Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Professional aloofness displayed by physicians may not be found faulty; but the same in media is unfortunate and blatantly anti-people. Media must be the medium of public education in matter of management of the State.
Orissan media is oversaturated with fellows that pursue the only mission of ingratiating with the ministers, and bureaucrats whom ministers rely upon. Media houses in Orissa run mostly by economic offenders encourage their representatives in this mission so that powers that be may protect them at times of need.
This is why ruling BJD and Chief Minister’s blatant failure in protecting Orissa’s interest in matter of Polavaram project is not yet known to the people. Similarly the people have not yet known that this government is pushing the State into bankruptcy.
The State Finance Minister has told member Dillip Ray in response to his question, on 14th December that the loan of the State shall reach by the amount of Rs. 56,540.13 crores putting debt load on every citizen to the tune of about Rs. 14 thousand. This financial year itself shall be loaded with a loan amount of Rs.12, 800. 38 crores that surpasses all the previous borrowing records.
Loan for development is not unusual. But, the peculiarity in this is that, the State government is borrowing increasingly higher amounts year after year without any workable planning for repayment. It has already impoverished the State denuding her of valuable natural resources and reducing her to a greasing ground of avaricious anti-people non-Oriya industries; and more dangerously, by ruining the peasants’ confidence on self-employment in their traditional agriculture.
There is no easy way for the people to know if the borrowing is productively used and if so, why instead of repaying the loans the State has been borrowing higher amounts every year to reach the state of bankruptcy. Audit Paras on wrongful expenditure and loot of exchequer are galore; but no penal action against any offender is discernible. Why? Shouldn’t media come forward to focus on it?