Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Orissa Government spends from the State Exchequer handsome amount every year in organizing a festival of classical music in the premises of the famous Rajarani temple at Bhubaneswar. The concept had developed for the sole purpose of exhibiting Orissa’s vocal classicism by attracting classical music exponents from other parts of the country to Orisssi Music that is by birth a classical music but yet to be recognized as such by the music world.
Navin Patnaik’s anti-Oriya orientation has ruined this purpose this year as the contractors of culture picked up by his administration, have deliberately kept Orissi Music away from display and participation in this festival.
Navin has become a cultural embarrassment to Orissa as despite in power for around a decade,he is unable to converse in Oriya.
Though born to Biju Patnaik, he was not living with his father in Orissa.
However, when Biju died, his sycophants, a pack of politicians having no distinct political economy as their creed and dragged out of power in the preceding election, had stumbled upon Navin in the funeral function of their leader and as mafias instinctively act, had cooked up a strategy to regain power by netting in obituary sympathies to the ballot boxes.
The idea clicked and BJD formed, Navin eventually became the CM.
Once in power, he became convinced that the BJD members were in politics because of the posthumous grace of his father and so he has developed the fancy of looking at them as mere subjects of Bijudom that he wrongfully believes Orissa is.
He has taken Orissa for granted and refused to pay any heed to the voice of Oriya hearts.
Under such circumstances, in the administration, the persons that have no commonality with the peoples of Orissa – the contractors and the mine mongers and the land grabbers – are having their presence felt more than the children of the soil.
The contractors have penetrated so much into the system that cultural events with tourism potentials like the State run Rajarani Music Festival are being organized through these fellows notwithstanding how adversely that affects the purpose.
There is a department of Tourism and Culture under a Cabinet Minister and two senior IAS officers as Commissioner-cum- Secretaries of both the wings and an army of employees under several Secretaries starting from Deputy Secretaries to Additional Secretary-cum-Director.
What these fellows were doing that they could not organize the music festival themselves? When the State pays, where was the difficulty for the departmental officers to organize the event?
It is clear that Navin Patnaik is unable to put these fellows to work as a result of which the State-funded Music Festival was assigned to a set of contractors of culture like the BMC. More damaging than that is the fact that these contractors were given absolute independence to act as they liked and were allowed even to sabotage the only purpose for which the State Exchequer was to spend so much money for the festival.
We have no adequate words to condemn the contempt shown to Orissi Music and the sabotage perpetrated on the core purpose of the festival.