Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
All of the one hundred and forty persons who have died due to Cholera and other water-borne diseases in Orissa and the 667 persons that are hospitalized being affected by the unrelenting epidemic are wretchedly poor fellows belonging to the undeveloped districts of Rayagada, Nabarangpur, Nuapada, Koraput, Kalahandi and Malkangiri, where welfare funds are habitually hijacked by ruling party hoodlums and bureaucrats who share their booty with politicians in power leaving people in the grip of continuous slow starvation.
Continuous slow starvation has destroyed their body immunity though health department officials hold that dependence on village streams for drinking water is the root cause of the epidemic. Even the administrative authorities of the affected districts admit that the infected villages have no dependable dug well whereas tube wells, wherever installed, are so sub-standard that they not functioning as a result of which people are forced to drink from the streams ignorant of how contaminated is their water.
Were the doctors and the administrative executives been honest, steps could have been taken to ascertain as to whether or not loss of people’s physical immunity due to continuous slow starvation has helped Cholera takes its toll. But the confession of the authorities that the epidemic is caused by contaminated stream water confirms that Navin Patnaik’s government has not paid attention to drinking water needs in the undeveloped districts.
Navin Patnaik brand of development has caused shift of priority from people’s welfare to benefit of POSCO and Vedanta and the likes. Consequently it has made administration so apathetic to needs of the common man that people in slow starvation are dieing due to want of potable water.