How do you know the Chief Minister?” blurted out the wife of a Syrian Christian planter in Central Travancore when she was told about an invite to a breakfast meeting with Pinarayi Vijayan, as part of the 36-day Nava Kerala Sadas. The planter had crossed paths with Vijayan over two decades ago, and yet the CM made it a point to have him at the event. Vijayan has fostered many such personal friendships over the years with disparate people, perhaps unknown even to his closest political aides.
The Nava Kerala Sadas, running from 18 November to 24 December, is the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government’s public outreach effort across the state’s 140 assembly constituencies. Vijayan and his entire Cabinet are travelling in a specially commissioned Mercedes Benz bus. However, in the light of the evidence so far, it would seem that the initiative caters more to influencers and ‘people of eminence’ like the aforementioned gent.
The object or purpose of the Nava Kerala Sadas has since been explained by a host of leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), including the CM, in different terms – reminding one of the central government’s shifting of goal posts during the demonetisation of high-value currency notes in 2016.
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Coveting a change of image?
Vijayan conceivably chanced upon the idea of the Nava Kerala Sadas when he saw over a million people queuing up on the streets for his predecessor Oommen Chandy’s funeral procession from Thiruvananthapuram to Kottayam earlier this year.
Chandy’s famous Jana Samparka Sadas, a UN-awarded mass contact programme that positively impacted the lives of underprivileged sections, was credited for the massive turn-out at his funeral.
A minister in the Kerala Cabinet told me that Vijayan first presented the idea of the Nava Kerala Sadas at the monthly get-together of ministers’ families at Cliff House, the official residence of the CM, even before getting the green signal from the CPI(M) State Committee.
The reputation of the Left government and Vijayan had hit a nadir following the revelation in August that the CM’s daughter had received Rs 1.72 crore from Cochin Minerals and Rutile Ltd (CMRL)—a private limited company with 15 per cent public stake—without delivering any service.
It was probably in this context, and the Lok Sabha elections to follow, that the Nava Kerala Sadas was conceived to ensure a much-needed change of image for the government.
There was a slight problem, though: the paucity of funds. Despite the Nava Kerala Sadas effectively being a tax-funded electioneering tour, the state of Kerala’s finances has been so bad that welfare pensions to the poorest of poor, at Rs 1,600 per head, were pending for five months in November.
So, the government decided to pool all kinds of resources— getting sponsorships, dipping into the funds of local bodies, and earmarking a sum from the exchequer.
The impropriety of a ‘Communist’ government going for sponsorships to fund such an event and the potential quid pro quo that it might entail created some disquiet. Messages reportedly sent to Kudumbashree women self-help groups, asking members to contribute Rs 250 per head, also didn’t go down well. However, just before the tour commenced, the government released one month’s welfare pensions as a goodwill gesture.
The specially commissioned bus, costing over a crore, also invited criticism, although the government defended itself by claiming that it would reduce fuel expenses. It was only revealed later that all the official vehicles of ministers, along with a group of their personal staff, accompanied the entourage.
ജനകീയ സർക്കാർ ജനങ്ങളിലേക്ക് #NavaKeralam #navakeralasadas pic.twitter.com/vHaq1Xb9kf
— CPI(M) Kerala (@CPIMKerala) December 12, 2023
A spate of controversies
No sooner had the Nava Kerala Sadas begun that it began to generate controversies. And it was clear from the very outset that this event was nothing like Oommen Chandy’s outreach programme where he interacted directly with the public.
Then, protests began to erupt when the police started rounding up Youth Congress activists and detained them at various locations.
Matters spiralled out of control when a batch of Congress activists waved black flags at the CM’s convoy in Kannur, engendering a violent reaction from cadres of the CPI(M), specifically its youth wing, the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI). Taking the law into their own hands, they injured the protestors grievously with flower pots and whatever they could lay their hands on, in full view of TV cameras.
What was even more astonishing was the reaction this elicited from the CM. He gave a clean chit to his party cadres and dubbed their actions as “life-saving”, claiming that they were protecting the protesters by ensuring that they weren’t hit by the convoy. Except, the news channels managed to capture exactly what transpired there.
This pattern repeated in every passing district, with DYFI activists seemingly taking over the role of law enforcement from the Kerala Police. Things went from bad to worse when shoes were hurled at the convoy in Ernakulam district and DYFI activists manhandled a Congress MLA, Eldhose Kunnappilly, who had rushed to the spot. The CM later defended the DYFI’s hooliganism as a “natural response”.
In a particularly strange incident in Kochi, a CPI(M) worker got beaten up by DYFI ‘enforcers’ despite pleading to them that he was one of their own.
Administration comes to a standstill
The DYFI’s acts of hooliganism hit a raw nerve with people as it was reminiscent of the breakdown of law and order associated with earlier Left governments— a scenario Pinarayi Vijayan had been careful to avoid, at least until now. The CPI(M) had been regularly accused of ‘cell rule’ in the past, with the term ‘cell’ denoting the lowest party unit, since replaced by ‘branch’.
What has made things worse now is the wheels of the administration coming to a standstill in Thiruvananthapuram, leaving files to pile up at the government secretariat as the Nava Kerala Sadas caravan marches along. Even in the past, file movement has been rather slow, with the daily Deepika estimating that only 11.6 per cent of files got cleared in Vijayan’s second term.
Upon making enquiries, I discovered that people aren’t being given a ‘pass’ to meet the chief secretary in the absence of politicians, and many prominent bureaucrats in the ranks of principal secretary or secretary aren’t at their stations, citing various reasons.
Even more worryingly, all activity in the finance ministry has come to a grinding halt. The state of finances in Kerala was so bad that only bills under Rs 5 lakh were being cleared by the state treasury from the third quarter onwards. But during the Nava Kerala Sadas, Kerala dailies reported that only bills under Rs 1 lakh would be cleared henceforth. Officials, speaking off the record, acknowledged that finance minister KN Balagopal has given standing orders to avoid clearing bills even below that figure so that the treasury doesn’t go into overdraft and closure—a situation that previously occurred only during the end of EK Nayanar’s tenure in 2001.
Things have escalated to the point where Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan has asked the chief secretary if it merits the declaration of a ‘fiscal emergency’ in the state.
Cabinet members like the finance minister, responsible for the forthcoming state budget, and the health minister, supposed to coordinate with officials to contain disease outbreaks, are instead relegated to a sideshow in what has become a travelling circus. There are controversies galore and myriad cultural and entertainment programmes on the sidelines of the Nava Kerala Sadas. However, the power breakfast with ‘people of eminence’ takes the cake.
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Tearing down school walls
Apart from preventive detentions and parallel law enforcement by DYFI activists, a controversy has erupted over the demolition of school compound walls to make way for the Mercedes bus carrying the CM and ministers. The DYFI and local CPI(M) cadres are at the forefront of this transgression as well.
In instances where the school management or local bodies controlled by the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) are not on the same page, party cadres and their bulldozers tear down entire walls in the cover of darkness like thieves, as happened in Mavelikkara, endangering the safety of young students. At last count, close to a dozen walls have been demolished, sometimes along with the trees in the vicinity.
Despite these controversies, CM Vijayan remains unfazed, sitting imperiously in the made-to-order revolving seat of the Mercedes Benz bus. The convoy seems to move along with utter disdain, reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s horse-drawn carriage on the busy streets of France in the 1700s.
Apart from protests by the Youth Congress, the opposition UDF is belatedly seeking to corner the government, holding ‘public trials’ in all districts. In Alappuzha, UDF convener MM Hassan arrived at a protest in an auto-rickshaw bearing the tag “poor person’s Benz”.
The government, meanwhile, is hoping against hope that CM Vijayan’s speeches at Nava Kerala Sadas events will create a change of sentiment and lead to an upswing in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. The common folk don’t seem impressed at all, though.
The author is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Pretty one sided article. What about all the opposition alliance leaders attending the program. Media is reporting only negative news about the govt, so they are meeting all 140 constituents and expaining what they have done for respective constituency.
Good initiative