DEFEAT POLITICAL HYPOCRISY

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Political hypocrisy is the worst enemy of democracy. Plutocracy has engulfed our democracy only because of political hypocrisy. The rich and the agents of the rich are contesting elections and on occupying Parliamentary floors, are framing rules and running administration for benefit of the rich.

More numbers of multi-millionaires and dreaded criminals than ever before are in the fray. This is election 2009!

Rarely independently but mainly from party-platforms they are contesting to represent our people in various constituencies.

Most of our peoples in any constituency are wretchedly poor, illiterate and innocent; but they are not multi-millionaires and / or dreaded criminals.

So, the contesting candidates and the majority of the electorate belong to two distinctly different classes.

How the class of multi-millionaires and dreaded criminals can represent our peoples that in majority comprise the wretchedly poor, illiterate and innocent?

They, in fact, will not represent our people, but will be elected as the representatives of our peoples, because they will get the votes, as the voters have no other choice than Hobson’s choice.

Our peoples have always tried to get rid of the meretricious politicians. They have changed Governments. But they have not been able to change the scenario of presence of these fellows in the political forums. Because political hypocrisy has always made them hoodwinked.

JP derailed people’s determination

As for example, when our peoples had woke up against Congress misrule and had relied upon J.P.Narayan to bring in the alternative, all the fellows, who were in the Congress party and when in power had indulged in such corruptions that the Congress party had appeared anti-people, had left the Congress and joined the JP movement and formed the Janata Party. When they fought against the Congress under the banner of this Janata Party, peoples voted the same corrupt and anti-people politicians again by believing that they were voting against the Congress!

JP was credited with fathering the first non-Congress Government in India; but in reality he had fathered a new era of political hypocrisy wherein the corrupt elements of Congress had congregated to contrive new masks for themselves that would look like non-Congress and to form, if possible, a government that would cover up their past offenses against the country and further their self-interests.

Thus, under the wave of this hypocrisy, the master practitioner of nepotism, Morarjee Desai, whose son Kantibhai had shown how an offspring of a person in power could materially prosper, had become the Prime Minister, even though his shameless practice of nepotism in the past had made major contributions to loss of credibility of the Congress.

Political hypocrisy of JP had helped all the known practitioners of corrupt practices in the country, because of whom, in course of time, the Congress had been branded as a corrupt party, to acquire credibility as leaders of “non-Congress” politics.

One such was Orissa’s Biju Patnaik.

In his first phase of his incumbency as Chief Minister, he had corrupted Orissa administration so crudely that Congress had to oust him from his post around three years ahead of when his term should have normally ended.

There were many investigations against him; but with the help of Atulya Ghosh who as Congress treasures was in know of such facts that could have embarrassed the Prime Minister, he succeeded in preempting criminal prosecutions.

Despite Cabinet Sub-Committee and CBI reports against him and despite evidences of how India had suffered humiliation in the Chinese aggression because of his treachery, no penal action was taken against him.

But the peoples of Orissa had not pardoned him. They had not only refused to support him in the next election, but also had punished the Congress party, as its Government had not instituted any criminal prosecution against Biju.

Till even 1977 he was kept rejected. JP’s political hypocrisy had revived him.

Once fallen in his trap, peoples of Orissa were getting so disgusted because of his misrule that they were rejecting him at least for two subsequent terms. So, after a win obtained though the JP generated confusion in 1977, he was rejected in subsequent two elections. And, after two terms of rejection, when internecine subterfuge that Basant Biswal had cooked up against J.B.Pattanaik had destabilized the Congress Government, Biju had grabbed the opportunity to capture power; but as always the peoples of Orissa had woke up to oust him again from office, which he had not been able to gain back till he breathed his last.

He was the embodiment of political hypocrisy that has ruined our peoples. When he was alive and was in power I had, in public interest, exposed this hypocrisy by bringing into public gaze relevant evidences through my column Singhavalokana (animadversion) in the pages of Orissa’s top-ranking broadsheet Sambad. Scanned copies thereof are available in saubhasya.com and an e-compilation is available through http://thenewssyndicate.com/store/ and a print edition thereof is also published by Orissa’s eminent publishing house, Bharata Bharati, Gajapati Nagar, Sutahat, Cuttack.

But with his demise political hypocrisy has not died. His son Navin Patnaik has taken over the mantle of political hypocrisy. He is hoodwinking poor peoples through machinations of subsidized rice in order to bag votes in this election even though it is he who had sloughed over the pogrom perpetrated on the poorest of poor tribal peoples of Orissa at Kalinganagar when the TATA company was facing stiff resistance from them in taking away their dwelling soil.

In trying to defend his chief minister position, he has activated a scheme to supply rice at the rate of Rs. 2 a Kg to peoples bellow the poverty line when, in fact, his obsessive support to private industrial houses has pushed even self-employed cultivators of Orissa into dire poverty.

In this game of political hypocrisy, both Navin and the Congress party led by Sonia Gandhi are great collaborators.

The Central Government led by the Congress party is feeding the media with sumptuously funded advertisements to project that rice supply in this low rate is possible, because Prime Minister Man mohan Singh has allowed subsidy worth Rs.11 per Kg of rice for the poor peoples.

On this premise, Congress claims, Navin cannot claim credit entirely for himself.

Two-rupees-rice a ploy

It seems, both BJD and Congress are competing with each other in claiming credit for supply of rice in low price to the poor. But this difference is a stage-managed one to keep beyond easy public gaze their collaboration in protecting the interests of rich men.

BJD MP B.Panda Bilks Rs.32,000 crores
as BJD and Congress Act Together

As for example, together they have helped a rich politician of Orissa, Baijayant Panda, bilk the exchequer of Rs.32, 000 crores, an amount that far exceeds the amount spent on subsidy for rice.

Both Navin Patnaik and Man Mohan Singh have their own role in giving the benefit to Panda, who, otherwise, should have been forced to pay huge sum to Banks whose loans were standing unpaid.

After the matter was exposed, Panda had cited many instances of waiving up of Bank loans to huge numbers of greater defaulters at the discretion of the Government.

This shows that the Governments, both under Navin Patnaik and Mon mohan Singh are in habit of helping defaulters bilk the exchequer of several thousand crores of Rupees through organized waivers on Bank loans while trying to divert public attention from that by publicly competing with each oher to show as to how they have helped the poor in subsidizing the price of rice.

This is happening because under political hypocrisy, both Navin and Man mohan are shrewd partners, whose outwardly different but inwardly confluent purpose is serving the capitalists at the cost of the poor; to quote the latter’s Goebbles Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi in nuke deal context, “come what may”.

But why the other political parties that are contesting against BJD and Congress in Orissa are not raising the issue of this massive loot of exchequer on Panda’s account? Were it raised, the people, whose poverty is being used by Navin and Man mohan to pose as redeemers on the basis of subsidy on rice price, could have at least got a chance to compare the benefit they are getting vis-à-vis the benefit granted to a single industrialist.

This was essential in the context of the ensuing election. It even might have prompted peoples to reject the pro-poor picture both the BJD and the Congress are presenting of themselves. And perhaps, it could have helped the non-BJD, non-Congress parties. But why are they silent?

Their silence is factored by extended political hypocrisy.

Even the Communists co-operate

The BJP being the party of the Indian traders, it is not expected of it to discuss the Panda loan-waiver issue. In Orissa context, other parties, except the Communists, are yet to show that they are to be seriously taken. Then, why the Communists are silent?

This is because; the Communists have sided with the patron of POSCO in Orissa, Navin Patnaik!

They have, in fact, distress-sold their support to Navin as except him nobody in Orissa was financially sound to open his purse in the brothel of electoral ambition.

But they are hiding the truth and projecting this dating with the BJD autocrat as their contribution to curb communalism. This is another instance of political hypocrisy that affects our democracy.

Political Parties are required to run on political economies. Communalism does not constitute political economy. It is a cultural perversion that every political party in India is vitiated with. This perversion is produced by faith in God. Faith in God is created by inherent sense of insecurity. Sense of insecurity is generated by economic instability. Economic instability is shaped by private ownership of means of production. Private ownership of means of production is ensured, encouraged and enforced under political economy of capitalism. As long as capitalism is not defeated, communalism cannot be defeated. To support a factor of capitalism under plea of opposing communalism is a political folly that the communists have now fallen into under the canopy of extended political hypocrisy.

This hypocrisy needs be defeated. This is needed to save our democracy.