Try & love me tikke-tikke, says Naveen
MEENAL BAGHEL

BHUBANESWAR, FEBRUARY 19: The favourite question in Orissa these days is: What do you think of him? The answers, varied, invariably vague, reflect the uneasy equation the State has with the man tipped to be their new chief minister: Naveen Patnaik, part-time writer, part-time socialite/dilettante, friend of Jaqueline Kennedy when she was alive, and now a full time politician.

The buzz gathered momentum after the February 16 rally at Atthagarh where Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Patnaik's strongest ally, formally anointed him as the man who would lead if the Bharatiya Janata Party-Biju Janata Dal alliance won. Till then, typically, nursing a hundred hopes and a thousand wiles in their breasts, State leaders had stuck to the coy - whatever the people will - cliche. But with a palpable mood and exit poll statistics backing a swing in favour of the BJP-BJD combine Patnaik wasn't taking chances.

In a move that is copybook Machiavellian he left his closest rival and one of the founders of the BJD, Bijoy Mahapatra, trapped and floundering in that nano-second before nominations closed. And then expelled him from the party for six years. Naveen Patnaik, politician, had announced himself. But up close and personal, Patnaik is still squeamish.

"I am in politics. I don't practise politics," he corrects in response to a question about him practising politics for only three years. Ask him if he is beginning to enjoy it and he gets a little sanctimonious. "Politics is not for my enjoyment. Several calamities have befallen my State in the last five years and I am here to serve the people, not to enjoy myself."

Touring with Patnaik as he criss-crosses the cyclone-ravaged coastal belt days before the February 22 polls is an insight into electoral politics. On an average he addresses ten meetings a day. On the chartered Mesco helicopter he prefers a grim silence. As the big bird descends at each venue, he waves, smiles and just before that final leap onto the ground arranges his hair in a nervous, reflexive way. His speech at all the meetings is succinct, similar. Greetings in Oriya for a New Year, a new century before he quickly lapses into Anglicised, somewhat brutalised Hindi.

Invariably father "Biju Babu", his love for Orissa, for the poor of Orissa is invoked, before he delivers the punchline. "I know you cannot love me as much but try and love me tikke-tikke (little little)." As the ecstatic public applauds he hits out at the Opposition: "I am single so I have no wife to send to the Rajya Sabha or a son-in-law to the Lok Sabha (an easily identifiable dig at Congress's J B Patnaik). My family is the poor of Biju Babu's dream."

Then comes a word about the local candidate, very often a promise to induct him or her into the Cabinet if he makes the government and the final charm offensive, in Oriya of course: "I am here to serve you, to serve you, to serve you." Sweet, simple, saying little. The velvet glove is off in Bhubaneswar, dealing with rebellious partymen. A whisper of dissent and expulsion is swift. Already forty-three members have been asked to leave and with Bijoy Mahapatra preparing ground for a split, numbers are going to rise. "We have to do it," he says with characteristic terseness when asked about the unusually high body count. At the desolate Congress office they are still trying to unravel the Naveen enigma.

"He looks unsure, his manner of speech is tentative, but he is so authoritarian. Moreover this man does not know the language of the state, how will he rule?" asks Ananda Prasad Sethi, vice-president of the Orissa Pradesh Congress Committee, rather indignantly. Perhaps, just as Congressmen hope, one day Sonia Gandhi will rule the country. Linguistic inability aside what makes most people uncertain about Patnaik's future is his lack of transparency.

"He doesn't include you," reveals a partyman, obviously on a no-names condition. "We don't relate to him as we don't know what he is thinking." In Bhubaneswar, Patnaik's opponents are already fantasising about a post-poll scenario: He forms the government, within months Bijoy Mahapatra engineers a split, Congress intervenes and as could the BJP....New elections, new aspirations, new possibilities, new permutation combinations. If wishes were helicopters... For now, secrets, savoir faire intact, Naveen Patnaik is riding it, landing into the sunset to address his last meeting for the day.

Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.