From the heart of the supercyclone, a cry: Pappu’s cool. And he can rule

Navin Patnaik, ‘‘Pappu’’ to his friends, became chief minister of Orissa in 2000 and almost everybody wrote him off. Pappu was seen as far too trendy for Orissa. He can’t speak Oriya, was friends with Jackie O, hung out in Manhattan clubs and wrote books on Indian herbs. Could such a man ever inherit the mantle of Biju Patnaik, lion of the East?

‘‘Navin Patnaik has been a far more successful CM than anyone predicted,’’ says JNU professor Manoranjan Mohanty, visiting in Orissa on a pre-poll survey. ‘‘Part of his appeal lies in the fact that he is seen as personally incorruptible.’’

In the cyclone-affected villages of Gudubonai and Kantopahoka, villagers complain that those who do not posess BPL (Below Poverty Line) cards have not been given adequate compensation for their destroyed homes. BPL families say the money allotted to them to re-build their homes and farms is simply not enough, given the size of their families and the destruction of their crops. Bengalata Kandi who says she still can’t sleep for fear of the cyclone and still hears the ‘shoo shooo’ of the wind in her ears says the government hasn’t done anything to provide them with an income. But will they vote for Navin Patnaik? ‘‘I will always love the children of Biju Patnaik. He has the right image. He was a big leader. He was good for Orissa which is a state which everybody looks down upon.’’

The re-built homes in the eerily flat landscape are painted with a plethora of religious symbols as if daring the demon of water to visit again. There is a Hero Honda parked in one of the yards.

‘‘The people feel that he is sincere,’’ says Braj Kishore Tripathi, Union minister for Steel and the BJP-BJD candidate for Puri, ‘‘that he is acting against corruption all the time, every day.’’

Patnaik has notched up a high-profile record on corruption. Prior to the start of the campaigning he had a senior IAS officer arrested and put in jail. The media regularly receives reports on his actions against corrupt officials. He has even alienated the Biju old guard by refusing to give tickets to stalwarts like Sarat Kar, speaker of the assembly. Instead a brand new entrant to the party from the Congress, Archana Nayak, was given the ticket for the Kendrapara Lok Sabha seat opposing the formidable Srikant Jena, (Congress) former union minister.

‘‘I am in favour of farmers, women,’’ thunders Patnaik at a rally in Bhubaneswar. ‘‘My focus is agriculture and my farmer brothers.’’ In spite of these declarations. his Mission Shakti designed for womens’ empowerment and the pani panchayats for rural areas have failed to take off.

Instead Orissa is sunk in despondency and gloom. As Suraj Narain Mishra, a panda at the Jagannth temple says, ‘‘Do you think we like treating god as an industry? What else do we do?’’ All along the coast from Konarak to Gopalpur-on-sea, little shops sell ‘maalika’ cassettes, songs of doom prophesying the return of the cyclone.

A dizzying number of politicians have changed parties in these elections and all through the villages, the talk is of ‘‘dolobodol’’ (changing parties). There are a large number of rebel BJD candidates on the coast such as Prabhat Samantray and Jalil Khan. BJP and BJD cadres are at war on the ground as BJP workers fume that Patnaik is treating them like dirt and exploiting his hotline to Advani and Vajpayee. They say he’s not letting the BJP grow as fast as it could.

Yet however embattled the BJP-BJD may be, from Konarak to Berhampore, CM Patnaik, contesting assembly polls from Hinjli in Aska, still brings a smile to his peoples’ faces. ‘‘Everyone looks down on Orissa,’’ says Rabindra Kandi, ‘‘but he makes us proud to be Oriya because he’s not just national but international.’’