NAVEEN PATNAIK - Man of the moment

NAVEEN PATNAIK’S story is a tale of guts and gumption. It was always a risk to ditch the BJP and take on the Congress. He took the risk and succeeded handsomely. Proving political analysts and his critics wrong, he scored a hat-trick in the Orissa Assembly elections. Congress Chief Ministers have won election for three times in a row but, possibly, no opposition Chief Minister has performed the feat. Leading his regional party — Biju Janata Dal— Naveen has done it . He emerged as the main anti-Congress pole in Orissa and also contained the threat of the BJP.

Ten years back when Naveen Panaik became Orissa’s Chief Minister, he was new to politics, considered immature and suffered from a handicap; he could not converse in Oriya. But he picked up the ropes fast, matured politically and proved smarter than the BJP leaders, his ally for the last 11 years. He dropped a bombshell when an emissary of L.K. Advani met him in March and was tersely told that BJD could not offer more than 31 Assembly and five Lok Sabha seats to the BJP.

Naveen did not lose his composure even for a moment while telling Advani’s emissary that the alliance with the BJP was over. The BJP leaders, who thought Naveen to be their most dependable ally, were shocked and changed their tunes, calling him a “serial killer” and “betrayer”. The BJP’s harsh words notwithstanding, there is a grudging admiration for the BJD Chief in the BJP circles. He is seen as a smarter politician compared with much senior ones in the BJP. More important, people see him as a clean politician, who is striving to end corruption.

What brought the BJD and the BJP together in 1998 was their common enemy, the Congress. But in an alliance one party grows at the cost of the other. The BJP was never comfortable with a situation that demanded that it permanently remain a junior partner. It was a matter of time before the opportunistic alliance ended in divorce and it did.

Naveen has aristocratic upbringing and his pursuit since he graduated from the Delhi University has been history and literature. He also evinced keen interest in Ayurveda and wrote a well researched book on the healing properties of various plants grown in the sub-continent. Having been brought up and educated in Delhi and sojourned in the United States for years, Naveen hardly looks an Oriya in conversation or appearance. His performance as the Union Minister for Steel had been better than many of his colleagues. He created a record having won three successive Lok Sabha elections.

His illustrious father, Biju Patnaik, had a domineering personality and strode the political scene like a colossal but Naveen is timid and remained a bachelor. His elder brother is an industrialist and the sister, Gita Mehta, a well known writer. Naveen, like his sister, has a literary bent. Among his many friends abroad was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and in India they included erstwhile Rajas and Maharajas.
Jacqueline was Editor of A Second Paradise, written by Naveen, depicting the courtly life in India from 1590 to 1947. The book was, apparently, produced to mark the Festival of India in Washington in 1985 and to coincide with Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to the US.

The Patnaiks were quite close to the Nehru-Gandhi family. Biju was a friend of Indira Gandhi though they later moved apart politically. Naveen was a friend of both Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. Mrs Gandhi would send her two sons to Biju’s house to keep company with Naveen who later moved to the Doon School.

Naveen’s another book, The Garden of Life, is on an altogether different subject. It deals with the healing plants in India used for preparation of Ayurvedic medicines. How Naveen got interested in herbs, having medicinal value, is shrouded in mystery.