Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is on a mission to make Odisha the ultimate welfare state
Ashutosh Mishra
Never complacent about his enduring success, five-time Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has begun preparations for further strengthening of his governance immediately after his party’s massive victory in Bijepur assembly by-poll.
Recently, he came up with a panel of IAS officers who will be assigned different hospitals in various parts of the state for improvement in the quality of services they offer. They will visit these hospitals, interact with people and the authorities and come up with ideas for improvement.
This is being seen as important because complaints about the quality of services provided by hospitals have been aplenty. As is widely known now, this was also noticed during the visit of 5T secretary and his team to some hospitals recently.
The Chief Minister has also asked ministers to make surprise visits to check the quality of food served to children at schools and orphanages. They have also been instructed to share meals with students in schools and the inmates of orphanages.
Equally significant is the directive that ministers should have lunch at Aahar centres and government-run rehabilitation centres for the differently abled during their visits to districts. The obvious aim of these visits would be to check the quality of fare being served at these places because it is food subsidised by the government and ought to be both satisfying and healthy.
The instructions make it clear that these visits should be unannounced and ministers should not be accompanied by more than three to four persons. This is important because politicians are wont to carry their hangers-on during visits to districts. For them this is a way of showing their importance.
There is little doubt that the instructions issued to the ministers are part of government’s recently launched Mo Sarkar drive which is an attempt to improve the quality of governance and make people feel that those in power actually care for them. It had begun with a bid to make police people-friendly and hospitals free of touts, and that is now being extended to other areas of governance.
Checking the quality of food at places where it is either being served free or at highly subsidized rates is important from the point of view of health. Government’s own image depends on it because schemes like Aahar and free mid-day meals have earned it a lot of goodwill which has translated into votes during the elections.
But in the past there have been complaints galore against the quality of mid-day meals. There have been several instances of poor-quality food being served and even insects being found in meals. Once it happened in a primary school at Hinjili which happens to be a part of the Chief Minister’s constituency.
Fortunately, the cooked food had not been served to any student when the insect was detected in the soya curry at the primary school. The food was immediately returned to the private organisation that had been entrusted with the job of supplying hygienic and nutritional mid-day meals to 390 schools in Hinjili and Chhatrapur blocks and in the Berhampur Municipal Corporation area in Ganjam district.
Such incidents have also taken place in other parts of the state. A few years ago there was public furore over the supply of substandard ‘dal’ for mid-day meals. It turned into a major political issue and led to the resignation of the then Women And Child Development minister Pramila Mallick.
Ever since maintaining the quality of mid-day meals has been a sensitive issue with the government, because it involves the health of children. With the government initiating schemes such as Aahar under which meals at Rs.5 are being provided to people, it has become imperative to ensure that the food being served is hygienic. And the Chief Minister has ensured that it is done. With such initiatives the credibility of his government is bound to grow.
It is this credibility which was recently reflected in the party’s stupendous victory in Bijepur with its candidate Rita Sahu, handpicked by the Chief Minister, winning with a record-breaking margin of around 98,000.
The victory proved that BJD is the most successful regional party in the history of the state having done far better than the mainstream parties. With this the Chief Minister has dealt a big blow to his main rival, BJP, which was trying to project itself as an alternative to him.
But people were more than happy with the glory that chief minister’s candidature had brought to the constituency and they basked in it. Never in its history had Bijepur received this kind of attention even if it was short lived.
If the people of Bijepur voted so overwhelmingly in favour of the BJD candidate, it was because they trusted the Chief Minister who has promised to develop the constituency. They have actually seen development taking place on the ground, such as the launch of an ambitious irrigation project among others.
Patnaik’s pro-people drive is benefitting people in all parts of the state and all sections of people. While he is taking special measures to improve services in hospitals and to ensure better quality food to people at Aahar centres and to students in schools, he is also focusing on improving the lot of farmers through the KALIA scheme which has garnered so much praise. He has ensured that his government makes Odisha a welfare state in the true sense of the term.
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