Orissa Matters

Case Against Mili Panda Rejected As Unproved

Shubhasree @ Mili Panda, wife of revolutionary Sabyasachi Panda, whom, despite nullification of cognizance against her in a court at Banpur by the High Court of Orissa, the State administration had denied fresh air and kept hostage under the guise of a cooked up case in Gunupur, has been release on Tuesday as the prosecution could not produce any evidence in support of its accusation.

Coming out of the jail, Ms. Panda has exposed the inhuman condition prevailing in the prisons. The government is not keeping them useable for human beings. If any funds for repair or maintenance might have ever come, it must have been misappropriated, she has remarked.

Proud wife of a revolutionary, she has no grief over her husband’s underground condition. “He is a very good man, addressed to well-being of people and protection of their interest from the clutches of the corporates and exploiters and has willingly adopted the path of suffering for the silent majority. I am proud of him”, she has said.

She informed that despite the court oder, she does not feel safe as the administration has obtained yet another warrant of arrest from another court to continue its repression, in order to force her husband surrender.

The Supreme Court of India, in an order on 23 March 2012, has served a notice on the State government seeking answer within eight weeks as to why should it not be asked to compensate her for illegal detention.

Abduction of Italian in Orissa; Issue Involves Human Rights Not Only of the Foreigner, But Also of Hundreds of the Oriyas

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The abductors of two Italians – one of whom has already been released – in Kandhamal of Orissa, can be condemned for contravention of human rights in their respect.

But, the three demands the abductors have projected as prerequisite to release of the other one from their hostage raise a question as to whether human rights of greater number of people of Orissa violated by the State, deserve equal attention and care or not.

The soil of Orissa has bathed in blood many a times by police bullets in the name of Naxal encounters. But that the police had coined cases of false encounter to cover up killing in cold blood whosoever was found disadvantageous to misrule, has been established by findings of Courts and Human Rights Commission. To honor the victims’ Human Rights at least posthumously, the abductors have demanded that, the police officials involved in those false encounters be prosecuted against and punished.

To keep people intimidated in order to stop any voice rising against exploitation and misrule, hundreds of them are thrown into jails under charges of being Naxals or their sympathizers. The courts have held that the cases lodged against them were false cases and ordered for their release. Yet the police has kept them under detention. The abductors have demanded that innocent and illiterate people thus victimized by the State be released immediately and compensated.

The third most emphasized demand of theirs is release from jails of the supporters of Naxalism as people have every right to support the political economy they deem most suitable for betterment of the country.

Do these demands not demand attention of human rights activists all over the world who really are honest in their purpose?

Kejriwal’s Tirade of Abuse Hurled at Indian Parliament is a Game that Plutocrats Play

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Indian Parliament, which has not yet been able to codify its privileges, had to hear vociferous harping on about its privilege breached by anti-corruption campaigner Arvind Kejriwal in attributing non-materialization of the Jan Lokpal Bill to its being a House of criminals, to whom the Bill cannot but be an anathema.

Cutting across party lines, members wanted punishment for Kejriwal for the tirades of abuse he had hurled at the rampart of democracy.

The Speaker, however, tactfully closed a short-duration discussion, propelled by debates on Monday, on Tuesday with remarks that any comment detrimental to dignity of Parliament was “unwarranted and unacceptable”.

Had it any impact on Kejriwal?

No.

To him, the House should have addressed itself to introspection instead of spending so much energy on reaction to his remark.

As 162 of its members are charged with heinous crimes, it would not be surprising if the Jan Lokpal Bill does not materialize, he claims to have said.

When reasoning out as to why the anti-corruption bill is not materializing in the Parliament is not a direct disrespect shown to the Parliament, it cannot be overlooked that the inordinate delay in bringing out the law is enhancing credibility of a combine that has no real agenda for eradication of corruption.

We are sure, adoption of the Bill and creation of the so-called Jan Lokpal will not end or even control corruption in India.

As long as right viruses rule the roost, corruption shall continue to grow; because corruption is a method that adopters of Political Economy of Inequality – the plutocrats – use to stay safe and to prosper.

So, the opposite economy i.e. the Political Economy of Equality is the only way to curb corruption.

Kejriwal and his forum, the so-called Anna team, do not subscribe to Political Economy of Equality.

So, we suspect, they are just a combine that acts to divert mass awakening against corruption by promoting an environment that does not encourage evolution of Political Economy of Equality as the pivot of Indian progress.

Passive resistance to corruption is no resistance; because no corruption is passively practiced. It is aggressively practiced by self-seekers and therefore, its eradication entirely depends on aggressive attack on factors of corruption. The so-called Anna team and its so-called Gandhian way is not for aggressive attack and hence, is, in reality, against eradication of corruption.

The corrupt fellows that have ruined India have been enhancing credibility of this shrewd combine, so that the masses of India, who are waking up against maladies the country is suffering from, can be misled by this team to accept corruption as the substitute to corruption in the same way the people had accepted the Janata conglomerate as substitute to the Congress government, misled by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s.

It would be wrong not to remember that when sporadic but aggressive protests against economic inequalities and exploitation were in the rise and the people suffocated due to corruption in every sphere of administration were in massive numbers joining the protests, Anna Hazare, with a Gandhi cap, was all on a sudden projected by corporate media as the new Gandhi capable of freeing the country of corruption and the most corrupt team so far to have taken over power, led by Dr. Manmohan Singh, had rushed to Anna in a way that only enhanced his credibility in public eyes exactly as Indira Gandhi had enhanced JP’s credibility by accepting him as the greatest political arbitrator, by forcing out of office her party’s Chief Minister of Gujarat Chimanbhai Patel on 9 February 1974 at his instance. But that, JP was not really against corruption manifested when the same Chimanbhai, after being expelled from the Congress on corruption charges, became the chief architect of a government by Janata Morcha that took oath on 18 June 1975. This Janata Morcha was so corrupt that it could not even complete one year in office and on 12 March 1975, its life had ended leading to rebirth of a Congress government in the state.

So, the corrupt government of Manmohan Singh inviting Anna to draft a Bill for the Lokpal of his concept, a group of elite of no unquestionable track records emerging as members of Anna team, the extra-constitutional drafting of the Bill fetching official collaboration through joint sessions of the so-called Anna team with committee of central ministers, the deliberate official delays in consideration thereof to give the Anna team required situations to consolidate its credibility as the real crusader against corruption by insisting on its ready adoption, the rabid right-wingers rallying behind him, denigration of Parliament by a Mumbai mainstream actor from Anna’s hunger-strike podium, Kejriwal’s tirades against MPs, barren reprimands behind his back in the house melting in a ruling of no action against attributing mala fide motive to Parliament and willful attempt to denigrate its dignity in public eyes, another member of the Anna team – Kiran Bedi – supporting and justifying Kejriwal even after the Speaker’s ruling, are a few samples of instances that have been used to enhance credibility of the so-called Anna movement, just to create a situation where people will like to rely more and more upon Anna in the present phase of their awakening so that in the consequence, the real beneficiaries of the current system stay safe, as the so-called JP movement had ensured, sans any change in political economy that has helped them build up their private empires in the Republic of India.

So, the unpunished tirade of abuse hurled at the Parliament of India by Anna team is a part of the game that plutocrats are shrewdly playing, and nothing else.

For every Indian patriot, to whom emancipation of the people matters, this poses a challenge.

Abduction of MLA Jhina Hikaka: Whither are We?

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

“The general public of Koraput District are facing numerous socio-economic hardships due to liquor trade and also dying premature due to consumotion of liquor. So there should be total prohibition in this scheduled District for the improvement and all round development of the masses as well as locality”.

Thus had written Jhina Hikaka, MLE from Laxmipur to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in a letter he had coauthored with other elected representatives of Koraput District and were he to attend the Assembly, he was to stress on this in his debate. This was not acceptable to his party, the ruling party.

In this letter, he had also stressed on preservation of the eco-system of the hill ranges of Mali and Deomali. When this was also not palatable to the ruling party, his participation in the Assembly might possibly have embarassed the government were he to make a mention of this matter.

The letter had also stressed on stoppage of state terror perpitrated on innocent people in the guise of hounding left ultras just to subject the people to waves of intimidation so that they remain too panicked to open their mouths against illadministration. Had he participated in Assembly proceedings, there was possibility of this matter gushing out into debates. That could have embarassed the government.

“We further request you to undertake steps to curtail PC (percentage) to government officials in contract works”, the letter underlined. This is how the letter not only stressed on end of a wrong practice, but also exposed how development projects are being looted by contractors in nexus with authorites as work orders are being placed with the contractors by officials pocketing portions of their profit by means of percentage. This matter could have embarassed the government had Hikaka been present in the Assembly to participate in debates.

Another point stressed in the letter is anathema to Naveen Patnaik’s administration as it prods the Chief Miniter into action for release of the members of Chasi Mulia Sangh, imlicated in false cases by the police and wrongfully kept in jails even after competent courts have acquitted them. Had Hekaka got the opportunity, he could have raised this point to the embarrassment of the CM in real sense.

Is it, hence, possible that his alleged abduction is engineered by the ruling party to prempt any debate on these points in the ongoing session?

Question may arise as to why he alone has been picked up – if at all the ruling party has engineered it – when two other MLAs, Rabi Narayan Nanda of Joypore and Raghuram Podal of Koraput, who are also competent to raise the issue in the Assembly, had also subscribed the letter?

The possible answer lies in the distingishability of Hikaka from others of BJD, as it is he, who alone is close to Chasi Mulia Sangh to the extent of being the factor of BJD’s alliance with it in the Panchayat polls that has, on the basis of this alliance only, given the ruling party the Chair of the Koraput Zilla Parisad.

Whither really are we?

One Italian Released, the Other in Crux of a Question the Government must Answer

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Italian tourist Claudio Colangelo, held hostage since March 14 by Maoists, has been released at the place of his abduction in Kandhamal in the afternoon of March 25, in a hope that the government would understand the positive gesture and stop state terror unleashed on progressive ultras and fulfill the pending promises made during earlier negotiations incorporated in the instant charter of 13 demands.

Release of the other Italian, Paolo Bosusco, would depend on government response to the instant gesture, leader Sabyasachi Panda has said while handing over Claudio to a team of media persons.

To a private TV channel, he, however, has given a reason of zeroing in on the Italians. In the guise of tourists they were trying to track private life style of tribal women and capturing pictures of their natural lustier as if they were commodities for joy of the foreigners. Taking them to hostage was meant to tell them as well as to the world outside, that tribal women of Orissa living in deep forests are not commodities of tourists interest and must not be considered so, Panda has stated.

Paolo, who has not been released, hails from a place in North Italy and has been staying in Puri since 23 years, is a tourist visa holder. He is working under a cover that he has contrived and christened as ‘Orissa trekking and Adventure’ with its office on Chakratirtha Raod. This being a commercial venture, how he is allowed to operate it is a conundrum.

The progressive ultras having taken him to hostage and having not released him with the man he had taken for the “adventure trekking” is a matter that makes the government answerable on how the Italian is allowed and by whom so allowed to operate the “trekking and adventure” venture in stark contravention of visa terms.

A detail investigation into the Italian’s activities in Orissa is now a must for the government.

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik seems to have developed a wrong notion that governance of Orissa in Oriya depends upon his mercy. His press-note of December 17 and full page display advertisement in major broadsheets of today force us to arrive at this apprehension.

In his December 17 press note it was declared that he had held a meeting with the five members of the ministerial committee on that day for the purpose of “strictly implementing the Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 in official and non-official level” to facilitate which a website has been floated by the government. In the full page multi-color advertisement in broadsheet dailies today, this is intriguingly missing.

The advertisement is designed to tell the people that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has taken historical steps to save and develop Oriya language, and has enumerated the steps he has taken. This is blatant lie. Neither he nor his government has executed any single item claimed to be “historical” in the official advertisement. The entire advertisement is nothing but false propaganda. What a shame it is, that, the people of Orissa are taken for granted by their Chief Minister! Read more →