By Biswaraj Patnaik in Puri, January 25, 2019: Odisha government drew Rs 734 crore from the contingency funds stock to bring relief to the distressed farmers who have lost so much due to harsh weather problems and such other circumstances for which they cannot be held responsible. The state being essentially an agrarian community, it is desirable that the ruling masters did organise some special support to keep farmers out of helplessness and anxiety.

When several states have begun waving farm loans, which is a bad practice as loan waiver acts do not turn farmers any the smarter, Odisha administration decided to extend such help as will make them resilient as well as more skilled to manage emergencies themselves by remaining as glued to agriculture as ever.

Loan waiver promotes laziness and kind of hatred for farm enterprises. Just doing farming for farming sake with the ultimate aim of getting a loan waiver has lately become a common phenomenon which is dangerous. Thus they decided to extend good loans on the soft mode so that farmers are never under the pressure of having to pay exorbitant interest amounts which keep mounting beyond control.

As is commonly known, the contingency funds are a special reserve of funds to be spent when disasters including natural calamities, extreme financial emergency situations occur suddenly due to unexpected crop failure, disease pandemics or several unforeseen circumstances that require immediate monetary assistance to save lives and keep people composed.

The Constitution of India permits spending of contingency funds on any emergency requirements. The farmers in distress pose such a situation and availing funds from the pool is perfectly lawful. The Congress and BJP party loudmouths keep screaming ‘fault and sin’ because most of them do not know law nor do they want to learn the basics even after being explained about the norms and the rules.

Many NDA fold states like Maharashtra spent eight crore rupees on publicity events involving the Prime Minister Modi. Similarly there are many instances of state governments availing this special fund to meet emergency situations of several kinds. The Odisha farmers’ prevailing plight had literally created a grave emergency situation which ended instant addressing.

People of India and many world class thinkers who respect India as a massively growing democracy are anxious to know how unethically a ‘big statue’ ate up a whopping three thousand crore rupees purely ego-satisfying purposes. When Mayawati of UP insanely put up a park of giant elephant statues in Lucknow, the rest of India had condemned her as a most hated politician for the despicable act which sucked in incalculable pubic money.

Conscious citizens of India are now keen to know of India can ever recover the huge money spent illegally on a statue of a statesman whose Noble deeds are certain to be forgotten or ignored due to the confounding size of the statue which can never be seen by any ordinary tourist. To see the whole beauty one has to take a chopper ride around, which is not affordable. The entry fees too are prohibitive for the ordinary people.

Even if one million people buy the costliest ticket for statue of unity which costs 350 rupees for the observation deck, only 35 crore rupees would be collected in one full year without expenses taken onto account, which is huge. Assuming everything by way of maintenance is free, and no interest on the loan is charged, it will take 85 years to only recover the amount without getting an interest of a single Paisa.

The Spring temple Buddha in China, fails to attract tourists when who prefer the age-old heritage sites like the great wall, forbidden city, terracotta army over the recently built Buddha statue which is not even among the top ten tourist attractions for them.

A viral post claims that Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) were coerced to cough out 2,500 crore rupees under their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) schemes for the statue. There is also a lot of murmur that the cost has been hugely exaggerated to siphon off money for dubious political actions and schemes to confuse public minds and ensure votes during elections.

The highest contribution came from the Gujarat government followed by the Centre, all ordinary citizens’ money. One David D’Costa posted a message on Facebook claiming that most of the funding for the project was made by public sector oil companies. “When India is literally crying for reduction in Oil prices…This is how our Oil sector PSUs are made to splurge their money!” he had slammed the planners with disgust. As per his observation, the Indian Oil had funded 900 crore and ONGC Rs 500 crore. It is further claimed that the BPCL, OIC and GAIL too have coughed out Rs 250 crore each for the statue. Power Grid Corporation has contributed Rs 12.5 crore. There is a great deal of over-invoicing in the bill statements and bungling up of documents so badly as the picture will remain hazy for always.

It appears the Modi administration is a populist one and hence huge amounts of public money is being wasted on fleecing the masses. Modi’s foreign tours expenses too have not been taken well by the general public at all. The benefits of his foreign trips are only a little; his personal image boosting has been phenomenal without actually bringing any benefit to the country in real development terms.

Even Raghuram Rajan, the former EBI Governor who abandoned post in disgust, had emphasised the need to have a decentralised structure of government to which no one paid heed. He says even today that the governments should learn how to implement reforms from the Narsimha Rao administration in which Dr Manmohan Singh was the finance minister.

In an interview to ‘ET Now’ in Davos, Rajan had said that political leadership has to build consensus to implement reforms, some of which can be learned how the former Congress Prime Minister and Finance Minister worked behind the scenes to make things work effectively.

Without taking any name, Rajan had also said that leadership is important for reforms and an overly-centralised government can’t achieve that. “An overly-centralised structure of government may offer leadership but may not offer the ability to implement and one of the lacunae we have seen over the last few years is that the policy plans at the top don’t get translated into implementation,” Rajan said.

He also talked about a host of issues related to Indian economy, Lok Sabha polls and farm distress.

Here are some snippets from his conversation:

People want change: He said Indian voters are very smart and want change because of low job growth, low-tolerance in the country and concerns over institutional freedom.

“My sense is that the pressure from people now for change is increasing and any government will have to respond to that. In this election as a citizen of India, there are three big issues- jobs, how tolerant we are towards different views of minorities and concern about how to protect our institutions. Whether it is Supreme Court, the Election Commission, or the RBI, it would be appropriate for the RBI governor to be below the finance minister but typically above the bureaucracy, because it is not appropriate that the RBI governor be dictated to by a secretary in the government.”

Thus it is crystal clear that except a very few good things like GST and the bankruptcy act, the Modi administration has grossly erred on the governance front- wrong priorities like record making statue, pleasure foreign trips, showing the way to efficient functionaries like Raghuram Rajan and more. For that matter, Odisha has not committed one grave financial blunder as is made out by opposition leaders and adversaries.

The Odisha BJP leaders are just a terrible lot-ranting the wrong rhetoric to lose public support and sympathy. The so called educated ones have no sense of governance or statesmanship; the frontliners are horribly crude and loud. More interestingly, the local Congress outfit is thinning out fast with stalwarts and sure-win characters abandoning the age-old political entity.

It is a pity that the Odisha Congress party is struggling to even survive as a mere picture on the wall (as most of the worthy likeable leaders have left by now), particularly when the national president Rahul Gandhi has come of age and making waves across the locales he is moving by having improved the fundamentals impressively- basic knowledge, behaviour and conduct and above all charisma, after suffering for long at the hands of the opponents, for being a pinhead and an unforgivable greenhorn. This indicates the local leader has problems and needs to amend ways by being able to to convince colleagues that he is willing to work hard by sacrificing personal gains.

The situation, not surprisingly, suits the Naveen administration immensely, more than ever before. If the BJP and Congress do not wake up adequately, it will be BJD again!