POWER FAMINE: BIJU TO NAVEEN

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Load-shedding or power-cut: call it in any term; the tormenting reality is that, people in Bhubaneswar are now forced to go without electricity for two hours every day. In rural areas where grey-shedding is a regular feature, total load-shedding exceeds 5 hours a day in most of the villages. Our earlier fear that Orissa is heading towards power famine is coming true.

In these pages of ORISSA MATTERS, we have several in-depth discussions on possible power famine with stress on how to avoid the debacle. But Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has never bothered about what we have said.

Now as the reality has so severely hit the State, it is necessary for the people of Orissa to know who has dragged them into this labyrinth of load-shedding.

To facilitate more and more people of Orissa understand the syndrome, I will put below one of my earlier discussions in Oriya as published in my column SINGHABALOKANA in Sambad a decade ago, portending the debacle of today.

They are scanned from my book of the same title. In the article I am to insert below, I have shown how for dubious reasons the then chief minister (father of the present CM) Biju Patnaik had dismantled the well-equipped and highly competent Orissa State Electricity Board and, hand-in-glove with the world capitalist syndicate, how had he privatized electricity in total disregard to the interest of Orissa. In this article a scam involving Biju was also exposed.

Peruse the article and know the saboteurs.