A Limited Agenda

In politics, Orissa can rightly be called the backwaters of the national hub. Helped by a tradition of peaceful co-existence, fostered by an indifferent political milieu, this has resulted in fewer or sparsely-attended rallies, public gatherings and low turnouts in polls, the yardsticks for political activism anywhere.

It is equally true, however, that in some cases the states low-key politics has translated into political inertia, and this has cost the state dearly, especially in terms of its lobbying power at the Centre.

Politics in the state has been hit by a 15-year spell of monotony generated by a limited political arena that has pitted one Patnaik (Congress chief minister J B) against another (Biju, the maverick Janata Dal leader).

 

One Patnaiks fall has brought the other to power and the situation is unlikely to change even though the senior among them, Biju Patnaik, has shifted base to Delhi following his partys defeat in the 1995 Assembly election and his own election to the Lok Sabha.

Despite his recent failure to sway the electoral verdict for his party, Biju Patnaik, the industrialist-turned-politician, remains the mainstay of the Janata Dal in Orissa. It was he who was the rallying point for the Dal in its landslide victory in 1990. But the noticeable non-performance of his government and intra-party squabbling saw the Dal soon losing ground to Congress in the subsequent Assembly polls in 1995.

Biju Patnaiks arch rival and chief strategist for the state Congress for the past two decades, J B Patnaik has always banked on his well-honed guile to tame foes within the party and outside.

That the younger Patnaik is a master manipulator is clear from the way he recaptured the chief ministerial seat after last years Assembly elections.

After a five-year hibernation, when he was left to nurse accusations of corruption and nepotism during his decade-long rule in the eighties, and faced opposition to his leadership from the state party unit, J B Patnaik seemed to be out of the race.

But he finally emerged the only consensus candidate for the top job because many faction leaders in the state could not agree on an alternative.

The thorough organisational man that he is, J B Patnaik reinforced his position in the parliamentary polls in May by leading the party to win 17 out of 21 seats on offer, two more than the Congress won in the last Lok Sabha elections.

J B Patnaik proved his mettle again in the recently concluded by-elections in which the Dal was soundly beaten in all the three seats one Lok Sabha and two Assembly constituencies in contention. The Congress wrested the Cuttack Lok Sabha seat vacated by none other than Biju Patnaik who had won it along with Aska in May.

And the prestigious Bhubaneswar Assembly seat, which had been represented by Biju since 1980, went to the BJP. A fringe party till last year, the BJP became the third largest block in the Assembly by winning nine seats in the March 1995 elections. The party also surprised many analysts with its spirited performance in the last parliamentary election where it not only polled more votes than the Dal in many constituencies, but also contributed to the humiliating defeat of Dal candidates in several others by splitting the vote bank.

Even as the parties fight it out, Orissas masses have been the worst sufferers. Statistics show that the states per capita income (at constant prices) actually fell from Rs 1,699 in 1989-90 to Rs 1,581 in 1994-95 and remained abysmally low against the national average.

Politicians know this but are unable to put aside their differences to help their people. Biju Patnaik, for instance, had done much to inspire hope during his second stint as chief minister in 1990. His successor J B Patnaik carried on from where he had left off. He has promised investments of Rs 1,00,000 crore in five years.

But today some of the states prestigious projects the power reforms project, the Tatas mega steel plant at Gopalpur and the Ib valley power project of US utility AES the groundwork for which was laid by the previous government are being strongly opposed by the Janata Dal in opposition.

Similarly, though the previous Dal government in the state had started the process of privatising some of the loss-making PSUs, the party is now critical of an identical move by the present government.