The Odisha Brand of ‘Democracy’!!

Let me start with a confession. The ‘provocation’ for this piece was a Facebook post in which a ‘friend’ (of the Facebook kind, that is) made the rather astounding claim that the whirlwind tour of the state by the Chief Minister’s private secretary, who also doubles up as the secretary of the all-powerful 5T ‘department’ (or is it the other way round?), is taking ‘development’ to the doorsteps of people and, in the process, ‘strengthening democracy’!!

Now, how the Chief Minister delivers ‘development’ to the people of the state who have elected him is none of my business – or anyone’s business, for that matter. Nor do I have the slightest doubt about the efficiency of VK Pandian. By all accounts, he is a supremely efficient and extremely hard-working officer. But my problem is with a system put in place where the writ of just one person runs and no one else matters. The entire bureaucracy, the whole council of ministers, the MLAs elected by the people - who, in turn, have elected the Chief Minister – have been rendered completely irrelevant. And that person is not the elected Chief Minister of the state!!  

The most startling part of the whole thing is that everyone appears to be perfectly happy with this arrangement. Ministers fall over one other to pay obeisance to the officer. Bureaucrats way senior to him in the hierarchy are in awe of him. This being the case with those supposedly ‘the most powerful’ in the state, is it any wonder that people fall at – and touch – his feet and women line up in numbers to garland him when he goes out on his whirlwind tour of the state? Hero worship is nothing new nor is obsequiousness an unknown commodity in the Indian variant of democracy. But this is unquestionably the first time we are seeing a serving bureaucrat – and not a politician – being publicly worshipped.

A couple of years ago, we were witness to the rather unedifying spectacle during a joint visit by the 5T secretary and the then chief secretary to Kandhamal when a person in the crowd literally shoved the chief secretary away in his desperation to reach - and garland - the 5T secretary! The person perhaps did not know the man he was brushing aside was the chief secretary. But it is also possible that he knew but simply didn’t care. The man he wanted to garland was the 5T secretary and not the man who ‘accompanied’ him (that’s actually how at least one news outlet reported the incident!). If the chief secretary felt hurt, slighted, and humiliated, he never showed it.

But that was two years ago. A lot of water has flown down the Mahanadi since then. Pandian was just as powerful even then. But he chose to largely remain behind the scenes then, appearing in public only occasionally and that too only when accompanying the Chief Minister. But these days, he goes out on his errands alone, in a cavalcade befitting the Chief Minister. And everywhere he goes, the worthies of the local administration, including the collector of the district, fall over one another to carry out his command. The local MLAs – and even ministers – are at his beck and call for as long as he is there, oblivious of the TV cameras capturing every act of their subservience and beaming it to the people of the whole state. How shameless – and utterly helpless - ruling party leaders have become was brought home in stark fashion recently when a cabinet minister, on being approached by his constituents on some demand, told them; “Tell the 5T secretary about it when he comes. He will solve your problem.” One would never really know if there was an element of sarcasm in what the minister said. But the conduct of another cabinet minister suggests that there was no such thing in the minister’s exhortation. Asked about the decisions taken on some matter involving her department in the cabinet meeting that had just for over, the minister, to the horror of the TV crews, actually said; “I don’t really know. I will tell you about it after talking to the secretary”!

It goes without saying that BJD leaders, many of whom have been around since the time of Biju Patnaik, the father of the Chief Minister and the man after whom the party is named, are putting up with such public humiliation because they know that is the way The Boss wants it. That any failure in being obsequious to his Man Friday would be taken as a personal affront by The Boss. That anything less than gross servility could cost them a ticket in the next elections or - as Rohit Pujari found to his cost recently – their ministerial berth.

The cheerleaders of the ruling party, including those in the mainstream as well as social media, shamelessly hail this arrangement as ‘governance at the doorsteps’. “Why should anyone have a problem if people’s problems are being solved ‘on the spot’?” “Why should anyone crib when the people themselves are happy?” they ask. Anyone who disagrees is promptly called names and branded an Opposition stooge, forgetting that the Opposition itself is as much culpable as the ruling party in allowing this farce to continue unchallenged.

For all one knows, the BJD could romp home for the sixth consecutive time in the elections due in less than a year and this system of one bureaucrat running the state would continue unabated for another term. And the cheerleaders would shout in cacophonous chorus; “When the people have given their verdict, who are you to question it?” They may even manage to silence the few feeble voices of protest that exist now despite all the attendant risks.
But there is little doubt that democracy would be poorer for it. And history would dub this phase in the state’s political history as a ‘dark age’ for democracy!

(DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own and have nothing to do with OTV’s charter or views. OTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)