By Biswaraj Patnaik in Puri, December 27, 2018: Only a couple of days ago, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi paid kind of a whirlwind visit to Odisha, believably under pressure from the horrendously helpless local saffron brigade without a face or strong enough ground to position firmly on.

The local nonsecular gang, after exhausting all their little, horribly ineffective tricks to turn the BJP cadres a force in vain, begged the only charismatic face to materialise in Odisha as Dharmendra Pradhan has virtually been pushed down by the more glamorous Aparajita Sarangi with some acceptable history to her credit earned from respectable postings granted by the Naveen administration when she was a senior bureaucrat.

With Ms Sarangi coming as a bolt from the blue, the ‘Oil and Gas’ boss was somehow pushed away into anonymity in the minds of the masses. Aparajita too couldn’t keep the tempo high as she blundered by saying Naveen had never inspired her one bit; she has been incredibly electrified by only Modi while serving the Union government during a deputation stint. Now, no matter how much pleas both the portrayed faces may make about their being together for the common cause, the one-upmanship battle is glaringly visible. Thus, Odisha is back to a ‘faceless BJP’ status. Big talkative and strategist guys including Bijay Mohapatra and Dilip Ray have deserted the fold too happily, and no one big enough has stepped in to talk sense to restore harmony in the witless local community.

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Modi has realised just too well by now that Naveen is truly an invincible leader who most of the party leaders and the people love to follow. Not surprisingly therefore, he has been heavily briefed and tutored to behave well in Odisha and speak gentler words than before when he was in a world of fairy tale hysterics due to sudden elevation to premiership. He was made to understand that he was so charismatic that even stones and pebbles became live to vote for him.

So, Modi kept on making wild, boastful talk and called the rest of the world politically foolish, self-serving and wicked. His marketing managers  painted him as a former humble ‘chaiwala’ whose only aim was to make every Indian individual wealthier by at least fifteen lakh rupees as he would dig out the enormous amount of black money stashed away on foreign locales by economic offenders of the worst kind. Unfortunately, he failed to do that as he could not even find a thousand dollars of black money hidden anywhere outside the country.

Further, he failed to generate the twenty million jobs for the youth which he had promised. He, on the contrary, took India behind by a decade or so by the mad demonetisation he resorted to one fine midnight. The ‘article 370 scrapping’ promise was not taken seriously even by a school kid. BJP boss Amit Shah’s crude, indecent techniques of intimidation and threat slowly began to backfire and boomerang badly causing deep wound and injuries across the saffron bulk and body.

Modi who spent a whopping 14840 million rupees on his insane, mostly-futile foreign tours has irked the Indians like never before. Furthermore, the Modi-Shah duo’s extreme love for the wealthy corporate entities has sent all the negative signals down the line over the years. People have already come to know that the BJP-led NDA government is here to amass funds to survive for always by making tall and false promises.

Despite repeated warnings about mass displeasure in Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh quite in good time, the Modi-Shah remained arrogantly smug and screamed to the nation that the BJP is here for always and no other worthless political party can dislodge them for another half a century. The party was simply kicked out of Punjab; and recently from the rest three indicating people of India have actually lost faith in the party primarily due to its nonsecular approach on every human issue.

It is known by all that Amit Shah and RSS Secretary Bhaiyaji Joshi agreed there was anti-incumbency against sitting MLAs of the party across states. The campaigns to drum up support for building the Ram temple in Ayodhya were also not taken well by the people of India. The Hindi heartland strongholds are gone forever. Excessive boastful rhetoric and talk and some of the bizarre pro-Hindu schemes had caused terrible anti-incumbency sentiments and disenchantment among the masses who craved for a happy India with real communal harmony in place.

For all this, Modi came a perfect gentleman and never uttered a word about anything politically unacceptable that the Naveen administration had caused to the people. Naveen received the Honourable Prime Minister showing utmost dignity as the latter is the chief executive of the nation.

But as the saffron strategists may have hammered into Modi’s head, he had to mention, for only mentioning sake, several aspects of bad governance in the state of Odisha without citing any concrete example or naming any particular individual player. He was extremely cautious about not stirring up any hornet’s nest lest that should boomerang back at him to cause irreparable damage at a location considered anti-BJP bastion. Modi was tricky in promising the skies by saying that he has brought with him a basket of projects worth nearly fifteen thousand crore rupees to give Odisha a big face lift in the domain of development.

Naveen Patnaik too was smart. He promised all necessary land and other infrastructural facility to put up the dream projects. Modi said unless the east of India is developed, the country cannot improve the quality of life of masses. He used a great deal of innuendos to blame the Odisha administration pointing to field-level corruption and the chronic bribery problems, as if only to please the fragile, helpless local BJP fraternity so as to keep its fighting morale and spirit in tact.

Just prior to Modi’s visit, KCR, the chief minister of Telengana had come on a courtesy visit with the sole view to forming a robust ‘anti-BJP-Congress’ third front. KCR virtually looked upon Naveen as a political demigod who moved his people with some magic power difficult to figure out or decipher. Naveen gave him all assurance of help but made no binding promise because he knows he does not require much outside help. Modi went upwards to vomit the same stuff as in Khurda and vanished from there. The disenchanted, frustrated BJP cadres of Odisha stayed back gaping in utter confusion as to what went wrong with Modi who dis not even launch one simple missile at Naveen to lower the latter’s image.

The just concluded Hockey World Cup in Bhubaneswar has left Indians in a frenzy of pride and glory because the show the Odisha administration put up is nearly impossible to replicate for the supreme class parameters set already. Modi should have been in Bhubaneswar to welcome and bid goodbye to the record sixteen super-grade teams from all over the world. Modi never came. He did not even pushed union minister Jual Oram to the scene for Oram’s home district is considered the breeding ground of Indian hockey.

Modi was thrilled to see the crowd in Khurda imagining BJP is very popular in Odisha. He did not seem to have the common sense to make out the fact any national Prime Minister makes people so happily curious as to congregate at his or her meeting place. Modi must have realised by now that Naveen could come one in handy when the BJP with a much smaller number would seek help from regional parties like Naveen’s BJD.