New Delhi, June 12: When an overcrowded dais is allowed serial run on the lectern with a single song to sing, it’s fair to suspect imagination hasn’t been part of the plan. Sabotage might have been. Words turn to wood, ears tune off, the show has stopped before the showstopper has stepped up.
So it was that by the time chief minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) boss Naveen Patnaik lumbered up to make his case for special category status for Odisha at the “Swabhiman Samavesh” rally at the Ramlila Maidan, tedium had already taken its toll. People were streaming away, the moderate gathering had begun to look thin. It was well past noon and pressure cooker hot. Besides, Naveen has never pretended he can be scintillating on stage. He read from a prepared text. In Odia, but off a text rolled out in Roman, the chief minister’s preferred alphabet, we are reliably told.
There was little in that speech to have kept people rooted to the scorched grounds in dehydrating centigrades. Except the odd and charming resort to exaggeration, such as likening today’s turnout to a “Mini Odisha”. It might have embarrassed gathered Odias to think how few of them it takes to constitute that description — not many more than fifteen thousand on today’s evidence. Odisha, for the record, is more than four crore-strong.
Naveen was clearly weary and a whit wilted in the heat by the time he got his chance on the pulpit, but the odds are even a freshly arrived chief minister would have sounded like a needle stuck to scratching on a terribly long playing record. Before he came to claim special status for Odisha and blame the Centre was denying it, a long line of colleagues had been there and done that. There was applause to Naveen’s laboured iterations, but it came mostly prompted by his bandwagon, not spontaneously. “The UPA has been giving funds to different states on political considerations,” Naveen said, “We will bring the rightful claim of over four crore Odias to the President (Pranab Mukherjee’s) attention and apprise him how we are being neglected. We will hand over to him the demand carrying one crore signatures of our people. We will seek his intervention for justice.”
On cue, an appointed set sounded conch shells, and drums began to beat somewhere at the back. An aide stood up and signalled to the crowd to clap. It obliged. But the pandals had already begun to lose density by then; if for nothing else, the gathered faithful had been claimed by the need to quench thirst. “What this rally is for we already know,” said Surendra Jena, one among those who had made the journey from the state, “And by coming here we have done our bit. Time to get some food and drink and see a bit of the capital.”
He’d heard the same speech over and over again all morning: Odisha deserves special status, it is being discriminated against, this battle is a fight to finish. “The Centre is on notice,” BJD MP Jay Panda railed, “We are not here to seek charity, we want our rights and we shall take it.” Or was it his colleague Tathagat Satpathy who said that? Such similitude and repetition reigned on stage, it was often tough separating one speaker from another: Revenue minister Suryanarayan Patra, MLA Pramila Malik, MPs Jairam Pangi, Pinaki Mishra and Bhartruhari Mahtab, they sounded in copyright violation of each other. And perhaps of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who arrived at the same venue to voice a similar demand, though to a much larger turnout just a few months ago? But, no, remonstrated state panchayati raj minister Kalptaru Das, this was no copycat rally to make copycat demands. “Who says we are aping Nitish Kumar?” he countered, “We are neither copying him nor collaborating with him. Odisha’s demand is very old and its case is historic, and it is time the people assert their legitimate rights. It will be a long battle, but we are in it to get our due, come what may.”
