Pappu pass ho gaya!

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Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has shattered myths about the babalog neta

Pappu can't dance, saala, goes the popular song from a recent film. But anyone observing the political career of Orissa Chief Minister Naveen 'Pappu' Patnaik (Pappu is the nickname of this youngest son of Biju Patnaik) would be forced to sing the opposite. Not only can 'Pappu' dance, he is now a self confident enough leader to say 'boo' to the mighty BJP. Unexpectedly, just as they were least expecting it, this mild mannered softly spoken second time chief minister of Orissa, who it was long assumed whether he liked it or not, needed the support of the BJP to survive in the Byzantine world of Orissa's politics, has thumbed his nose at the NDA and decide to contest all 21 seats in Orissa on his own. Who says Doon School-educated hepcats who once partied with Jackie Kennedy and Gore Vidal, can't become ruthless regional satraps?

When Naveen Patnaik was elected to the 12th Lok Sabha from the Aska parliamentary constituency in 1998 and subsequently when he became chief minister of Orissa in 2000 with the help of the BJP, your columnist who covered his campaign and first days in office, was forced to ask the question, Pappu's cool, but can he rule? In those days Naveen Patnaik spoke no Oriya, he was an anglicized urban sophisticate who smoked his cigarettes and drank his scotch like any denizen of metropolitan India. He was known by his trendy night-clubbing lifestyle in New York, had written books on herbs and gardens, was the creatively inclined founder member of INTACH. Indeed he was someone seemingly much more at home in genteel air-conditioned dinner parties than trying to lead India's second poorest state, with its vast swathes of tribal communities, its grinding underdevelopment, its belching leg-shaking, tea-slopping MLAs and representatives of the dirt poor and the illiterate, who crowded his reception rooms in Naveen Niwas in their crumpled kurtas and blood red tilaks. He faced a formidable opponent in the Congress' redoubtable JB Patnaik. Nor were the Biju Patnaik loyalists convinced that the gentle public school-educated son could ever inherit the mantle of Biju Patnaik, Lion Of The East. A veteran Oriya journalist told me at that time, "Only god can save Naveen Patnaik."

Yet today, with or without God, Naveen Patnaik has shattered many myths about the English-speaking baba log in India. First of all he has proved that dynasty need not necessarily be a bad thing. He may have started out as Biju Patnaik's son, may have had a head start in politics because of his family connections, yet today he seems to have surpassed his father in charisma and durability.He's turned into a ruthless canny politician who perhaps his fashionable friends would find hard to recognise. He's shown that family name need not stop you from artfully marginalizing an old guard that may have been loyal to the father but are of little use to the son.

Second, he's proved his own dictum right. He once said in an interview, "Ultimately its whether you're working for them or not, it doesn't matter where you're from." He's boldly arrested the VHP activists accused for the anti-Christian brutality in the Kandhamal riots last year. After the Orissa super cyclone, he started the Indira Abhash Yojana which gave loans to BPL families and HUDCO house building loans to non BPL households. Like the worker-ant Chief Ministers Shiela Dixit or a Raman Singh, Patnaik emphasizes development above all. Police brutality on Kalinganagar adivasi protests and open door investment friendly policies like inviting in Tata steel and Posco may have been severely criticized, but Patnaik's still notched up a reputation as a hard working chief minister.

Third and most importantly, he's proved that those who are criticized for being affluent and privileged are also relatively free of the pressures of having to please hanger-on families and kinship groups. Naveen Patnaik's own clean image and his high profile campaigns against corruption are today perhaps his greatest asset. Prior to the 2004 elections he had a senior IAS officer arrested and put in jail. The local media regularly receives reports about his actions against corrupt officials. Travel in Orissa and from the windswept beaches of Puri to the sylvan jungles of Manoharpur, they all grudgingly agree on one assiduously cultivated perception, "Naveen Patnaik doesn't take money."

Which is why the BJP must now repent having taken Pappu for granted. As the national party, there is still a tendency to see the regional party as the 'junior' partner. But the rise of Patnaik only proves the emergence of regional satraps as the dominant figures of this election season. Indeed, as Left and JDS make energetic efforts to regroup into a "non Congress secular alternative" to both the BJP and the Congress, the national parties seem to be in a state of increasing disarray. The NDA once a 23 party alliance is now a rump of a handful of discontents.

The Congress' own alliances with the regional satraps too show that the freedom party now pays second fiddle to the state level parties, however bravely its spokespersons may declare that this is a "unipolar" election. Today the Congress does not know whether it can rely on the Samajwadi Party, or the Nationalist Congress Party as an ally, its own arrogance in not offering national alliances has pushed it into a situation where it must now bargain for almost every seat it wants to contest. The manner in which the NCP has been playing open footsie with the Shiv Sena to bargain for seats with the Congress, shows that the latter's helplessness in the face of robust regional bosses.

These regional bosses fit no stereotype. From caste army leaders to farmer capitalists, they now have a new posterboy in the regional pantheon. A representative of the English-speaking class, of the elitist children of privilege, who were long written off in India's democratic process, as being irrelevant and unworthy of a popular mandate, who could not hope to compete with the caste movements of today, has now emerged as a strong and tough regional satrap.

Naveen Patnaik is a good example to all elite folk seeking a return to their "roots". It doesn't matter if initially people make fun of you for saying "koi hai" and drinking your chota pegs, but "disconnected" Macaulay's children too can become natural born children of Bharat, if only they are willing to work at it.