Pinarayi: As Kerala celebrates Easter on the last day of its poll campaign Sunday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told ThePrint, in an exclusive interview, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should know “who has played the role of Judas in our country”.
In response to Modi’s comments during a poll rally in Palakkad last week, where the PM had accused the Left Front government of betraying the people like Judas betrayed Christ for a few pieces of silver, Vijayan sharply retorted, “Everyone knows who has played the role of Judas in our country. Our Constitution guarantees secularism. Everyone knows which force in the country has been acting against this secularism.
“The murders of Graham Staines and his two children took place in our country,” Vijayan said, referring to the murder of the Australian missionary and his two sons in Orissa in 1999, when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power in Delhi.
“Who has been carrying out attacks against Christians? Everyone knows,” Vijayan said. “The Sangh Parivar has given the leadership for these attacks. Who has been protecting the Sangh Parivar?”
The mild-mannered chief minister, who was speaking at his home village of Pinarayi in Dharmadam constituency in north Kerala, from where he is contesting, appeared to be confident that he and his Left Democratic Front (LDF) will retain power when Kerala goes to the polls on 6 April.
If the LDF, indeed, keeps Kerala, it will be breaking an alternating pattern of power between itself and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) since 1982.
The LDF ‘captain’
Pinarayi Vijayan stands tall, not just in Dharmadam but across the state that has been splashed with red hammer-and-sickle flags, bunting, posters and hoardings of himself that overshadow those of his candidates.
In the mind of every Malayali, the LDF is now synonymous with Pinarayi Vijayan.
From Kannur to Kollam and Palakkad to Pathanamthitta, he is known as “captain,” a personality cult reminiscent of leaders in other parties, from Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee to Rahul Gandhi and M.K. Stalin.
Right through the Covid-19 lockdown last year, every single day from 6-7 pm, the soft-spoken Pinarayi Vijayan would address the people on the Covid situation, a reassuring voice that sent the message across the state that the chief minister was in charge.
But everyone noticed that he had replaced Health Minister K.K. Shailaja, who had begun the Covid briefings and would explain in great detail how the state was coping with the pandemic — so much so that despite its rising cases, Kerala soon acquired an international reputation on how poor states could deal with the infection.
The mundu Modi
Left leaders are also now pointing out how Vijayan has systematically marginalised all other rivals in the party. How he has felled rising stars by imposing an arbitrary consecutive two-term limit for MLAs, although he has been himself has been elected five times — from Kuthuparamba (thrice in a row), Payyanur and Dharmadam.
Among those to miss out due to the rule is outgoing finance minister and development economist, Thomas Isaac, a two-time MLA from Alappuzha, who crafted the reinvention of the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Board Fund (KIIFB), which raised over Rs 63,000 crore to fund infrastructure projects across the state.
Another high-profile leader not contesting is 70-year-old Industries Minister E.P. Jayarajan, also a former close confidante of the 75-year-old chief minister from Kannur district, who this week announced his retirement from politics after being denied a ticket.
While Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, Vijayan’s biggest rival and fellow CPI(M) Politburo member, fell upon his own sword by stepping down on the eve of local body polls some months ago owing to ill-health and cases against his son Bineesh.
All of this has led to Vijayan sometimes being referred to as “mundu udutha Modi (Modi in a dhoti)”, because of the larger-than-life profile he has cultivated.
P. Jayarajan, a former close confidante also from Kannur, who was denied a ticket, in a Facebook post over the weekend grumbled about the state-wide adoration of “Captain” Vijayan. “Communists never worship individuals. In this party, all are comrades and the party is the captain,” Jayarajan said.
Asked why he was sometimes called the ‘Narendra Modi of Kerala’, Vijayan replied, “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years,” he said. “I don’t have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.
As for Narendra Modi being called the ‘Pinarayi Vijayan of India,’ the chief minister added: “It is not like that. Narendra Modi has his own style and Pinarayi Vijayan has his own style. That is how one should look at it.”
A tall leader
It is clear that Vijayan, who joined the undivided CPI in 1964 as a student in Thalassery’s Government Brennen College and rose through the party ranks has gathered the CPI(M) around him and has today become its tallest leader.
Along the way, Vijay first became the state president of the Kerala Students Federation (a precursor of the Students Federation of India), was arrested and tortured during the Emergency, elected to the party Politburo in 2002 from which he was suspended in 2007 because of his publicly critical remarks against former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan (who was also suspended),
Fact is, the 92-year-old VS Achuthanandan delivered the state to Pinarayi Vijayan in 2016 – the Left Front, under his leadership, won 91 seats. Today, the 97-year-old Communist leader is ailing and in no position to fight on.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, VS’ protegé, is seen as a West Bengal leader – which the Communists lost 10 long years ago. While Manik Sarkar, Tripura chief minister for 20 years over four terms, lost power in 2018 to the BJP – the Left is considerably weakened in that state today.
That is why the election in this tiny corner of India is important. PM Modi has held three rallies in the state, focussing on Sabarimala tradition, which disallows fecund women from praying at the shrine, but even he knows that the RSS and the BJP cannot hope to win more than two or three seats – the party’s best chances are at Nemom, Kazhakoottam and Manjeswaram.
That’s why Pinarayi Vijayan matters, both to the Left as well as to the combined Opposition. An LDF victory would prevent the BJP from also colouring this part of India saffron.
But Vijayan has also realised that in the new Kerala, it has been necessary to reinvent the old message. So when the country shut down during the Covid lockdown, he pressed the state machinery into action.
The humanitarian crisis was addressed by CPM cadres bringing “food kits” into the houses of 87 lakh people registered under the PDS scheme – rice, dal, cooking oil, spices, suji, sugar and soap. While a monthly pre-Covid pension scheme that gave Rs 1,500 to the poor and the weak, including elderly farm workers and elderly single women, saw the government spending Rs 32,034 crores.
But if the LDF wins, the reinvention of KIIFB, created by the previous LDF government in 1999 – now the jewel in Pinarayi Vijayan’s crown – will be significantly responsible.
Crafted by state finance minister Thomas Isaac, KIIFB raised more than Rs 63000 crores from the market and even issued masala bonds at the London Stock Exchange in 2019, to fund the building and refurbishing of infrastructure, including 43000 “high-tech” classrooms, a government hospital in every taluka, roads and street lights and even a zoo in Thrissur.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman accused the state government of “corruption” and Enforcement Directorate officials have since filed a case against KIIFB officials.
In the interview with ThePrint, Vijayan dismissed the charges, saying KIIFB got RBI permission before going to the London Stock Exchange and that the BJP was using the ED with “an eye to the elections, (which) is clear from Sitharaman’s statements and ED’s actions…We have opposed this strongly.”
This transition to a welfare state under Pinarayi Vijayan — combining pro-poor activities with an appeal to Kerala’s highly consumerist middle class which has been a huge early recipient of the Gulf boom — has been pushed through decidedly un-Marxist activities like land acquisition, which Vijayan and the LDF strongly resisted when they were in the Opposition five years ago.
In the last five years, though, KIIFB funds have been used to acquire land to build roads, such as the Thalassery-Mahe bypass pending for 50 long years, a takeover of 698 acres of Hindustan Newsprint Limited, a central PSU, of which 300 acres will be used to develop a rubber park, and clearing land issues for a 400 KV power highway from Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu to Madakkathara in Kerala – V.S. Achuthanandan had in 2012 travelled to Kudankulam to protest against the power plant there.
As Easter gives way to polling day 48 hours from now, Pinarayi Vijayan’s fate hangs in the hands of the people. He knows it is over to them now.
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