government, in response to this Appeal, had stressed on the thrust of this Act where it “prohibits keeping of animals in the premises so as to be nuisance or danger to any persons besides having other stringent conditions with regard to keeping the cows and buffalos within the city limits of Bhubaneswar” to which the Court had fully agreed and rejected the appeal of the milkmen.

Taking the 2003 Act as an Act that “aims at maintenance of health and hygienic condition amongst the residents of the town of Bhubaneswar” the Supreme Court recapitulated its 3-Judge Bench judgment in (2004) 9 SCC 362 where it had observed,

“the power under the Act cannot be treated as a power simplicitor, but it is a power coupled with duty. It is the duty of the State to make sure the fulfillment of conditions or direction under the Act. Without strict compliance, right to environment under Article 21 could not be guaranteed and the purpose of the Act will also be defeated”.

Citing Friends Colony Development Committee v. State of Orissa case, the Supreme Court relied upon its own 2004 decision therein where it had observed,

“Not only filth, stench and unhealthy places have to be eliminated, but the layout helps in achieving family values, youth values, seclusion and clean air to make the locality a better place to live”.

The 2003 Act having bestowed upon the State government a duty to ensure a safe environment free of filth, stench and unhealthy places, the Supreme Court not only appreciated the provisions therein prohibiting cow keeping in the city limits, but also ordered that the Gowalas cannot be allowed to operate even in the periphery of the town.

The Gowalas submitted that the State government had earlier proposed to rehabilitate them in places outside the core sector of the city of Bhubaneswar and so the State should be directed to rehabilitate them in the periphery of the city before eviction.

The Supreme Court also rejected this plea.

“As by reason of the Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, within the periphery of the town, dairies or cowsheds cannot be maintained, the State would not be entitled to adhere to its earlier plan of rehabilitating them in the villages mentioned therein”,

it ordered.

Even if they offer to pay for the plots, they cannot be rehabilitated in and around Bhubaneswar City, the Supreme Court decided. It decided,

“only because they are agreeable to pay for the plot which may be allotted to them, that by itself in our considered view would not clothe them with the legal right to be rehabilitated”.

The above decision of the Supreme Court was delivered on 02 February 2006. But till now the Navin Patnaik government has not evicted a single milkman form the Bhubaneswar City.

In every unit and locality of Bhubaneswar the milkmen have encroached upon lucrative vacant plots and have been playing havoc with the lives of the local public.

Now mark the two pictures placed below. They depict the picture of encroachment on a prime plot as large as half an Acre of land in the heart of Unit 6 by a single milkman. The picture taken on 15 Nov. 2004 shows that the milkman had built up two sheds, one for his family and the other for the cows. The picture taken on 19 April 2008 shows how the same milkman has expanded his empire by adding three more cowsheds to his earlier one.

Brilliant scribe Bibhuti Mishra and his equally bright wife Rubi, residing then in the government quarter close to the cowshed, succumbed to acute environmental pollution caused by accumulated cow dung, filth and stench generated by the cowshed.

After we discussed the devastation in these pages, the Government has constructed compound walls around the quarters standing at both the sides of the ever-expanding cowshed as you may see from the following picture.

Why the Government is protecting the milkmen and allowing them to expand their empires to the total impairment of hygienic environment of Bhubaneswar in blatant contravention of the Act it framed and promulgated in 2003, that too in stark disregard to the Supreme Court decision discussed supra?

As we have expressed our inclination to rely on hearsay information, the concerned functionaries of this Government are collecting bribe at the rate of Rs.2000 per cowshed every month and thus, there being 2000 milkmen in Bhubaneswar, there is a 2000 X 2000 = 40,000,00 of Rupees illicit income reaped every month by persons who are in positions to halt operation of the Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003.

How do you rate this government?