The Odisha government pats itself on the back a lot these days. Not that good work must go unrecognised but the ongoing department review of the Naveen Patnaik dispensation has reduced it to a self-congratulatory process. Review of departments by a CM should be a serious affair, analysing the successes and failures, identifying problems, bottlenecks and laying the roadmap for future.
After his presentation last week, Agriculture Minister Pradip Maharathi presented himself before the media and awarded his department a “first class” for its performance. Everything is hunky-dory in Odisha’s farm sector, the farmers’ suicides, non-remunerative agriculture, lack of insurance coverage for farmers, flight from the vocation notwithstanding. The brazenness in the face of a building potato crisis is amusing. In last four years, the government has not operationalised its much proclaimed Potato Mission.
However, the icing on the cake is the master plan for Mahanadi which the government unveiled Saturday after a CM review of the water resources department. The grand announcement includes construction of seven barrages in the river’s downstream to utilise excess water draining in the Bay of Bengal.
Not long ago, the same government shouted itself hoarse over the declining Mahanadi water flow downstream because Chhattisgarh built barrages upstream. Further, it has not spelt out budgetary allocations for such structures, made no study of land requirement and displacement of people. Interestingly, in 2011, the government had to shelve the `3000 crore Sindhol hydel project in western Odisha due to opposition from the locals and even BJD leaders. Now even a layman can tell that all these announcements are political stunts with polls drawing close. Naveen made no attempts in the last 18 years to save the Mahanadi. Now, the least he could do is not to pretend. The state’s lifeline, as the BJD’s campaign calls the river, deserves better. So do the people who depend on it for their lives.