ORISSA GOVERNMENT USES CENTRAL FUNDS TO SLOW-POISON SCHOOL KIDS

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Vigilance Police of Orissa estimates, government has caused a corruption worth at least 500 crores INR in supply of Dal to the School kids under the Midday Meal (MDM) scheme and Supplementary Nutrition Program (SNP).

The corruption is so severe that ruling party stalwart Debashis Nayak had to raise the issue before the media following which, as a skin-saving measure, vigilance was engaged to enquire into the alleged corruption.

As the corruption was unearthed in test investigations conducted in only four districts, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has tried to take the district Collectors to task in the Collectors’ conference on January 21. His father Biju Patnaik had formulated the tactics of shifting responsibility to officials when, under his regime of misrule, corruption had engulfed Orissa. He had called upon the people to physically assault the officials for failure in administration, though the anarchy Orissa was reeling under was generated by his whimsical steering of the state. His tactics was ill-famed as Mada Tattwa (Theory of thrashing the officials). To what extent anarchy had hit Orissa is yet remembered for the attack on Biju himself by members of the Secretariat staff and subsequent refusal of mandate to him in the elections. Hence, the CM’s attempt to lay blame on the Collectors in the Dal scam is being seen as an attempt to shift responsibility in the pattern that industrious Biju had invented.

However, the fact as seen by the vigilance police shows that worm-eaten, rotten and inedible Harad dal adulterated with poisonous Khesari that unscrupulous factory operators even do not dare to use for producing animal and poultry feed, are supplied to schools and anganwadis for consumption by the human kids. And, it is apprehended that the substandard dal, which may cost at best 25 rupees per Kg is supplied at Rupees 75!

More harmful than the massive money swindled in the name of social welfare is the slow-poison given to school kids in the name of MDM and SNP for months and years by the administration run by Naveen Patnaik.

It would be shameful if this harmful corrupt government is allowed to breathe and continues in power to manipulate and tamper with evidences in this crime against the school going kids.