“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like
a mighty stream.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
― Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice is the elixir of life. Craving for justice perhaps
was one of the primary motivations for man to create the State. Preamble to our
Constitution mentions about our solemn resolve to constitute our country to a
sovereign socialist secular democratic republic and secure to all its citizens
justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Among the four primary obligations
we have set upon ourselves and resolved to ensure; Justice has been assigned
the top position. Justice has to be
ensured in social, economic and political spheres.
People seek Justice --- social, economic and political--
from the Courts. Courts are our Temples of Justice; they secure our freedom,
protect us against injustice. We seek its protection against onslaught on our
liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; we pray to court to
ensure that we enjoy equality of status and opportunity. While I write, the
working of the highest Court of the state—the High Court--- stands severely
affected for two months due to strike by lawyers who reportedly
are aggrieved over alleged police excess in some matter. A matter of this
nature, involving a citizen and the police, comes under the purview of state’s
executive organ. The impasse, however, continues. For a long time, courts in
Sambalpur are unable to function normally, again over certain grievances. Here
again the state has been witnessing the impasse that has been causing untold
misery to the litigant public.
A word about the situation in the area of economic justice
would be relevant. A review of the implementation of the Forest Rights Act,2006
--- a law in force for 12 years -- till August, 2018 indicated that out of
5,362 Community Forest Resources claims received by government, 3,525 claims
have been settled and Titles had been distributed for 2,826 cases. Despite the
district level committee being headed by the Collector, it takes long time to
hand over Titles to the claimant villagers. Out of 2,826 Titles distributed,
demarcation had been done only for 300 Titles in the concerned villages. Sadly,
correction of record has not been made even in one case so far. Analysis of
individual claims under the Act is also indicative of the lack of
dispatch. Forest Rights Committees
(FRCs) filed 6,10,219 individual claims. District Level Committees (DLCs)
headed by Collectors disposed of 5,78,265 individual claims. DLCs rejected as
many as 1,46,107 individual claims.
4,20,992 individual titles have been distributed. Records of Rights have
been corrected only for 1,31,483 individual titles. Though the Act mandates
that titles can be given up to 10 acres, the average extent of land per title
is only 1.5 Acres.
Urbanisation in Odisha has remained slow. Around 85% of its
people still live in villages. By itself it may not be a conclusive indicator
of the state's slow development. With a predominantly rural population, it is still
possible to have an affluent economy with the state's population living mostly in
prosperous villages. If, however, most of the villages continue to be poor with
little productive activities, it indicates inadequacy of development. As of now, public sector Banks have 1493
Branches in the state's rural areas and the private sector Banks have 181
Branches. The two Rural Banks in the state have 839 Rural Branches and the
Cooperative Banks have 170 such branches. Total number of Rural Branches in the
state therefore is 2683 out of the total of 5108 Branches in the state of all
the Banks put together. The state has 6799 Grama Panchayats and about 4600 of
them, as of now, have no presence of Banks in their area. This is an indicator
of the low level of economic activity in the greater part of our rural area. On
the other hand, liquor is available everywhere, in plenty, even in unbanked
Grama Panchayats. We can ill afford not to take notice of this harsh reality.
It is a matter of concern that a Regional Party in power for close to two
decades has failed to bring in wealth into the bulk of the state’s households.
It seems its people has been managed to be in peace with poverty with small
state-sops.
With the constitution of the Mahanadi Water Disputes Tribunal the ruling
Party and its Supremo seem to be resting on laurels and the issue of the mighty
River’s untapped irrigation potential seems to have been decently buried.
Following the wide-scale hue and cry over inaction of the state government in
utilising the Mahanadi water downstream Hirakud, there was an announcement that
Government would build six Barrages on the River downstream Hirakud and
twenty-two Barrages on different tributaries of the Mahanadi. And they seemed
to have been happy that their responsibility on utilisation of Mahanadi water
has been discharged with this announcement. The need of the state for
irrigation through optimum utilisation of the Mahanadi water has hardly been
appreciated. Nor is any concern discernible about the future of the Hirakud
Irrigation system fifty years down the line. Will not the present command area
of Hirakud and Delta Irrigation be severely compromised if the prevailing
mindset of the government continues? We cannot ignore the relevance of new Dams
in the Mahanadi. The issue of rehabilitation and submergence notwithstanding,
Andhra Pradesh is going ahead with the mammoth Polavaram Project. We have
hardly done anything in tapping new hydro potential. Three Barrages were
contemplated on the Mahanadi between Hirakud and Sonpur to use the
hydro-potential which could have been used as peak load power plants. Little
seems to have been done in respect of the hydro potential of the Baitarani.
The lacklustre performance over the Mahanadi issue
notwithstanding, Naveen Patnaik has reasons to be happy about what he has been
able to achieve. He has successfully stalled a CBI investigation into the
mining scam; Chit Fund investigation seems to have been buried and the BJD
Supremo has reasons to claim that his Party’s incorruptibility stands
vindicated. He has gone ahead with the State’s own schemes on Food Security and
Health Insurance. He has promoted Hockey the way no one did before. Bhubaneswar
is being publicised as the Sports Capital and at least, his core admirers
believe it. He is focussed on his electorate and every effort is made to make
him look as a transformational leader. In full-page advertisements of the state
government published in national and local newspapers, pictures of a few major
bridges inaugurated recently by him are shown with the Chief Minister as the sole
pedestrian on the long-bedecked Bridges.
People of the state, who would have been eligible under the
comprehensive health insurance scheme of Ayushman Bharat Yojana, seem to have
been deprived of the advantages the scheme offers merely because the Odisha has
not joined the scheme and has launched its own. The state scheme costs the
state much more and gives much less to the clients; yet the state government
has not heeded to the plea of the Prime Minister.
“Dhadi Darshan”, a system of visiting the Shri Jagannath
Temple in Puri in queue was introduced without adequate discussion with the
stakeholders. It led to widespread inconvenience and resentment leading to widespread violence in
the temple-city. The practice was hastily done away with leaving deep scars on
the historic Baish Pahacha of the Temple and the psyche of millions of
devotees. The government preferred to turn a Nelson’s eye to the safety of the
Temple Treasure in the Ratna Bhandar even after knowing that the keys to the
Bhandar have been missing. The first thing that should have been done with
alacrity was to have a supervised entry to the Bhandar, take stock of the
treasures found, checked the treasures with the list of inventories prepared
some years ago and mounted a hunt for the missing treasure if anything was
found missing. They preferred a Commission of Inquiry to ascertain the
circumstances that led to the missing of the Keys.
Before the state is in a state of euphoria over World Hockey
show beginning in Bhubaneswar, Sundari, the Tigress, bought by the state
government at a huge price from a sister state, is on a killing mode and the
second person is dead. Satakosia region now tense. In stead of the jungles of
the Satakosia reverberating with tiger roar as the state government had thought the
progenies of Sundari and her partner would bring about, it now human anger the
state government is to content with.
Biju Janata Dal and its Supremo would be perhaps facing the
toughest political fight in the next Election not far away. Other Parties seem
to be much better prepared this time than they ever were and detractors of the
present regime are increasing every day.
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