Advertisement

Royalty in the political circus

The royal lineage has steadily declined as a rallying point in India. However the political class in Orissa have uninterruptedly been reaping huge benefits from its persistence.

D N Singh
The royal lineage has steadily declined as a rallying point in India. However, in one way or the other, the political class in Orissa have uninterruptedly been reaping huge benefits from its persistence, oddly enough, in the most backward and illiterate sections of the populace. So it is not surprising that politicians here try hard to rope-in such people into the fray for easy wins unmindful of the fact that these people hardly ever deliver. For the coming elections there are about a dozen members from different former ruling families in the fray and, ironically, a majority of these people represent or plan to represent from the interiors of the state where poverty remains the biggest social problem. Be it Bolangir, Kalahandi, Nuapada, Dhenkanal, Sundergarh or Gajpati; they together portray a collage of backwardness; in stark contrast to the prosperity achieved by the people who seek to represent them. Bolangir needs no introduction. In last few decades it had earned the epithet of being a `pocket of hunger `, from where news like of people dying due to hunger or a mother selling her children has become quite common, blotting the scorecard of the state. Bolangir has been represented by the members of the erstwhile royal family for many years, who somehow manage to keep alive the roots of peoples` blind faith on them like any evangelical cleric. Two senior cabinet ministers in Naveen Patnaik government, A U Singhdeo and K V Singhdeo, have inherited the political legacy of Bolangir and Patnagarh Assembly constituencies respectively for over one and a half decade. Similarly, the Bolangir Lok sabha constituency is represented by K V Singhdeo`s wife Sangeeta Singhdeo who is trying for a hatrick this time. After his failure to convince Naveen Patnaik for the Bolangir Lok sabha ticket for himself, the clever prince AU Singhdeo managed to get Bolangir`s Lok Sabha ticket for his flamboyant son Kalikesh, who is a sitting MLA from Saintala in Bolangir. Enticed by the dividends politics pays, KV`s aunt Prakriti Singhdeo has also taken a plunge into the electoral circus with a BJD ticket for Patnagarh Assembly seat, apparently a step designed by Naveen Patnaik to upset KV, a friend turned foe. The scene in Kalahandi, another pocket of sorrow, is similar. There the local royal, B K Deo, the sitting MP, has somehow managed to hold on to the traditional longevity of political domination on the downtrodden mass since his father`s time. Kalahandi still bears the stigma of `starvation deaths` which has rocked the country`s Parliament in early 80s. The recently appointed president of the Pradesh Congress Committee, K P Singhdeo had played a long political innings in yet another economically pulverised pocket of the state. He represented the Dhenkanal Lok Sabha constituency for a record seven times but the district has not been able to escape this family’s servitude nor could it taste the fruits of development. Trapped in a feudal mind-set, this erstwhile king of Dhenkanal is yet to come out of the insular world of palace culture. ` He can not treat us the way he wants and more than sixty percent of the people in Congress are just suffocated by his arrogant disposition` confided one of the senior leaders of the party. Royal family members remain in the news, during the elections, through the Unusualness of their appearance in the common man`s domain with a begging bowl reciting the stereotypical rhetoric `agar hum chune gaye to hum aapke har pareshani` ..... and so on. The populace, still in the throes of a transition, laps up their assurances. Once they are in power, the insularity becomes vivid and the bonhomie pales out to be slowly replaced by imperial contempt.