Rajya Sabha elections are not much of an eye-popping affair in Odisha. For the last 18 years, Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the dominant majority it is, has called the shots. Names of candidates are virtually read out as a formality and they get nominated without raising any eyebrow. The 2018 polls, though, have been anything but that.
Frankly speaking, in India, people who get to choose politics as a means to fight for greater social end (read change) include activists, film stars and of course, journalists. The examples are dime a dozen and Odisha has been no exception either. On March 7, all the three persons who BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik nominated for Rajya Sabha from the state belonged to these fields.
Prashanta Nanda, one of the most-loved yesteryear actors of the state, has been in politics for long by now. The two time-MLA joined BJP in late 1990s, moved to NCP before heading to BJD. Now that he is a politician first, his nomination did not cause much flutter.
Another nominee, Achyuta Samanta, founder of KIIT Group of Institutions, made his mark by giving the state a place on the national map through the education empire he built over the last two decades. Then he went on to set up KISS, a residential institution that provided KG-to-PG education to children from disadvantaged tribal groups, completely free of cost. Samanta, having pioneered edu-entrepreneurship, was always seen closer to the ruling party.
Given that his interests, whenever required, have been well-protected by the BJD government, his joining the party was only a matter of time. And then there was Soumya Ranjan Patnaik.
It is the nomination of the man who introduced offset printing in the state’s newspaper industry way back in 1984 and went on to become Odisha’s Media Moghul (that’s what his personal website describes him as) that opened the floodgates of debate.Oxford-educated, Political Science teacher at Benaras Hindu University, he has been an extraordinary intellectual and known to be a fierce fighter for the state and its Odia identity. But he also has been a politician with limited success.
Soumya Ranjan joined politics back in the 1990s when his father-in-law and three-time CM J B Patnaik, was in the peak of Congress rule in the state. Such was his clout, he even fought against the venerated Biju Patnaik from Bhubaneswar Assembly Constituency. In 1996, he successfully contested as Bhubaneswar MP on a Congress ticket. Why is then his getting a BJD nomination within hours of joining the ruling outfit has led to so much public debate? Have political leaders not switched parties ever? Is not party-hopping part of political leaders’ DNA by now?
Soumya Ranjan has been there and done that, but the man packed much more punch all the time. The 67-year-old who owns the state’s biggest media conglomerate (which also includes a band of Odia opera units) has all along been a strident critic of Naveen. In fact, the ideology he advocated has been an antithesis of everything BJD and its boss stood for.
It has a historical background too. Sambad, the leading Odia daily he has been bringing out since 1984, was a bitter critic of Biju Babu and his anti-establishment stand gave Soumya a high pedestal in the state. While the political rivalry of J B Patnaik and Biju Babu is part of political folklore in Odisha, Soumya Ranjan played a huge role in taking up that fight.
Diametrically opposite on a political board, Soumya Ranjan in his mission to propagate Odia through his “Aama Odisha” project never minced his words when it came to Naveen—known to be not particularly proficient in the mother tongue—as well as his administrative machinery which did not show much affection for the language earlier on.
All of that fight he put up was not just as someone who came from the Congress background. Because when he was expelled from the grand old party in 2014 for his rebellion, he floated Aama Odiaha Party, which according to him, was to provide alternative politics to the state. And he was relentless. Soumya Ranjan took up the cause of farmers and travelled far and wide mobilising movements for the community which raised the discomfort level for BJD Government in the face of a spate of farmer suicides and agrarian distress.
That was not all. He also led the fight for thousands of small investors who lost their money in the multi-thousand crore Ponzi scam that the rocked the state in 2011-12. With the elections drawing close, the media baron was turning up the heat against the ruling dispensation.
Naveen played his trump card by bringing the 67-year-old into the party fold. With Soumya Ranjan, comes the support of an entire media house and an umbrella of charitable organisations. No wonder, the
BJD chief described him as an “asset”.
But for the man hailed champion of people’s causes, an image no other Odia could manage in recent history, his decision to join BJD, a party he fought tooth and nail all his life, has served the biggest poser of his life. What was that lifetime of struggle for? A mere Rajya Sabha seat at the end? Did he sell himself? Soumya Ranjan says his fight for the causes he espoused will continue no matter what. We can leave history to judge that.
Siba Mohanty
Deputy Resident Editor, Bhubaneswar,Odisha
Email: sibamohanty@newindianexpress.com