By D.N. Singh
It has become more than a contest between Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over launching of poll freebies with unfailing regularity. Both have emerged as master stroke players never allowing the electorate to get dulled by any kind of monotony.
Either the endeavours are products of a mutual war room feedback or sheer coincidence but the alacrity both the leaders demonstrate in the pace of the schemes dedicated to people is amazing. Sometimes it appears as if the Odisha chief minister does a kind of mind reading and lying in wait to ambush with a fitting scheme to match with that of Modi. Imagine the load that the war room staff on either side are under, ready with quick counters.
Be it Ujwala or today Modi serving the three billionth Akhsya Patra meal in Vrindavan but the sequence is amazing. As if, in the know of that, Patnaik took Modi’s swing on the front foot and quickly announced the expansion of the 38 fresh Aahar Kendra centres to make a convincing total of 157 which can feed over one lakh people.
It all sounds remarkable under the prevailing circumstances notwithstanding the longevity of such schemes in the days to come. Initial phases of the inning were more bellicose in nature, either Modi’s Ayushman Bharat or the food security schemes, they were calculated political spins that Patnaik tried to smother with alleged replications inviting severe onslaughts from none other than Modi himself who lambasted at Patnaik’s schemes as copy-cats of the central ones and ridiculed the latter’s benevolence as a product of panic.
Interestingly, Patnaik’s reactions to any such scheme are meted with a disarming calm or he jabs back at the opponent with a fresh shot like Peetha or Kalia, which usually hits an opponent on the rib.
Purposes of both are common and they require no elaboration before the slug overs start. The only difference between the techniques of Patnaik and Modi is that the latter resorts to strong language or tenor (not now though) and the former exudes the enviable patience and cool while designing his next stroke.
Modi and Patnaik are an interesting pair of politicians, perhaps unprecedented in the history of politics between two leaders of their position. Divided, overtly, due to politics and united, covertly, for politics only.
Both play with such fantastic ease that for the onlookers, mainly the cohorts in the Bharatiya Janata Party here, all appear like an object which trapeze from here to Delhi and back, leaving all guessing including the Congress.
