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STATES:
ORISSA
File
And Forget
The chief
minister's public durbar is fast dashing people's hopes as barely 1 per
cent of their complaints are redressed
By Ruben
Banerjee
Lakshmidhar
Parida's visits to Bhubaneswar have been following the law of diminishing
returns. The first time he had come to stand in the queue at the chief
minister's public durbar, he returned with a chit that's routinely given
to all those who come to narrate their woes and seek justice, besides
a lot of hope. On the past few occasions though, he has been returning
with only the chit and no hope.
 |
| The
chief minister and officials discussing a petitioner's plea |
Though launched
amidst unprecedented fanfare in April - a month after the BJD - BJP Government
assumed power-Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's twice a week public hearings
of general grievances is proving to be a damp squib. With folded hands
and prayers on their lips, hapless people still throng the Chief Minister's
Grievance Cell to share their plight and seek redressal. Under the gaze
of tough- looking security personnel, Patnaik hears them out. A flurry
of activity starts immediately: aides fill up forms furiously, the chief
minister attests his signature on them in hundreds and then they are sent
to departments and officials concerned.
What follows
thereafter is disappointment and dejection. For in the six months that
the Grievance Cell has been at work, little or no justice has been handed
out yet. On Fridays, Patnaik meets people from his own assembly constituency
of Hinjili. Working Saturdays are reserved for people from the rest of
the state. In all these sessions, thousands of petitions have poured in.
In contrast, only a few handful have secured justice.
|
LACKLUSTRE
LIST
|
| Home |
272 |
21 |
6 |
| Revenue |
261 |
13 |
1 |
| Agriculture |
102 |
3 |
2 |
| Collectors |
1,162 |
14 |
0 |
| Overall |
4,456 |
240 |
45 |
Going by
the latest available update in possession of INDIA TODAY, the Grievance
Cell on Saturdays has received 4,456 petitions till date. But not more
than 240 of them have been attended to as on date and an even smaller
number-45-have actually been disposed of. The rest, it now appears, have
all been lost in the bureaucratic maze. The Grievance Cell for Hinjili
has also not fared any better. Its redressal rate is also abysmal. Of
850-odd complaints received, around 85 have been attended to, and not
more than a dozen disposed of.
"People
have problems and we are doing our best to attend to them," says
Patnaik. But his best is obviously falling well below popular expectations.
Lakshmidhar
Parida's house was damaged by last year's cyclone, and he has been running
around for some monetary help to repair it. He first reported to the Grievance
Cell and argued his case before the chief minister on August 26. He was
back again on September 16. Nothing happened and Parida was back again
at the cell on November 11. The help he has been chasing is not in sight
yet and Parida is desolate. "To me, he was God. But then what do
you do when God fails?" he asks.
Propelled
to power by a landslide mandate, Patnaik has clearly failed to match up
to the skyrocketing expectations he had stoked. "The non-performance
of the Grievance Cell is an index of his performance," says an insider,
disgusted with Patnaik's tardy administration. For the complainants themselves,
its much worse. A cancer patient, Guna Dei from Delanga in Puri district
has already paid several visits to the durbar without any tangible results.
She borrows to pay for her bus fare and then sleeps in the local railway
platform on arrival in Bhubaneswar. "But where is the help for my
treatment?" she wails. Being rapidly destroyed by a debilitating
illness, time certainly is running out for the woman. But it's not late
for the chief minister to ask what has gone wrong with his cell. Or, what
has been happening to the petitions that he has been signing and forwarding
to the concerned departments for speedy action and redressal.
The truth
that awaits him is disconcerting. Notwithstanding the public hype and
the hoopla over the Grievance Cell-the chief minister's official residence
was specially spruced up with special staff and ancillaries being pulled
in at a substantial cost for the purpose-minions like departmental secretaries
and district collectors who make up the Government are unswayed. For example,
one collector who has not acted upon several complaints forwarded to him
says, "I am overworked. I am not bothered whether the chief minister's
public image is going up or going down. Whatever be the case, my salary
remains the same."
Though rules
say that every complaint must elicit a response within a month, few officials
bother to get back. District collectors have been forwarded 1,162 complaints,
but they have got back only on 14 of them so far. Likewise, the Home Department
has been sent 272 and they have responded only in 21 cases. Other departments
have done no better. The Women and Child Welfare Department received 69
petitions and responded in only four, and the School and Mass Education
Department has attended to only 10 of the 202 petitions it had been sent
by the chief minister's office.
But how
is it that even the state's ultimate boss is being treated with such disdain?
"We are up against attitudinal problems," admits a senior official
at the Grievance Cell. Patnaik's mild manners are being mistaken by many
as a weakness. This, added to the lack of follow up from the chief minister's
cell-not one single reminder has been sent to them as yet-gives officials
the courage to sleep on the files.
"We
will change all that with time," insists Asit Mohanty, the officer
on special duty at the Grievance Cell. "Not only do we need to have
teeth, we need to show the teeth as well from time to time," explains
the official, stunned by the lukewarm response they have elicited till
date. The chief minister's secretariat points out that many of the petitioners
could be making blatantly illegal requests which could never be met. But
in the absence of any feedback, their frivolousness is yet to be established.
The feedback may still be a while coming-the feedback forms of the government's
Public Grievance Department haven't been printed in years.
The disillusionment,
meanwhile, is building up. One woman has already threatened to immolate
herself at the chief minister's official residence. On returning empty
handed, another was found angrily quipping: "Naveen is no God. He
isn't even worthy to be Biju Patnaik's son." With expectations unfulfilled,
Patnaik's stock is nosediving.
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