Orissa Matters

YOUR JOURNAL MAKES THE IMPACT: CESCO OFFICIALS SUSPENDED

Bhubaeswar Bureau

Please recall the exposure at

We had discovered the malady. And we alone had put it on records.

The result is: as many as six officials of Central Electricity Supply Company of Orissa (CESCO), including Superintending Engineer Debabrata Rath, who we had named, have been suspended from service pending disciplinary proceedings.

Others in the group are Executive Engineer Satya Narayan Nayak, Assistant Engineers Sarada Prasanna Mohanty and Sudhakar Behera, and Junior Engineers Pitambar Pradhan and Jayaram Rautray.

All of them are suspended for the offence that we alone had exposed under the link supra.

Reporting and resolving conflict

OM Bureau

Forty journalists and media professionals with an interest in helping to resolve
the Kashmir problem between India and Pakistan are taking part in a ground-
breaking series of workshops in Cardiff , about 200 k.m.s off London starting
next week.

Mrinal Chatterjee, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Mass
Communication, Dhenkanal has been invited to join the course starting from 28
January 2006.

The three tailor-made British Foreign Office-funded courses – for media
academics, print and broadcast journalists from the Indian subcontinent – are to
be led by Thomson consultants Tony Geraghty and Russell Isaac .

They will start with a series of seminars, discussions and role play exercises
before the participants move to Belfast for briefings and seminars drawn from
the bid to resolve the conflict between the Catholic and Protestant Christian
communities in Northern Ireland. The three days in Belfast will include a day at
INCORE – a United Nations and University of Ulster faculty which focuses on
the causes, consequences and resolution of international conflict.

INCORE aims to influence policymakers and practitioners involved in peace,
conflict and reconciliation issues and assist research.

Also during the Northern Ireland visit will be a visit to the regional BBC
headquarters and two of the main newspapers, the Irish News and the Belfast
Newsletter. The delegates will then travel to London for the concluding part of
the course.

Participants of the first course – which will last two weeks – include four media
academics from Kashmir University, Srinagar (India), and two delegates from
the Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi, two from the Indian Institute of
Mass Communication, and one each from Tezpur University, Assam and
Kohima University, Kohima (capital of Nagaland in the far north-east of India).

Among topics to be covered in the programme will be: the relevance to
Kashmir of the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and Iraq; sources of
conflict; the role of the media; human rights; and international law.

WHY HOMILIES FROM RANGARAJAN?

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Homilies coming from the mouth of a religious preacher may not be surprising; because that is his job. When one is to hear Dr. C. Rangarajan, he would naturally expect to hear what exactly ails our economy and what steps are being taken to cure that; because he heads the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of the country. But hearing him in the convocation of Utkal University was to hear homilies only, studded with shoulds and musts. Sad.

Asking us to believe that a new vibrant India has emerged only after liberalization of economy, he highlighted five areas, which he believes, warrant priority attention. And with this started the homilies.

Growth of agriculture has several implications for the economy. It leads to a reduction of poverty, a greater expansion in employment given the Indian situation and a more broad based growth he said as if we do not know this truth! Admitting that recent period has seen a slowing down of agriculture, he said, We should focus on the agriculture sector. He further said, We need a comprehensive agricultural policy encompassing a higher level of public investment, a shift from subsidies to investment in terms of public expenditure, consolidation of holdings, a proactive programme to foster exports, intensified agricultural research to raise yields particularly of dry land crops and evolving a better cropping pattern. If the country needs a comprehensive policy to reverse the located slowing down of agriculture, why has the government not framed it? Instead of telling why agriculture has slowed down in recent years he has delivered homilies like we should focus on agriculture! Is it expected of the PMs chief economic advisor?

He says, Very nearly the whole of the household savings in financial assets is appropriated by the public sector. But again says, Government expenditure should shift in favour of capital expenditure.

Why such shoulds?

Should people hear functionaries like chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister to hear we should do this or we should do that or we must do this or we need that?

For how long should we hear these homilies?

When functionaries like Dr. Rangarajan address the public, they should refrain from peddling the shoulds and tell us what exactly is happening to our country and what exactly the government has done or is doing to discharge its duties to the country so that the citizenry is able to know of its position vis-à-vis the government it has elected.

UTKAL UNIVERSITY GRACES EMINENT ORIYAS

Bhubaneswar Office
In its 39th Convocation, Utkal University graced former Chief Justice of India Ranganath Mishra with the Degree of Doctor of Laws and Priyabrata Das, Jayanta Mohapatra as well as Manoj Das with Degrees of Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa, on 28 January 2006.

The second largest university in the country with 316 affiliated colleges having a student strength of 1,49,000, the UU has 27 Post Graduate departments, two constituent Law Colleges, a Directorate of Distance and Continuing Education and a number of research and extension centres.

On account of their competitive track records vying with the best in India, 17 out of 27 PG. departments of the university have qualified for assistance from UGC, DBT and FIST even as three of them are accredited as Centres of Advance Studies.

But the University had not been able to hold its convocation for last four years due to bureaucratic interference in its management. Its academic climate was in doldrums under chancellorship of a retired IAS officer when he was the Governor of Orissa. During his tenure an IAS officer of Orissa cadre was appointed as administrator of the University and revered teachers were suspended from service.

However, the scenario has changed. A seasoned public figure Rameswar Thakur has joined Orissa as Governor and is presiding over the University as its Chancellor. He has been showing keen interest in affairs of Universities with a positive approach and as far as Utkal University is concerned, it has a Vice-Chancellor in Prof. L.N. Mishra who puts all premium in academic environment and a very able Registrar in Bijay Kumar Mohanty, an officer of Orissa Administrative Service. Thanks to untiring efforts of the later duo and encouraging interest of Sri Thakur, the convocation could be a reality.

Besides the Honoris Causa awards, the University conferred Dctoral Degrees, Gold Medals, Endowment Gold Medals and Endowment Prizes for 2004 to the successful candidates of the year.

Conferring the awards, Chancellor Sri Thakur informed that the university has prepared its vision document to focus on a few thrust areas in future so that it may realize its goal of achieving the status of University of Excellence.

Transition to a system of acquisition of knowledge through choice rather than a water-tight environment and greater emphasis on multi-disciplinary learning are the key elements of the future vision, he disclosed.

The convocation was addressed by Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Dwelling on post liberalization economic performance and areas of priority attention, he admitted that “Differences in growth rates among states have become more pronounced after liberalization”. However, he disclosed that “the populous states have grown weakly in the last eleven-year period”. Saying that monopolies do not lead to efficiency, he opined, “If the regional disparities have grown, it is in part a reflection of the quality of governance”.

FREE OUR PEOPLE FROM I.A.S. OFFICERS, SAVE OUR REPUBLIC

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

In his message to the Nation on the occasion of the 57th Republic Day of India, President Kalam has called upon for eradication of corruption.

What else could he have said?

Everybody knows that corruption is killing our country. If anybody wants to say that the country be saved he or she is bound to say that corruption is to be eradicated. Dr. Kalam has done exactly this. So he has said nothing new or remarkable. His entire speech is full of wishful thinking. Hence it is of no significance except being an official admission of corruption.

The President being above politics, his Republic Day speech should have told us where the root of corruption lies and how to eradicate it. He has failed. In free India, he is a prisoner of freedom. He is a prisoner of freedom the Prime Minister and his Cabinet enjoy. Hence he has no freedom to say what he ought to have said.

Like the President, we the people of India are also the prisoners of freedom. We are prisoners of freedom that our Ministers as well as the Officers of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) are enjoying. When we had freed our country from the British, we had not imagined that we shall be subjugated to these two most pernicious power-players. Any idiot can become a minister in India. Therefore any IAS officer on who any minister depends for management of his ministry or department can play havoc with the general public. Our Republic has enough experience of this.

Educated persons are also becoming ministers. By class character and orientation they are such that the IAS officers are getting active collaborators in them. Therefore we do not find a minister who has taken any real action against any IAS officer for any administrative malady under him. Advani matter is a pointer. In 2000, the then Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) of India Mr. N. Vittal had informed that names of 2000 tainted officers of All India Services would be posted in website for public knowledge in order to enable the people to monitor official action against corruption. (Times of India, 29 January 2000). He also disclosed that Home Minister L. K. Advani was possessing “unaccounted money”. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), embarrassed by the exposure, wanted to define the functioning of CVC (India Abroad, 25 Feb. 2000, p.14) it found its strongest ally in IAS officers who were managing ministries as Secretaries and thus Vittal’s endeavor to curb corruption ended in frustration.

Under the Rules of Business, Secretaries are the heads of administration of their respective ministries or departments. But their function, particularly in the context of provinces, is to direct and control administration rather than execution of projects and programs. Taking advantage of this, they remain unanswerable. This provides the most congenial climate to corruption.

The purpose of retaining the ICS after independence in the new nomenclature of IAS has been defeated as in almost all the provinces officers of this service stay glued to the state administration from joining till superannuation. Their contribution to national integration as well as integrated development of the nation is not discernible. But, as the President has admitted in his Republic Day message, the country has been drowned in corruption when these IAS officers have been controlling and directing administration.

Instead of expressing barren anxiety for eradication of corruption, it would be better if the President uses the prerogative bestowed upon him to create a climate for freeing our people from dual rule that runs by the IAS. To begin with he should start to know if there is any necessity of keeping officers of this service in the States where there are provincial administrative officers to serve the people.

We in orissamatters.com strongly feel that the country must be freed from the IAS and every member of this service must be subjected to social audit in respect of his or her activities and assets.

To save our Republic we must save our people from the pernicious freedom the IAS officers are enjoying sans any involvement with common man in the grassroots of society.

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 →