It was the eve of the Kerala assembly polls in 2016. Congress ticket-seekers and their hankers-on thronged Kerala House on the Jantar Mantar Road as the screening committee meetings were held in New Delhi to finalise the list of candidates. The parleys meandered to a deadlock as chief minister Oommen Chandy wasn’t amenable to dropping any sitting minister or legislator at the behest of V.M. Sudheeran, then Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief, backed by Rahul Gandhi.
With no sign of a truce by the seventh day, Chandy offered to make way if his ministers were denied tickets and flew down to Kochi and, to Puthuppally, his constituency, adjoining Kottayam, to keep his date with voters. In what became a famous routine for the last 53 uninterrupted years as Puthuppally legislator, Chandy made himself available in his constituency and met as many people as possible every Sunday. Come hell or high water, Chandy kept that date ritually till the fag end of his career, when he had to be taken to Bengaluru for treatment earlier this year.
And as it turned out in 2016, Chandy had the last laugh when Rahul Gandhi’s wishes were roundly rebuffed, and although he went on to lose the election, two of his inimitable traits stood out in this unseemly episode: Chandy counted loyalty above everything else and would stake everything for those loyal to him; he was a true mass leader, and not merely a public relations phenomenon. Oommen Chandy, who breathed his last early this morning in Bengaluru, was 79, and served twice as Kerala chief minister.
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A long career
Chandy’s political initiation preceded even his lifelong comrade A.K. Antony’s, when the former was plucked out of school by M.A. John to partake in the ornama samaram (One Anna strike) initiated by the Kerala Students Union (the precursor to the National Students’ Union of India) against the EMS Namboodiripad government’s decision to nationalise Kerala’s water transport services in 1958. Within a decade, he became the state president of the KSU in 1967 and state Youth Congress in 1970, defeating P.C. Chacko.
The split in the Congress towards the end of 1969 ensured that the Young Turks led by Vayalar Ravi and A.K. Antony were thrust into leadership roles in Kerala. When Chandy got the Puthuppally ticket as a 26-year-old in 1970, it wasn’t the Congress bastion that it is today. In a triangular contest, Chandy won, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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A.K. Antony’s shadow
One quality that always held Chandy in good stead was his ability to bide for his time. Forever the bridesmaid and lieutenant of A.K. Antony, Chandy waited patiently for his turn to emerge as numero uno in Kerala politics, till Antony’s resignation in 2004. Often, it came at a personal cost as it happened in 1982 and 2001, when there was no room for Chandy in the cabinets of Karunakaran and Antony, respectively. Even when Vayalar Ravi and AK Antony fell out, Chandy stayed loyal to Antony and steered the ‘A’ faction with all his might.
There was a point in 2001 when it seemed Chandy was passed over, when the Congress ‘High Command’ struck a deal in the wake of the assembly elections whereby K Muraleedharan, son of Karunakaran, was anointed PCC chief on the same day Antony took over as CM. The communal equations and Karunakaran pushing for KV Thomas’ inclusion in the Antony cabinet meant that Chandy couldn’t even land a ministry.
Chandy gamely took on the position of United Democratic Front (UDF) Convener, a position he earlier held in the early ‘80s when he, similarly, couldn’t land himself a ministry in the third Karunakaran government (1982-87). Those days, political cartoonists such as Raju Nair of Deepika daily often drew him with pathos as leitmotif.
When Karunakaran initiated a battle of one-upmanship with Antony shortly thereafter, Chandy was once again back in the thick of things as he slowly weaned away the legislators of Karunakaran faction to ensure the stability of that government.
Eventually, when the Congress drew a blank in Kerala in 2004 on account of the power struggle which spilled on to the streets – even as it managed to unseat the Vajpayee government in New Delhi – Antony’s resignation paved the way for Chandy. It was the result of a long and arduous journey in Antony’s shadow.
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Legacy as CM
In his first tenure as Kerala CM from 2004-06, Chandy tried to build on his image as a clean politician, keeping away ‘tainted’ veterans such as R Balakrishna Pillai and T.M. Jacob from the cabinet, against whom he nursed grievances from the past. While Chandy got away with that on account of the tyranny of numbers then, it came back to haunt him in 2011 when he ran a government with a wafer-thin majority (72-68) for five years.
That did not stop him, however, from emerging as a popular leader with a spate of development programmes to his credit. Chandy’s ‘mass contact’ programme where he met people directly in every district won him the United Nations (UN) public service award in 2013. That was the highest point of his career when analysts predicted that Chandy was on his way to win another term.
The solar scandal that broke out – even as Chandy was away to receive the award – ensured he did not. Chandy was defiant in the face of calls for his resignation claiming his conscience was clear. Eventually, Chandy was cleared of wrongdoing in the case, but it came too late, towards the fag end of his career. As former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh once famously said, history proved kinder to Chandy than the ‘media trial’ he underwent back then.
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Air of simplicity
One remarkable aspect of Chandy’s leadership was his unassuming disposition. He wore his positions lightly and he was truly a democrat in that sense. Chandy was always seen in the midst of people and would often joke that it is easier to speak confidentially among the crowd than in private.
During his early days as legislator in the ‘70s, Chandy travelled to Thiruvananthapuram from Kottayam on the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation’s bus in the wee hours, catching a wink lying atop the bundles of Malayala Manorama in the back. Shortly thereafter he managed to get hold of an Ambassador car. Chandy, however, would continue to take buses to Thiruvananthapuram from Kottayam.
Even after being CM twice, Chandy had that air of simplicity about him that made people easily relate to him. It is not that Chandy was beyond reproach but perhaps that is best left for another day.
The author is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)