On a blazing hot day in 2021, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs in Odisha decided to corner Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for attending the assembly’s budget session by video conference instead of appearing in person. They wanted the septuagenarian chief minister to be physically present for an important discussion on farmers’ problems in the state. Covid-19 was very much a threat at the time but the Opposition had a reasonable argument. Most of them were turning up in person for the proceedings.
Incensed by what seemed to be an exasperatingly callous approach towards the legislature, the BJP MLAs, led by Pradipta Kumar Naik, who was then leader of the Opposition, undertook a three-kilometre padayatra in protest. It was 1 pm by the time they got to the chief minister’s residence, Naveen Niwas. A posse of policemen had already been stationed outside the compound wall to prevent any disruptive moves by the angry legislators.
The media, which had covered each step of the noisy protestors, was hoping to capture an explosive political outcome. The political temperature in Odisha was almost at par with that of the merciless March afternoon.
Suddenly, the gates of Naveen Niwas opened. A tall and stately figure, dressed in trademark white kurta pyjamas, emerged. An umbrella was held over his shock of silver hair as a shield against the blazing sun. Behind this figure came a contingent of women leaders of the Biju Janata Dal. They greeted the protesting MLAs with a chorus of ululations. They also applied tilaks to the foreheads of the legislators, while the chief minister cordially invited them in for a discussion.
Visibly perplexed, the legislators allowed the chief minister to take control of the situation. Most of them appeared to be in awe at meeting a fifth-term chief minister, a dynast with unmatched elite roots in the political and literary world, and one of the most successful politicians in India. The MLAs were led into the grounds of the house, offered seats and coconut water, heard patiently and courteously dismissed.
Naveen Patnaik had artfully defused a potentially explosive situation that could have pockmarked his political image in Odisha.
Defusing political explosives lobbed at him has been the essence of Naveen Patnaik’s style of politics in his 24 years as chief minister of Odisha. That was evident again during the last phase of the 2019 campaign, when Odisha was voting simultaneously for Lok Sabha and assembly.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in Kendrapara district, had launched an unusual personal attack on the Odisha chief minister. Referring to poll-related violence in Odisha, Modi said that while he did not want the long-serving chief minister to be humiliated, it was time for him to lose his seat of power.
This was probably the first time that Modi had directly attacked Patnaik. His campaign speeches in Odisha had until then criticised the state government and the ruling Biju Janata Dal. But disappointing all those hoping for a feisty exchange, Patnaik drew on his usual stratagem and offered a pithy rejoinder to an inquisitive reporter: “Did he really say that? He must have said it to enthuse his cadres.” Once again, an imminent political controversy was snuffed out at a moment’s notice.
Patnaik’s political strategy, which is misconstrued as mere politeness and civility, is a demonstration of his masterful political skills. Patnaik has correctly read the political outlook of Odias – a proclivity for anti-politics. The term, which essentially means a distrust for politics-as-usual, is a deeply ingrained instinct in the people of Odisha.
The modern history of Odisha offers several significant examples that reveal the running thread of anti-politics among its residents and their distaste for intense politicking and political animals.
The first noteworthy example is that Odisha, since 1947, has remained largely unaffected by the major social and political movements that have galvanised the country. Though a direct neighbour to Bengal and with significant people-to-people links between both states, Bengal’s hegemonic Communist movement of four decades did not impact Odisha significantly.
The politics of caste representation and the Mandal agitations that rocked Bihar did not touch Odisha, though it has a significant population of Scheduled Castes. The Hindutva movement that electrified many parts of the country did not hold sway over Odisha. In fact, after its language movement led to the creation of an Odia province in 1936, the state has never seen a major social movement that would have birthed political leaders who drew their legitimacy from day-to-day, incessant realpolitik.
The few towering political leaders in Odisha, who emerged between 1921 and 1947, were shaped by the anti-colonial freedom movement. After attaining independence, the anti-politics strain among Odias soon reasserted itself.
Three leaders of modern Odisha have continued to loom large over the public imagination. Madhusudan Das – an eminent lawyer – was famous for his courtroom and legislative acumen as well as his vision of an industrialised Odisha. Gopabandhu Das was revered for his charitable and philanthropic projects, especially his relief work in times of natural calamity. Both these men contributed immensely to the political awakening of Odias. But they were not celebrated as practitioners of politics.
Biju Patnaik – Naveen’s father – was a politician who won and lost elections. But he is revered more as a fearless pilot of international repute, a piquant character, and a CEO-type figure who strove for the rapid industrialisation of a rural state beset with poverty and feudalism. In that sense, Biju Patnaik is beloved as a symbol of modernity by a state that was desperate to break away from the old world.
Former chief ministers Harekrushna Mahtab, Naba Krushna Choudhury, Nandini Satpathy and Janaki Ballav Patnaik who were politicians to their core have not captured the imagination of Odias to the same extent. After 1947, Odisha has also not seen the emergence of towering political activists, such as Jay Prakash Narayan, Rammanohar Lohiya, Kanshi Ram and Periyar, who achieved stature taking on the establishment and established thinking.
Naveen Patnaik, a perceptive politician to his bones, has identified the subterranean forces that have shaped the Odia psyche. Though he was not promoted by his father, he has never shied away from his position as a dynast and being part of the establishment. Instead, through consistent demonstrations of personal austerity and public largesse, Naveen Patnaik has added texture to the image with which he entered politics in the late 1990s.
Patnaik is one of the richest politicians in Odisha, but he leads a spartan life. He has carried out a massive expansion of the welfare state that now benefits people from the cradle to the grave. Unlike Rahul Gandhi, Patnaik never tried to reinvent himself as an anti-establishment firebrand. He instead chose to sculpt his image as a generous and peace-loving ruler, immersed in the orderly management of economic aspirations and social tensions and committed to protect his state from natural calamities.
Patnaik’s quiet and deep-running personal popularity among Odisha’s residents after 24 years in power comes from this political image – something authentic in its core while the new contours blend seamlessly with the old.
Anti-politics also signifies a distrust of stereotypical politicians who recognise no limit in their lust for power. Respecting the anti-politics current among his people, Patnaik has repeatedly clarified that he has no national ambitions.
Though he is the son of a famous chief minister and once hobnobbed with the New Delhi establishment, Patnaik has eschewed the temptation of becoming the grand old man of national politics, offering counsel and guiding alliances. In that respect, he differs from other significant regional satraps such as Sharad Pawar, Nitish Kumar and K Chandrashekhar Rao.
Last but not the least, Naveen Patnaik has developed an ingenious method of keeping Biju Janata Dal politicians out of the public eye. Many of his party colleagues are also long-serving politicians or children of politicians. Corrupt, autocratic, and pugnacious, their clout in their small pockets could be easily defeated by the equally strong anti-incumbency sentiment against them. But in the public eye, Patnaik has managed to replace the politician with the bureaucrat.
For instance, businessman Bill Gates, on a visit to Odisha in February, was briefed by the agriculture secretary and the development commissioner-cum-additional chief secretary. The only politician from Odisha who met Gates was Patnaik.
Over the last six years, the Odisha government’s thrust on building sporting infrastructure has been marketed and pushed by Sports Secretary Vineel Krishna. Meanwhile, Manoj Mishra, the principal secretary in the electronics and information technology department, is the public face of the government’s efforts to incentivise information technology companies to set up offices in Bhubaneswar. The ministers in charge of these portfolios are not publicly leading the state government’s major projects.
People lamenting the rise of the bureaucrat in Odisha, citing the example of Patnaik’s former private secretary VK Pandian who is now a powerful politician, have probably missed another subtle pattern.
Patnaik has always chosen a bureaucrat as his lieutenant. Once, that position was filled by the former IAS officer and Rajya Sabha MP Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, who arguably wielded more clout than Pandian does today. After Mohapatra’s failed coup against Patnaik, there were brief test runs with other senior bureaucrats till Patnaik cannily picked a young, conscientious non-Odia IAS officer who has now evolved into a full-time politician.
Patnaik’s decision to replace the politician with the bureaucrat also dovetails with the anti-political feelings that Odias possess. In Odisha, the generic IAS officer has been as respected and envied as the average politician is detested. In Odisha, IAS officers continue to dominate the middle-class imagination and cultural life.
The transfers and postings of Indian Administrative Service officers are a subject of lively discussion. Individual IAS officers have their own cult followings. Even after retirement, they run the cultural centres, clubs, educational institutions, and pontificate on all and sundry to an unfailingly attentive audience.
Those blaming Patnaik for the ascendance of IAS officers forget that he has merely been the first to effectively harness a desire that had prevailed among Odias since Independence. Even the Opposition was forced to take notice. Today former IAS officer Bijay Patnaik holds a very important position in the state unit of Congress, while his colleague Aparajita Sarangi is in the BJP.
However, if anyone thinks that the Opposition has caught up, they have failed to realise that Patnaik always manages to stay a step ahead. It is important to state that Naveen Patnaik has ruthlessly dealt with errant officers. Several IAS officers have been sent to jail, while others have been unceremoniously pushed to the margins.
While he doesn’t oppose rival political parties or ideologies very vigorously, Patnaik has decimated politicians who have threatened his position from time to time. Patnaik lets neither politicians nor bureaucrats grow too big for their boots.
If one follows politics in Odisha, then another stratagem of the chief minister becomes visible. The figure of VK Pandian – first as the most powerful bureaucrat and now as the second-most powerful politician in the state – has deflected any attacks on Naveen Patnaik himself.
Though Patnaik has been chief minister for around 24 years now, Pandian is the magnet that attracts all the anti-incumbency sentiment, the political diatribe, rumours, mistrust and anger of political opponents. Patnaik, on the other hand, remains the statesman and larger-than-life figure serenely perched above the sludge of everyday politics.
Sampad Patnaik is a Homi Bhaba Fellow and a freelance journalist based in Odisha.