Actions are speaking louder than words in the Naveen Patnaik administration’s unrelenting quest for better governance
Siddhartha Tripathy
As the second morning of this month dawned and people across India began paying homage to the Father of the Nation on his 150th birth anniversary, Odisha was abuzz with scenes that had been unheard of, let alone seen, anywhere else in the country ever since the great Mahatma Gandhi led the Independence struggle to its successful conclusion well over 72 years ago.
While addressing the National Integration Conclave on Gandhi Jayanti, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: “Bapuji was not a political personality, rather he was a great saint and social reformer who had united the whole nation with his mesmerising personality. He was indeed the true symbol of national integration.”
Reminding everyone that Gandhi was not just a freedom fighter but also a crusader of nation-building, the Biju Janata Dal boss stated that many of the nation’s problems can be resolved by adhering to the Mahatma’s principles of non-violence. He also reiterated his call for incorporation of the word Ahimsa into the Preamble of the Constitution.
On the day, the state also collectively remembered India’s second prime minister and one of the greatest Gandhians ever born – Lal Bahadur Shastri – whose birth anniversary coincides with his idol.
“Humble tributes to former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri on his birth anniversary. He was a freedom fighter, patriot and his golden words, ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ are still a guiding force to build a strong and powerful nation,” the Chief Minister posted on Twitter.
However, unlike the way things had been in the nation for the best part of the past seven decades, this year’s October 2 did not end up being an occasion on which political leaders gave elaborate speeches about Gandhi’s principles and ideologies only to forget about it all the very next day.
Not in Odisha at least.
BIG LAUNCH
As per its prime objective of making governance people-centric, and as per the schedule announced in mid-August on Independence Day, the Naveen Patnaik government officially launched the ‘Mo Sarkar’ initiative – as part of the Chief Minister’s 5T programme aimed at achieving progress through transparency, teamwork, technology, time and transformation.
Staying true to every planned step that his office had announced earlier, the Chief Minister himself made phone calls to as many as nine randomly selected people across the state – one each in Balangir, Sundergarh, Malkangiri, Jajpur, Baripada, Nayagah, Ganjam, Balasore and Bhawanipatna – who had visited police stations and hospitals over the past few months and sought feedback on their experience of the services they received.
The initiative became operational at all police stations, 21 district headquarters hospitals (DHHs), and medical colleges in Cuttack, Berhampur and Burla. By the end of this month it is scheduled to cover all DHHs, and by March 5 next year the Mo Sarkar initiative will be implemented in all government departments across Odisha.
From now on, under this pioneering initiative, the mobile numbers of all people visiting police stations and DHHs will be registered and uploaded onto a centralised database of a specially designed dedicated portal. From this portal, which will be used by the Chief Minister, home minister, health minister director-general of police and health secretary, among others, ten numbers will be randomly selected every day for collecting feedback. Importantly, the identity of the people telephoned shall be kept confidential so they can give feedback honestly and fearlessly.
With this process in place, the government can collect first-hand feedback on the professionalism, performance and general behaviour of department officials at all levels. And on the basis of such feedback, the officials will be ranked. The Chief Minister himself had already made it clear that those ranked well will have their careers fast-tracked, while those ranked poorly will face action.
“People are the real masters and every institution exists to serve citizens in a professional and dignified manner,” the BJD president reasserted on Gandhi Jayanti.
If there were any lingering doubts about the Naveen Patnaik administration’s express commitment towards best-practice governance, they were definitively dispelled two days later when four officials of the state received premature retirement orders from the Odisha government either for their involvement in corruption cases or for their inefficiency in providing the public service expected from their job profile.
Four officials – Dhenkanal regional transport officer Basanta Kumar Behera, Deputy Commissioner of Excise Dillip Kumar Nag, Deputy Conservator of Forests Sarat Chandra Panda and Assistant Civil Supplies Officer Ashok Kumar Majhi – were sent on compulsory retirement when corruption charges against them were proven after a vigilance probe.
CRACKING DOWN
All these officials had been booked in disproportionate assets cases.
Behera was booked by the anti-corruption agency last year for allegedly amassing assets worth Rs 3.6 crore, which was grossly disproportionate to his known sources of income. The assets were found to be either in his name and or in the name of his family members.
Nag was arrested after the vigilance department found properties worth Rs 1.5 crore in his name. A surprise raid at his residence led to seizure of more than Rs 47.5 lakh in cash.
Investigation into Panda’s case led to the highest detection of cash in the account of a government servant and his family members in Odisha. Bank deposits of around Rs 4.5 crore were found in his name and in the names of his family members.
Lastly, Majhi is facing a couple of corruption charges against him on similar accounts, apart from having already been suspended for failing to carry out his duties during cyclone Fani.
In an unprecedented move, a circular was issued by the General Administration and Public Grievance department, advising the secretaries of all departments to get rid of incompetent and corrupt officers and employees.
Thanks to the winds of change blowing in Odisha long before the official launch of the 5T governance programme or Mo Sarkar initiative, some good outcomes are already visible – the most recent and encouraging one being the 1,000 investment proposals that the Government of Odisha Single Window for Investor Facilitation and Tracking (GO-SWIFT) portal has received barely within two years of its rollout.
Developed for the purposes of providing all the information and clearances that investors require in a transparent, time-bound, hassle- and paper-free manner, as well as to track the complete life cycle of an investment, this one-stop portal received its 1,000th proposal recently from a Mumbai-based chemical manufacturer Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Ltd.
MEANING BUSINESS
Involving the establishment of a Rs 162-crore manufacturing facility in Odisha for production of water treatment chemicals, with an annual capacity of 72,000 cubic meters, the proposed project has the potential to generate some 125 jobs.
Recalling that GO-SWIFT was launched in 2017, Industries Minister Dibya Shankar Mishra said the portal receiving its 1000th application was “a testament to its tremendous success for facilitating industrial projects in Odisha”.
“We will definitely continue to raise the bar for Ease of Doing Business and are focused on speedy implementation of projects on the ground,” he added.
Over this period, some of the nation’s leading companies such as Indian Oil Corporation Limited, ITC Foods, Haldia Petrochemicals, Aditya Birla Fashion, Vedanta, JSW Cement, Manpasand Beverages, Apar Industries Ltd, Gokul Agro and and Jindal Aluminium, among others, have registered investment proposals at the GO-SWIFT portal – many of which are at different stages of clearance.
IOCL’s proposal of setting up one of the nation’s largest petrochemical complexes in its existing base at Paradip, involving an investment of Rs 1 lakh crore, was approved at a High-Level Clearance Authority (HLCA) meeting in August. At the same meeting, Haldia Petrochemical’s Rs 78,000-crore investment proposal involving establishment of another petrochemical complex in Balasore district, also got the green light.
Ever since its launch, GO-SWIFT portal – operating online in its entirety – has dramatically improved the efficiency of the investment approval process for both new and existing industries across 32 services from 15 departments of the state.
WAY TO GO
Another positive development was Naveen’s offer of all possible assistance to his counterpart in Patna, Nitish Kumar, for dealing with one of the worst floods that Bihar has faced in its history following torrential rains there towards the end of last month.
Once a state that needed the world’s help to survive natural disasters, Odisha has now become a state that is not only giving disaster management lessons to the rest of the globe but also reached a position where it can offer help to other states of India dealing with similar problems.
Odisha has indeed come a long way over the past two decades, but there is yet a long way to go.
The recently reported dreadful story about a pregnant woman dying while being shifted to a government-run hospital in Baripada was one of the starkest reminders of realities still facing the people of the state.
On October 4, Tulsi Munda, the heavily pregnant wife of Chittaranjan Munda from Handa village, needed to be urgently moved (owing to some labour-related complications) from Bangiriposhi Community Health Centre to Pandit Raghunath Murmu Medical College and Hospital (PRMMCH) in Baripada.
However, the ambulance carrying her reportedly ran out of fuel midway on the outskirts of the town – and it would be another 45 minutes before another ambulance could reach the spot.
“When we reached the hospital, the doctors declared my wife brought dead,” Chittaranjan said.
When contacted, the Chief District Medical Officer of Mayurbhanj, Pradip Kumar Mohapatra, said: “According to the driver of the ambulance, the oil pipe of the vehicle leaked midway to the hospital. However, I will conduct an inquiry into the matter and take appropriate action.”
In the bygone era, such an unfortunate incident would be forgotten in no time – without even so much as a sincere probe, let alone appropriate action against people who might be directly or indirectly responsible for it. But now, especially under Naveen’s 5T governance and Mo Sarkar regime where accountability has become an unavoidable priority, that will be increasingly less likely to happen.
Now these are the kind of changes that would make even the great Mahatma Gandhi proud.
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