‘Gentle and simple’: How a young Naveen Patnaik lulled his rivals into a false sense of complacency

Having been elected a member of Parliament, Naveen arrived in Aska, wide-eyed.

Though just an hour’s drive from the commercial town of Berhampur, known for its unkempt and crowded roads, Aska was primarily rural, where most people were poor and open defecation was rampant. It fell in the district of Ganjam, notorious for what was locally known as the “Ganjam salute”, wherein hundreds of men and women lining the roads to defecate at night would stand up, to preserve their modesty, the moment the headlights of speeding vehicles fell on them and sit down again when they passed, in seemingly unending waves. Aska was close to the tranquil sea resort of Gopalpur, but it epitomised the underdevelopment and poverty that have historically plagued Odisha.

Naveen, too, was aghast and possibly held his nose at times as he negotiated Aska’s serpentine roads, lined with filth and human excreta. But he was also impressed with what Aska had to offer in spite of its collective misery. For one, the region was famous for the hordes of blackbucks that roamed freely by the side of the roads and in the courtyards of houses. Naveen was smitten by their beauty but also horrified to learn that the animals were routinely killed by speeding vehicles and sometimes poached. So one of the first things he did as MP was to paint a picture of the gentle creature himself. He got some thousand prints of the painting framed with the message “Save the Blackbucks” scrolled across. He gave these prints to schools for distribution among the students as a gift from the newly elected MP.

Though his colleagues in the party saw little political mettle in him and viewed him more as a mascot and a means to harness votes from Biju Babu’s sympathisers, Naveen took to his new role in earnest.

He soaked in the sights and sounds that revealed themselves during his visits to his constituency. When he first visited Aska to file his nomination papers, his sister Gita had come along to boost his morale. In most of his subsequent visits, Ram Krushna Patnaik and V Sugnana Kumari Deo, two local political stalwarts, gave him company and showed him around.

Naveen constantly swung between delight and dismay at what he saw. On a trip to a government hospital, he was astounded to see stray dogs sauntering in and out of the wards. “Dogs in the hospital? Unbelievable,” he repeatedly told local senior officials in the following days as images of the ill-maintained and ill-equipped hospital continued to haunt him.

What he could change was the condition of the dying Tampara Lake in Chhatrapur. the once pristine lake, 5.8 kilometres long and 670 metres wide, was being choked with the filth and garbage that the drains and nullahs flowing into it brought in. Naveen got the lake cleaned and revived, arranging money from the local area development fund at his disposal as an MP in what was possibly his second intervention as an elected representative.

Naveen was enraptured by the beauty of the Bhairavi temple at Mantridi and the Surya mandir, perched on the top of a hill near Berhampur. The hill was almost barren and he initiated a special plantation drive to turn its slopes green.

Other leaders of the party in Odisha were happy to see Naveen doing things that came naturally to him. A founder member of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), he seemed more interested in “softer” issues and valued tradition, trees and history. The new MP, they overwhelmingly felt, was a political novice and posed no long-term threat to them.

No alarm bells rang for the state leaders who nursed bigger ambitions for themselves when Naveen became a Central minister after the United Front government fell and a BJP government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee took over.

The BJD had performed creditably in the 1998 general elections as an ally of the BJP. Ministerial berths were due to the party in the Central cabinet and Naveen, as the party chief, was seen as the natural claimant. Many thought he would be given a portfolio of little consequence. Vajpayee, in his first meeting with Naveen in Parliament, reportedly told him that he was a natural fit as the union culture minister.

Naveen, however, got a more important portfolio and became the union minister for steel and mines. His BJD colleagues in Odisha made light of it, believing it was done to honour the memory of Biju Patnaik, who had held the portfolio during the Janata Party rule between 1977 and 1980.

In being dismissive of Naveen, his colleagues showed incredible naivety. They misread him badly, taken in completely by his outward gentle behaviour. He was prim and proper and always respectful of others. When meeting senior leaders, he always stood up and responded with warmth. He pestered them with questions about Odisha, its people and politics in general and seemed all at sea in his new vocation. On the few occasions that he put his foot down, the overconfident party leaders, who believed they were using him and not the other way around, failed to read the signs of what was to come.

One such instance was when the newly formed BJD was being registered with the Election Commission. As the constitution of the party was being drawn up by a group led by senior leader Trilochan Kanungo, Naveen insisted he be made founder president of the party, a position for life. The framing of the constitution was held up for weeks as Naveen refused to take no for an answer. He finally acquiesced and gave up only after being told that such a provision for a permanent president could not be allowed under the Election Commission’s rules for a democratic party.

But the party’s registration was held up for some more time due to another of Naveen’s demands. The BJD’s newly drafted constitution entrusted its political affairs committee (PAC) with the sole power of choosing candidates for elections. But Naveen sent word that he, as party president, should have the final say, insisting that he should have the power of cancelling the nomination of a candidate chosen by the PAC.

The demand he made was odd, but not one party leader made much of it. The rules were amended and Naveen, finally, had his way and the registration could proceed.

To get things done the way he wanted, Naveen never raised his voice or threw a tantrum. He spoke gently, gave the impression that he didn’t know too much and lulled his party colleagues into comfort. “He acted more like a child coming to terms with a new toy that he had just acquired,” said a leader, who has observed him closely from his nascent political days. In hindsight, though, it seems Naveen was playing a longer-term game. He was crafty and calculating; he knew what he wanted and how to get it. He took small but measured steps.

With Odia names being Greek and Latin to him, there were moments of embarrassment, too. During a visit to Chandikhol, the town along the national highway halfway between Bhubaneswar and Balasore, he mistakenly referred to it as “Chadikhol” (meaning “open your underpants”) in the middle of a public address. Another time, he was in Balasore, where he attempted to invoke the name of the state’s most famous litterateur, Fakir Mohan Senapati. The long-dead Senapati hailed from Balasore and is still revered for his seminal works such as Chha Mana Atha Guntha and Rebati. But Naveen got it wrong, referring to the writer as Fakir Mohan Satpathy. It was equivalent to a Bengali politician getting Tagore’s name wrong. But these harmless, and hilarious, gaffes showed Naveen as unsure, simple and still uncooked, perhaps only a ploy to further lull his potential rivals into a false sense of security.

Excerpted with permission from Naveen Patnaik, Ruben Banerjee, Juggernaut.