A comedown, but creditable nonetheless

 

 

Sandeep Sahu
(The writer is a senior Bhubaneswar-based journalist reporting for the BBC)

For a man who has been voted the best chief minister before, a fifth place among chief ministers of ‘major’ states is no cause for wild celebrations. Naveen Patnaik’s supporters would, of course, cite the findings of the Sunday Indian - C Voter survey as yet another proof of the continuing popularity of their leader.

But the figures that have emerged from the survey do not quite bear this claim out. The difference between his performance and that of the others in the list is huge. While Orissa has secured just 19%, Gujarat has walked away with the first prize with 46%. The state fares poorly even against Bihar (33%), which ranks only below Orissa and Jharkhand in nearly all human development indices.

It is not very difficult to see where Naveen’s government did not fare so well. Perhaps for the first time in his 10-year long unbroken stint as the chief minister, his clean image is under a serious cloud – notwithstanding the daily arrest of and raids on low level government servants by vigilance officials. As shocking revelations keep tumbling out of the official closet, it is becoming increasingly clear that the rampant, blatant loot and pilferage of precious mineral resources – primarily iron ore – from the rich mines of the state that had been going on since 2000 when Naveen became CM is by far the biggest scandal in the history of the state. [One conservative estimate has put it at Rs 7,000 crore but others say it is worth at least Rs 50,000 crore.]

But the clouds of doubt that surround Naveen’s hitherto shining visage, going by the findings of the survey, do not appear to have become deep enough to seriously dent his carefully cultivated image. Master manager of image that he is, Naveen has managed, even in this hour of crisis – to play the innocent victim and deflect the arrows in the direction of the man who is widely regarded as the architect of the split with the BJP and the massive victory in the Assembly elections in April 2008 that followed, erstwhile bureaucrat and Rajya Sabha member Pyari Mohan Mohapatra.

One criterion on which the performance of the state government was judged by was farmers’ issues. Though the respondents of this survey are unlikely to be farmers, they could not perhaps have been unaware of the fact that it was a year when Orissa joined states where crop failure and mounting debts had forced largescale suicides by farmers. At least 40 farmers have taken their lives in the state in the last few months.

There have been other major failures that must have pulled his ranking down in the survey – the most important of them being the virtual ceding of vast tracts of the state's bordering areas to Maoist rebels. Despite the arrest of and surrender by some Maoist cadres in the recent past, the government is nowhere near joining battle against the Maoists in real earnest – let alone winning it.

But his government has obviously done some good work in certain key areas to get the kind of ranking that he has - certainly not its best ever but creditable nonetheless considering that highly developed and presumably well governed states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala do not figure among the top five. And it is not difficult to see those areas. The Rs 2 a kg rice scheme for BPL families certainly takes the ‘riceball’ among the few things that have gone well for his government. Even as his government presided over the unbridled loot of the state’s mineral wealth, Naveen has largely ensured that there are very few openings left for pilferage of rice under the scheme. His government must have also scored fairly well in areas like bijli, roads and highways.

In the final analysis, it is a matter of perception of the outsider which has tilted the scales in favour of Naveen. Thus, even as the state continues to hold on to its unenviable position as the poorest state in the country, Naveen has certainly managed to create an illusion of a state on the fast road to development. Posco, Arcelor Mittal, Vedanta and other big ticket companies – despite the fact that not one of their projects has got going - have certainly helped perpetuate the myth.