Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Our intelligentsia is our asset. But there are scoundrels in our intelligentsia who support the foreign firm POSCO and oppose our people.
One need not be astonished. These types of people were also playing hosts to invaders in the past. Without people of these types East India Company could not have occupied India; Keshari kings could not have annihilated Buddhist Siddhacharyas and destroyed Bauddha Stupas of Orissa; Choda Ganga could not have captured Orissa and could not have dared to transform Sri Jagannatha from Buddha to Vishnu.
Time has changed from era to era. Power has changed hands. But scoundrels have never changed.
The syndrome called self-seeking motive
Scoundrels are scoundrels. Notwithstanding change in notions of time, notwithstanding change in pattern of education, notwithstanding change of people in power, there has never come a change in self-seeking motive and modus operandi of scoundrels.
Even in the modern world where class is determined by political economy they continue as a class beyond the realm of political economies! They are neither active nor passive participants in implementation of any of them; but in confusion, they prefer to brag like political cocks.
If their roles could be compressed into a single word, that word would be opportunism.
Opportunism
Opportunism is neither capitalism nor communism. It is a synonym of the habit of its practitioner to support whosoever has massive money notwithstanding non-existence of any chance of percolation of any of that money to the said practitioner.
Therefore opportunism is a method practiced by self-seekers, lacking in self-confidence and sense of security, to bask under an imagined elitism that perhaps psychologically stills their inherent sense of insecurity.
Cocooned
Born in an environment where their childhood was not secured, despite education acquired by consuming up state exchequer, they remain so cocooned in their phobia about poverty, that wherever they smell money, they rush in support of that, even though that goes against the interest of people, who, while perishing in poverty, had contributed their might to the exchequer on which their education was dependent.
Let scholars in psychology term them as they like, but we can, for the purpose of this write-up, call them opportunists.
Genuine citizenry against POSCO
Barring the people of this type, every genuine and responsible citizen has condemned the way Orissa government has been torturing our people to promote POSCO.
An instance of savagery
An instance of savagery of POSCO supporters has come on records with former Judge of Orissa High Court, Justice Choudhury Pratap Mishra narrating on December 10 how a sitting-in dharana by the affected people against the threat to their self-employed status was shattered as participants were severely injured at Dhinkia by bombs thrown at them from behind their back.
This is well on records that the people were there to express common grief over sequestration of their land by their own State government in order to satisfy the foreign firm.
A combine of State Police and POSCO goons threw bombs at the peaceful congregation from behind and severely injured many of the participants. The people could not even know that the deadly bombs were being thrown at them.
This brutality was meant to scare into silence the sons of our soil who have been peacefully raising their collective voice against their land being given away to the foreign firm.
Gandhian obtains impartial report
Responding to a request from a revered follower of Gandhiji, Smt. Annapurna Maharana, Justice Mishra had led a ten-member spot-study team of apolitical stalwarts of Orissa to the Balitutha area of Jagasinghpur where farmers are helplessly seeking protection of their traditional source of livelihood, their soil, from the pernicious avarice and grip of the foreign firm POSCO.
The team visited nerve centers of the area like Balitutha, Nuagan, Govindpur and Dhinkia and found that the Government is compelling farmers through its police to hand over their lands to the POSCO.
Spot study by Justice Mishra
On spot study it was found that the State police is terrorizing the people, not only by brute power, but also by instituting false cases.
The people of Balitutha area, the people of Gada Kujanga, Nuagan and Govindpur, are perishing under fear of police action even as the inhabitants of Dhinkia are shrinking under repression perpetrated by the state police and hired goons donning pro-POSCO attires under banners of the ruling party and colors of development.
Navin guilty of dividing people in POSCO interest
Naveen Patnaik’s contribution to Orissa’s development is not discernible. But very much discernible is the divide he has created amongst people of Orissa to provide POSCO with the muscles that it needs to grab our land.
It is sad that a part of Orissa’s intelligentsia is displaying pride in placing itself at the POSCO side of this divide.
Nothing better is expected of the scoundrels.