Author: Vrinda Gopinath

A Tour of Kozhikode’s ‘Literature Park’ and Two of Its Libraries

The Literature Park represents a fascinating yet barely acknowledged literary aspect of the city, and its libraries are the legacy of a movement that makes Kerala distinct from other parts of India.

Retired school teacher Dr S. Nagesh has been an enthusiastic member of the academic and technical team that worked voluntarily for two years to get UNESCO’s City of Literature tag. Nagesh took The Wire on a whirlwind tour of the Literature Park in Mananchira, in the heart of the city, pointing to some of the sculptures; and to the adjoining S.M. Street, to reveal a fascinating yet barely acknowledged literary aspect of the city.

1. As the plaque reads, “These are the cradles of our culture; those who discovered the mystery of karma, those who plunged into the tide of life and turned to stone”.

Novel: Nellu

Author: P. Vatsala

Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

Nagesh says: “The book was set against the backdrop of rice farming in Wayanad, so it’s very relevant right now. Was it a kind of radical, revolutionary story? I think [like] all novels written in Kerala after the 1960s about proletarian workers, [Nellu] was [also] humanistic.

“Nellu is the story of a tribal family facing the rich new settlers who came from the plains and who set up farming in the hills of Wayanad, inhabited by tribals. It evocatively showed the brutal exploitation of the tribals by the new settlers and shed light on their lives even as she wrote of the pristine and magical beauty of the Wayanad hills.

“Vatsala even built a home in Thirunelli to live with the tribals and see first-hand their lived lives … It has been said her humane stories even forced the government to announce several welfare and protection schemes to uplift tribals.”

2. The plaque reads: “I assumed she would love the lake’s charms and say something. Instead, she handed Yudhishthira the flowers he had bought, even without smelling them.”

Also read | The Unseen Chapter: Uncovering India’s First City of Literature Kozhikode’s Rich Literary Legacy

Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

Novel: Randamoozham

Author: M.T. Vasudevan Nair

“The novel is a retelling of the Mahabharata without the divine aspects of the old epic, and from the perspective of Bhima, who has not been given his rightful due. It’s one of the few books that has been translated into English (as Second Turn).

“Bhima has always been seen as this bulky bouncer in the original epic and has never been idolised like his older brother, Yudhishthira, and younger brother, Arjuna, despite his valour, strength and sacrifice. For instance, while everyone mourns the death of Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son; Bhima’s son, Ghatotkach, is led to his death in saving Arjuna’s life, but he is unsung.

“The sculpture depicts Draupadi, also Bhima’s wife, but she barely looks at the flowers Bhima has brought and hands them over to Yudhishthira, her favourite husband. Draupadi is always seen as partial to Yudhishthira and Arjuna … MT’s book is a radical re-writing from the point of view of Bhima, and we realise that he has been given a raw deal in the epic. The book was to be made into a film starring superstar Mohanlal, but Nair pulled back the script after a long legal battle.”

3. The plaque reads: “Lazar is a character in Pottekkat’s novel, Story of a Street, who had two names, Onthu, meaning chameleon, and the other, Manthukalji, one who has elephantiatis in his legs. A character called Chandu made it Omandji; it later became Omanji.”

Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

Novel: Oru Theruvinte Katha

Author: S.K. Pottekkat

“Lazar is a central character in Pottekkat’s novel, Story of a Street, an officer in the customs division whose life also revolves around two other main protagonists, Kurrupu and Radha, but who dies of smallpox eventually. However, the book is a testament to the boisterousness of S.M. Street or Sweetmeats Street, where Pottekkat’s bust looms over as you enter the pedestrian-only street.

“The book is very important as it gives the social history of the time. It talks of the iconic restaurants and meeting places for writers, Butler Hotel and Wheat House – both no longer exist, alas. It was called Wheat House because during the Second World War, rice was rationed and the British encouraged the use of wheat, which was used here too. Alakapuri still exists, and all the writers hung out either in Wheat House or in Alakapuri. V.K. Nair set his story, ‘A European Hotel’, in the Wheat House. Both restaurants had a bar attached …

“There are a lot of anecdotes about the unsavoury aspects of a writer’s life. Once a manager was stabbed to death, though it had nothing to do with the writers.

“Pottekkat has written over 60 books, which include novels, short stories, essays, poems and plays, but he is probably hailed as one of Kerala’s most prolific travel writers. Pottekkat was a globetrotter having spent many years abroad, from Nepal to Bali and London to Frankfurt, and he published books including Bohemian Chitrangal and Bali Dweep, apart from many travel diaries.

“Pottekkat brought his sharp observations from his travels as well as his sense of humour and irony through his travelogues, and this seeped into his fiction too. The murals on the walls of the street are lines from his books and characters that leap out at you.”

4. Novel: Pathumeyaddu Addu

Author: Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer

Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

“Ah, Vaikkom Basheer, another of Kerala’s progressivist writers; and the novel Pathuma’s Goat has become so iconic that on Basheer’s birthday, schoolchildren in Kerala are asked to come dressed as one of Basheer’s characters. But they all end up dressing as the goat, and even dress up as Pathuma dragging a goat to school.

“Basheer settled in Kozhikode, though he came from Vaikkom in Kottayam, central Kerala; but he adopted and wrote in the dialect of north Malabar Muslims, a kind of speak-easy, punchy language that is so typical of all folks in Kozhikode-Kannur. Unlike writers who wrote in formal Malayalam, Basheer wrote in this zesty language, which is neither Arabi Malayalam nor is it slangy.

“In fact, the late British linguist and specialist in Dravidian languages, R.E. Asher, who translated Basheer’s works to English, used the English dialect of the uneducated working class; but Basheer’s Malayalam was not of the illiterate, it was just not formal, and he gave this dialect respectability.”

Translations from Malayalam to English by Iyra Gopinath.

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The libraries:

There are over 600 libraries and reading rooms in Kozhikode district alone, the heritage of a library movement that began as early as the beginning of the 20th century, when grants were first given to open reading rooms and libraries. The Library Act came in 1948 in Malabar in a first for the country; this makes Kerala distinct and is perhaps also the reason why it has the highest literacy rate in the country.

The libraries are open to the public, and it’s not uncommon to see students, workers, teachers and public transport drivers reading newspapers and books there. They are housed in buildings and even in small kiosks next to bus stands, autorickshaw spots, offices and schools; in the centre of town and in the outbacks.

The Wire went to two libraries on the busy Mavoor Road that cuts through the city – the Kovoor Library and the Snehadeepam Library, barely a mile apart.

Gireesh K.P. is the Kovoor Library’s secretary and Jameela is the librarian, who has been with the library for 24 years. It’s a modest but generous space, spread over two floors, and the upper floor is also rented out for cultural programmes to subsist the budget.

The reading room in the Kovoor library. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

The Kovoor Library gets a grant from the state government of a princely sum of Rs 32,000 a year, and the librarian’s salary, which is decided by the number of books in the library, ranges between Rs 3,000 and Rs 6,000.

Says Gireesh: “We have locals come here through the day reading, or students referencing; we are Grade ‘A’ as we have over 20,000 books. We have many activities; the other day, S.K. Pottakkat’s daughter came to speak to us.”

Jameela shows the neatly stacked books in the library, which are mostly in Malayalam, including all the classics by renowned authors from Basheer to Nair. “The annual membership fee is Rs 150 and lifetime membership is Rs 500,” informs Jameela.

Gireesh and Jameela. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

The reading room has a couple of people sitting on the neat benches at 6 pm in the evening – an insurance agent reading the newspapers before he heads home; the salesman from the local chemist enjoying a quiet time reading a magazine; a young student taking notes on current affairs preparing for her PSC exam.

Down the curve and going down the slope is the Snehadeepam Library and reading room housed in the E.P. Achutha Nair Memorial building, another two-room modest library.

The Snehadeepam Library. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

Librarian Sheeba P., who works in the late afternoon, says her library is of Category ‘D’ as it has only 10,000 books. Most of the visitors are young school students from the neighbouring Chevayoor School, who troop in at 4 pm when the library opens, and there are books by Nancy Drew and Eureka Science magazines, even as daily newspapers are neatly laid out on the reading table.

Sheeba. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

She admits that budgets to buy books and periodicals have come down and that even visitors have shrunk after the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. “Yes, books have become more expensive and interest has come down as children have their phones and computers. It depends on parents to insist that children should read more books than play more games on computers.”

The libraries of Kerala get a boost in June-July every year during the annual weekly P.N. Pannicker celebrations, commemorating the stalwart who ushered in the library movement in the state as early as the 1920s. In fact, June 19, his death anniversary, has been celebrated as Reading Day in the country since 1996.

While technology may be threatening to make libraries irrelevant, the libraries of Kozhikode are certainly getting a boost after the city has been declared a City of Literature. The action plan includes establishing a ‘Reading Street’ where people can read, discuss and have spot debates; re-imagining and reinvigorating community libraries to enthuse both children and adults; including the imposing state public library in the proposed literary circuit; establishing a mini library in coffee shops, the new haunt of the urban young; and other plans.

Yet, there’s a long way to go before the team can turn the first page to making Kozhikode the country’s first City of Literature.

Vrinda Gopinath is a senior journalist.

The Unseen Chapter: Uncovering India’s First City of Literature Kozhikode’s Rich Literary Legacy

In the Ansari children’s literature park in the thudding heart of the city, adjoining Mananchira square, giant stone sculptures of characters from the literary works of Basheer, Nair, Valsala and others loom large.

It’s been more than a month since Kozhikode or Calicut, the old port town of northern Malabar in Kerala, was awarded the title of India’s first City of Literature by UNESCO, on July 23, 2024, as part of its Creative Cities Network (UCCN), but there is barely a sign of its emphatic literary history. The airport and railways station book shops have the cursory bestsellers from the waggish Sudha Murty, Infosys’ billionaire wife, to self-help guru Paul Coelho, and of course, the omnipresent Chetan Bhagat.

Nowhere in sight are the works of Kozhikode’s mighty literary figures, from Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, P. Valsala, S.K. Pottekkat, Balamani Amma, K.T. Mohammed, Thikkodiyan, Punathil Kunjabdulla, G. Aravindan among others. Nair and Pottekkat are Jnanpith awardees, the national literary awards; Balamani Amma, mother of the poet Kamala Das, was conferred the Saraswati Samman, yet another national lit award in any Indian language.

S.K. Pottekkat’s bust at S.M. Street. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath

There’s not a hint of a literary blast in the bustling town overflowing with bakeries, eateries, heaving food carts and stalls, Kozhikode has already earned the title of the food capital of Kerala; and where markets are flooded with cheap Chinese goods to brassware etc. Not unless you are pointed to the Ansari children’s literature park in the thudding heart of the city, adjoining Mananchira square, where giant stone sculptures of characters from the literary works of Basheer, Nair, Valsala and others loom large in the tree lined park. Only, that the visitors are disinterested teenage lovers locked in furtive embrace in the late afternoon sun, even as locals whizz past the park to throng the pedestrians-only cacophonic S.M. Street or Muttai Theravu (sweets) street, where the giant bust of author Pottekkat looks below from a pedestal at the milling crowds at the entrance of the street.

Pottekkat’s bust is a fitting tribute to his book, Oru Theruvinte Katha or the Story of a Street, where he has chronicled the iconic S.M. Street with colourful characters like shopkeepers, shoppers, friends, passers-by, beggars and the like. There’s also a giant wall of murals depicting Pottekkat’s fictional characters in scenes from the book, including excerpts from his writings in Malayalam that welcome people, and where the municipal corporation has built cemented seats for weary shoppers and bystanders, some sitting with loaded bags, or some reading newspapers even as they wait for their bus, auto or car.

Mostly, people just walk past all this indifferently, barely throwing a glance at the literary post.

Playwright and author K.T. Mohammed’s bust. He has written plays such as Srishti, Sthithi and Samharam. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath

Nearby is the mounted black stone sculpture of Basheer’s famous goat splattered with pigeon droppings, from his popular book, Pathummayude Aadu or Pathumma’s Goat, on a traffic island on the busy Palayam road; but is anyone interested or even aware of the significance of these literary chiseled works?

Of course, there are the public libraries, from the biggest and oldest Kozhikode Library and Research Centre, the Desaposhini Public Library built in 1937, Chavara Public library where students can even bring their books to study here, the Aikya Kerala Reading Room and Library, Kunduparamba Library and Reading Room all built in the 30s; in fact, the public libraries and reading rooms are in every district and village in Kerala, next to town halls, markets  and bus stands, a stunning explosion of words and lit works. Kozhikode district is reputed to have over 600 libraries and reading rooms, some as tiny as a kiosk, to the big ones.

There’s more to Kozhikode’s literary heritage — if Calicut got its name from Calico, an all-cotton fabric produced here, the town has had first, Arab traders who settled here as early as the seventh century, so much so according to Britannica, as was recorded in the 12th century, the earliest fragments of the cloth to survive have been found not in India, but at Fustat, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, Egypt.
One of the earliest references to Calicut was by the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah who visited Malabar 1342-1347, as being a great port and that he saw at least 13 Chinese ships docked here. Another reference was by a Persian ambassador 100 years later, who wrote that even though Calicut was ruled by an infidel (non-Muslim) the port offered “security and peace where goods can be left on the streets without fear of thieves on account of the watchmen of the state.” Then, by the 15th century the Europeans, and later the British arrived, after the docking of Vasco da Gama in Kappad, Calicut in 1498.

It was this historical evidence of Calicut’s fame in ancient traveller recordings that was collected by the team as part of their proposal to present to UNESCO to get the literary tag — an idea that came from Ajith Kaliyath, urban chair professor at the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) who, in October 2021, got in touch with city mayor Beena Philip, who readily accepted the proposal to make Kozhikode the Literature City. It was a roller call of academics like Mohammed Firoz, head of the Dept of Architecture and Planning at NIT, Calicut, who set up a team of his students to collect data like GI-tagging dozens of libraries, interviewing publishers, literary groups, schools and colleges; co-ordinating with the Ministry of Culture in Delhi, to put up the proposal for UNESCO. It took a good three years for the proposal to be accepted and for Calicut to be honoured with the tag.

So, where can a visitor begin to look for literary Kozhikode; where are the lit luminaries immortalised here? Where do the characters of Basheer, Nair, Thikkodiyan and the rest come alive in the town? Is there a guided immersive experience of the dives and restaurants, streets and homes, haunts and dens of the writers?

The Wire spoke to mayor Beena Philip about the projects for literary Kozhikode; took an educative walk in the literature park with retired school teacher and noted team member Dr S. Nagesh; and also visited two local libraries listed by NIT intern head Indulekha M.S., in a bid to see how the project will play out:

Excerpts from the interview with mayor Beena Philip: 

As you know, there is nothing that tells you Kozhikode is now designated as the first City of Literature in India — no tourism brochures, signages, literary walks, not even a pamphlet highlighting the town’s rich literary heritage?

Yes, there are no visible signs for any outsider to see our literary heritage in Kozhikode, and I agree it’s a big drawback — but we are coming up with many plans to enlighten the public beginning with Calicut’s ancient history too. There are remnants of the old port city, like the ‘kadal palam’ or bridge that is jetting into the sea, after all, this has been recorded by ancient travellers. We are still looking to see how to preserve this; there’s the freedom square on the beach where we plan to have a glass or metal plaque which tells you the town’s history. Another important project is to collect all historical records and digitise it for easy access and reading.

Nobody is even aware there’s a children’s literature park in the heart of Mananchira though the characters are really from books for adults?

Kozhikode mayor Beena Philip. Photo: Local Self Government Department, Government of Kerala

I agree, people who come to the children’s literature park, which was formerly Ansari Park and an extension of Tagore Park, nobody even refers to it as Lit park, and that’s because we don’t keep a board saying so. If we did have a board, I think people will be intrigued to know more about it, after all, here is your town which has all these amazing sculptures of characters from famous books; it’ll give people a great sense of curiosity. There’s Basheer’s famous goat sculpture outside the park, and Scottish officer William Logan’s Malabar Manual, a two-volume detailed treatise on the region was published here; all this is Kozhikode’s literary heritage which is unique to the town.

How do you plan to introduce people to Literature City?

Calicut Corporation has launched a website and we will incorporate all the necessary information for the literature section of the city where people can refer to books and literary resources. We must also delve into our history as Calicut has the distinction of so many world travellers who came here over centuries, and who recorded their visits from the early AD; even earlier from King Soloman’s time where Calicut is mentioned in the Bible. In fact, 20 years before Vasco da Gama arrived, the Russian traveller-merchant Afanasy Nikitin came to Calicut and recorded its history in his travelogue. Two years ago, Calicut Corp even renamed Customs Road after him, and established a twin city status with Tver, Nikitin’s birthplace.

Then, there’s the Arabs and the history of Zamorins who ruled Calicut for over 400 years, and the palace that was burned down by the last Zamorin, giving it a cursed history — unfortunately there are no remnants of that history today, which was destroyed by the British, and which must be put up.

Where is the literary history of the city?

Well, Kozhikode is famed for its Revathi Pattathanam or the open annual assembly of scholars from the 14th century, a seven day competition event of dialogue and debate, which was conducted on two mandapas on either side of the entrance hall of the Talli temple that still stands today. This tradition continues and this history was part of our presentation to get the lit tag for the town.

Is there an action plan for the immediate future?

See, the Corporation cannot do everything, it’s the committees who have to take this forward. We’ve kept a budget of Rs one crore for our action plan and will manage and execute a vibrant literary ecosystem. They include: creating sustainable public spaces and parks such as Mananchira, the beach, Talli temple and others as literary venues; establishing a literary museum, organising literary events, drama and poetry, affordable book fairs and literature festivals; a literary circuit where people can go to various haunts of our writers, citizen engagement programs including schools and colleges, mapping cultural and literary assets of the city; heritage conservation, the list is long.
For instance, Kozhikode traditionally has had the “Kolaya Culture” or verandah meets, which we will re-establish as it is deeply rooted in Kozhikode’s literary history. All this is Phase 1 of the Action Plan (2023-2025).
Vrinda Gopinath is a senior journalist.

Vinesh Phogat: It’s Time to Put Spotlight on Wrestlers and the Deadly Demands on Their Bodies

The United World Wrestling must change its body-blaming rules to allow contestants a healthy choice to compete, not put sportspersons to gruelling and life-threatening qualifying regimens.

It’s 8 am in Paris, and the walk to the Grand Palais Ephemere is fraught with tension. It’s been two days since dieticians and nutritionists, and a whole bevy of support staff are trying desperately to knock off first, two kilos two days before, and finally the stubborn 100 gms of weight from a lithe, slim body that will participate in the Palais’ large arena and ramp later in the day.

The team has tried everything on extreme weight-cutting measures, from keeping her awake all night, making her jog and skip without interruption to produce more sweat, denying water as dehydration leads to weight loss; no loading on carbohydrates, and intense exercising, including saunas and body suits to drain every drop of water in the body.

In desperation, they even cut her hair and shortened her singlet but to no avail. She was not allowed to participate in the coming go for the gold event.

Is this the backstage of a Christian Dior couture show in Paris fashion week where waif-thin models float around in a whiff of chiffon, waiting to hit the ramp, with not an extra cellulite bump or bulge to show? No, it’s the grand stage for the Paris Olympics finals of the wrestling bout in the 50 kg weight category, where India’s champ and gold medal hopeful, the 29-year-old Vinesh Phogat, was disqualified for weighing a mere 100 gms more than is permissible in the international competition.

For years, the beauty business has been in the glare of harsh scrutiny for its demanding cruelty of the body beautiful, of anorexic models, bulimia and terrifying eating disorders. Even as agents, fashion magazine editors, photographers, and designers demand a Size Zero as the nub of a perfect body, sending a whole generation of impressionable girls into a psychotic spin of depression as they try to achieve the impossible, photo-shopped fake perfect bodies.

How has the wrestling arena escaped this scrutiny where the demands on the body are so excruciatingly painful and terrifying for the participant? For example, after Phogat’s two-day agonising regimen to lose the weight she had gained, she was rushed to the hospital after the final weigh-in suffering from dehydration, fatigue and exhaustion. Phogat was finally declared stable after a few hours when she also dejectedly announced her retirement from wrestling competition.

Should the United World Wrestling (UWW) seriously consider taking a re-look at the conditions to participate in various categories? It’s not a gender lopsided demand – male wrestlers too have to go through this demanding gruel to stay within the weight category.

For instance, Aman Sehrawat, who won the bronze in the 57 kg category, weighed over 4.6 kg over the permitted limit, barely 10 hours before the competition, sending his coaches into a tizzy. Sehrawat underwent a punishing regimen – according to media reports, Sehrawat had intermittent wrestling bouts with his coaches, hour-long hot baths and treadmill running, light jogging and lemon honey and coffee to drink. He finally weighed 100 gms less than required, though he said he didn’t sleep the night before, watching videos of wrestling bouts the whole night.

So, why does the UWW make such ridiculous demands of a competitor? First, a weight category underlines the bottom line so that combat sports athletes don’t have any undue advantage over a lesser-weighing competitor. Fair enough, but does 100 gm give the combatant any advantage? Apparently, the UWW allows a leeway of two kilos in the World Cup, but not in the Olympic Games.

Also, the UWW moved from a one-day to a two-day weigh-in system so that it could control the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and more importantly, look at the horrific consequences of extreme weight cutting as the two-day weigh-in now allows wrestlers to rehydrate and recover from overnight weight changes. Some of the effects on the body include motor issues, dizziness, hormonal changes in women, impact on sleep and effects on kidneys, and even death.

In 1997, as media reports point out, “Three USA collegiate wrestlers made national headlines, dying from the same cause – weight cutting within 33 days of each other. In all three cases, the students experienced dehydration resulting in hypothermia after they layered on clothes and did endless workouts in heated rooms. Unfortunately, they outworked their bodies. The perspiration they produced cooled them to the point of hypothermia resulting in heart attacks and kidney failure, all common effects of extreme weight cutting.”

Now the world knows what happened with Vinesh – her normal weight range is 57, but the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) did not allow her to compete in the more manageable 53 kg as someone else had taken the slot; which is why the 50kg category was so challenging for her. The WFI said 50 kg or nothing at the Paris Olympics.

A bloody sport 

Vinesh along with Sakshi Malik, and other wrestlers had also last year, taken on BJP MP and former chief of the WFI Brij Bhushan in a much-publicised protest for alleged sexual harassment. The Narendra Modi government refused to investigate and in fact, Bhushan’s close aide was elected the new president. It’s another matter that Bhushan’s son was given a parliamentary ticket by Modi’s BJP for his father’s Kaiserganj seat in UP, which the former won by over a lakh votes.

Vinesh Phogat being detained. Photo: Vipin Kumar/National Herald

It seems the Indian Olympics Association (IOA) clearly dumped Phogat, according to lawyer Rahul Mehra – it was the Games’ pro bono lawyers who first appealed on behalf of Phogat to review the decision to disqualify her, the IOA finally hired senior lawyer Harish Salve to represent it, while PT Usha, president of IOA squarely blamed Phogat for the 100 gms weight gain even as the Court of Arbitration (CAS) was hearing the appeal. Indian officials look more as if it is sabotaging rather than assisting the appeal.

The fashion empire has seen a feeble attempt to ban body shaming and include curvier and plus-size bodies, clothes and shops, but a survey by Vogue Business which releases a biannual Body Inclusivity Report which calculates sizes that are seen on catwalks in New York, London, Milan and Paris, the report for Spring/Summer 2024 reveals that of the 9,584 looks across 230 shows only 0.9% were plus size US 14 or above – the average size of an American woman; only 3.9% was mid-size of US 6-12; as much as 95.2% of looks presented were in the unattainable size of US 0-4.

As an industry watcher says, brands use a few curvy models to deflect criticism, called “fat washing” as akin to “green washing” when destructive industries talk of carbon footprints, sustainability and empty climate pledges.

Yet, it’s time to put the spotlight on wrestlers and the punishing and deadly demands on their bodies, where even an extra 50 gms can disqualify the contestant in an international game. This is a blood sport, not a sport. The UWW must change its body-blaming rules to allow contestants a healthy choice to compete, not put sportspersons to gruelling and life-threatening qualifying regimens.

Phogat going for gold was beaten by a measly 100 gms of fat. The CAS’ verdict slammed the final nail in the controversy – Phogat’s appeal to consider her for at least a silver was rejected. As it says, you can never be too rich, or too thin.

Interview | There Has Been an Erosion of Connection Between the Party and People: CPI(M)’s Thomas Isaac

In an interview with The Wire, Isaac has underlined that while “Kerala is one of the fastest growing economies today” the Left has “lost the perception battle ideologically” and “lost the narrative”.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) in Kerala is in the throes of a churn after its spectacular loss in the parliamentary elections last month with rumblings in the party about the high-handedness and disconnect of party leaders both at the top and bottom with its supporters. 

The media has in the last few weeks been agog with unnamed party sources airing their grievances. Former Kerala finance minister and senior CPI(M) leader T.M. Thomas Isaac spoke to The Wire about what ails the party and what needs to be done to rectify the situation. 

Isaac has been in the news for rallying Opposition parties in the country to demand central funds owed to the states which was denied by the Modi government, and it is with same sense of righteousness that Isaac talks about his party in its last bastion in Kerala, in the coastal town of Bekal, in Kasargod.

Excerpts from the interview:

There’s been a lot of introspection within the CPI(M) in the last couple of weeks ever since the election results which saw the party plummet to the bottom in Kerala? What in your estimation is the reason for this dismal performance?

The results went completely against our expectations. Of course, we weren’t expecting a sweep but we believed the LDF (Left Democratic Front) would get at least half the seats; a victory was crucial to have a national presence with a significant number in parliament but that was not to be. It only shows that we have not been able to break the jinx that has been hovering over Kerala’s electoral scene from say 2009, for you would find a very clear demarcation between the voting pattern in the assembly elections and in parliament.

Look at the figures, in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the LDF had 42%, in 2014 it came down to 40% and in 2019, it was 35% and now it’s 33%. 

This is certainly alarming, but if you look at the vote share of the LDF in the state elections during the same period, you get a very different picture — in 2000 state election, LDF got 45%, in 2016, we got 43%, in 2021, it was 45% again —  so, it’s the opposite trend in the assembly and also the local government elections, in fact, in the local government elections we get an even better vote percentage. 

The Left had more than 60 seats in parliament in 2004, but it has been in a free fall from 2009, could the Left’s pulling out support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2009 on the Indo-US nuclear deal be a reason for its diminishing role in national politics? What are the other reasons for the Left losing in Kerala today?

Yes, 2004 was a great performance by the Left in national politics but I don’t believe the Left pulling out support to the Manmohan Singh government in 2009 brought its downfall; it was the serious electoral setbacks in Bengal and Tripura in 2009 that the Left’s strength began diminishing in national politics. In Tripura, I believe, it was overconfidence as they underestimated what the BJP could do; in Bengal, there was serious anti-incumbency after 34 years of unstinted rule, also compounded by a certain degeneration in the party organisation. So a section of the voters in Kerala felt the role the Left can play at the national level is very limited. 

Also, by 2019, minority communities in Kerala believed it was the Congress that was a national secular alternative in Delhi and backed the Congress hoping it would challenge the BJP, but the Congress fared badly in the election.

So, are you saying the Left will do well in the coming local government elections and later in the assembly elections?

No, this does not mean that in the coming local government election next year, and thereafter in the assembly elections in 2026, the Left’s vote share will automatically rise and we will win Kerala again. That’s not the argument at all. The decline in the vote share this time is the lowest in its history which means a section of the core vote of the Left has shifted and that’s dangerous for the LDF. 

Let’s see where it’s going downward.

The base of the Left in Kerala is the rural proletariat — agriculture, workers in traditional industries, the construction sector, labourers, and poor people. At the other end is the organised working class where the Left is an important presence but in terms of numbers, it is the rural poor which is the base of the Left. 

In this election, a section of the poor was obviously disenchanted with the Left’s performance and voted against it. In Kerala, the Left faces a daunting challenge — while the traditional base is this rural poor, but over time, structural changes have been taking place in the economy and their numbers are diminishing. As the last three census show, the number of agriculture workers have declined, traditional industries are in serious decline, etc; and on the other hand, a new middle class has emerged, around 30% of the population which is big, who have benefited from migration, upward social mobility, better education and high commercial crop prices. This was true till around the 1999-2000, when it all collapsed.

The challenge before the Left was not only to protect its base but also win a section of the  middle class whose expectations are very different.

Did the Left fall between the rural poor and the new middle class?

No, in fact we evolved a strategy and also implemented it, and this was seen as a great success of the last LDF government, from 2016 to 2021, which brought a kind of historic alliance between the poor and sections of the middle class. This strategy for the vision of a new Kerala stood on two legs — one,  give total social security to the poor where social welfare pensions were to be raised from Rs 500 to Rs 1600, and consequently eligibility went from 32 lakh beneficiaries to 62 lakhs in five years, which is about 50 lakh households, or almost half the population. Apart from other social welfare benefits like education, health etc. 

The second leg looked at the middle class and their aspirations — they want quality education for their children, better healthcare system than was being provided but more importantly, they want quality jobs. We had good primary education but no good skill and technical higher education institutes. We also had to create an environment for ease of business to attract capital for investment in industry for growth and better paying jobs. 

The right wing and liberal narrative has always been that the Left was only good at redistribution of resources but not for creating wealth.

We decided to change this perception and came up with a Left strategy which said one, the economy’s productivity must increase where we employ modern advanced technology to concentrate upon sectors which are knowledge intensive, skill intensive and so on, which can afford to pay higher wages. Two, overhaul your higher education institutes; three,  improve infrastructure which was so bad, from roads to industrial parks to knowledge cities.

We set up the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) in 1999, an elegant, open model assured by law and government guarantee, for big infra projects from digitisation of education, building schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, power projects etc. So far Rs 80,000 crores of projects have been tendered in the state.

This mega and unprecedented infra development was the mandate of the last LDF government 2016-2021, and we managed both social welfare and economic productivity which is what brought us back again in 2021 by both the poor and middle class. 

Why were the new middle class disillusioned then?

The knowledge economy is the mandate of the present  government and we are getting there, but it takes time and it is in this transition period that there is a lot of disaffection, people don’t understand. Also, the central government squeezed funds owed to the state in the most sinister way, our government even protested in Delhi but it was not effective here — the reason being, and now I see a scheme in this, a campaign was unleashed two years ago against the CPI(M)  by big media supported by the Opposition and some academics who are friends so i won’t name them, that Kerala was going the Sri Lanka way — fiscal mismanagement and that borrowing heavily has landed us in a debt trap.

Nothing could be further from the truth — Kerala is one of the fastest growing economies today, your debt increase is a sign of the robustness of your economy because it’s only a matter of time you will grow out of your debt.

However, we lost the perception battle ideologically, we lost the narrative, it was our failure.

But not only has the Left vote share dropped to 33%, the lowest in its history, it has gone to the BJP?

Yes, I agree that the numerous welfare schemes for the poor that were promised and initiated by our last government had to be delivered, it’s sacrosanct, but they were not fulfilled which is why the voter was angry in 2024. However, the Left’s vote shift to the BJP is serious for the BJP is a different animal.

Let’s look at the reasons: First, the BJP has over the last few decades steadily taken over temple committees after the Left took a decision about 15 years back that no party member will be part of temple boards. The BJP swiftly moved in to fill this void and has systematically been using temples to propagate Hindutva by launching bhakti movements, and because it is religious, you cannot oppose it. The RSS-BJP slips in anti-Muslim rhetoric particularly through WhatsApp groups, bhajana sangams etc connected to these temples. Second, though the Hindu community did not buy into Hindutva despite RSS having the largest network of shakhas in the state, because of the Kerala Hindu ethos; today with the BJP at the Centre espousing it for over 10 years and more, and supporting every effort in the state, this new ethos is seeping into the culture drip by drip.

I admit the Left missed or ignored this systematic takeover, but while we still disallow temple board membership, we support every secular candidate.

Has the Left’s caste base shifted too?

Earlier, caste organisations had very little direct role in Kerala politics, they did try to float political organisations in the 70s and early 80s but it didn’t succeed; even the CPI(M) had said caste organisations should not enter politics, nor were we interested in capturing them. As the CSDS survey has calculated, 63% of Dalits in Kerala vote for theLeft, 53% OBCs, less than 40% of upper castes, and only 30% of minorities vote for the Left. This is the caste breakup.

However, 10 years back, the Ezhavas, a dominant OBC caste and a big supporter of the Left floated a political party, the BDJS (Bharath Dharma Jana Sena), and its caste organisation, SNDP (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam), was soon co-opted because the latter’s general-secretary’s son was head of the BDJS. While the BDJS has barely made any headway politically, it has been systematically capturing local bodies of the SNDP over time. In fact, in this election local units of SNDP were openly campaigning for the BDJS and yes, it had an impact in some constituencies like in Alleppy, Kottayam, where BDJS was able to build a bridge with SNDP. Also, the BJP has been surreptitiously appointing its people in these political caste organisations, which we will resist — this is a new situation and the Left was slack yet again and not alert to this new development. We have to work out a plan to face this challenge.

Also read: Kerala: CPI (M) Takes Stock of Shift in Political Dynamics, Analyses Reasons for LDF’s Rout

The minorities like the Christians are being actively wooed by the BJP, on the other hand,  Muslims didn’t bite your anti-CAA stand?

Even as the council of Bishops and the bishops of Kerala have been making strong statements on Manipur, the BJP has been putting pressure on the FCRA clearances. I don’t think the church misuses money, the Church spends money on educational institutions and so on but if somebody wants to catch you they can because over time you take for granted certain procedures which can be tripped. So the Church has been under tremendous pressure here.

The Left has always sided with Muslims in every imperialist aggression, from the Khilafat movement in 1921, in Kerala, where we supported the uprising, we removed many of the restrictions that were imposed by the British on mosque construction and so on. The Left has always taken a principled stand of minority rights, from the Iraq war to Palestine to CAA. But today the BJP says Muslim appeasement the moment you take a stand in favour of Muslims and it gets a sympathetic ear from certain sections of the Christians. Yet, the BJP gets barely five per cent of the Christian vote but it is concentrated in places like Trichur (where the BJP got its first parliamentary seat in Kerala) and certain parts of central Travancore. Yes, a kind of shift has taken place in the community.

More crucially, the Left today has been beset by allegations of corruption, arrogance, and the leadership being completely out of touch with people?

I accept there has been an erosion of connection between party and people, or we could not have missed the dissatisfaction and disaffection of our supporters this election. The party central committee too has said the living connection with the people has been eroded. Before the poll, our party assessment gave us 12 seats, then the drop in voter turnout during polling was dismissed as a drop in Opposition Congress-BJP vote, but post-poll it was revealed that not only did angry Left workers and supporters not come out to vote as was seen in traditional CPI(M) bastions, many Left voters voted the BJP and Congress. It was a complete disconnect between the party and people.

It’s obvious today — the people have not changed, the party has changed. 

A degeneration has taken place and we have to self-critically make an assessment on the extent of petty corruption that is seeping into the party. Remember, the Left in Kerala is not just the state government, you have cooperatives, women self-help groups, panchayats and so on. Problems have emerged that people are mishandling money, let’s admit corruption exists and people don’t like it.

The media has been agog with stories of corruption, recently a district CPI (M) member was accused of accepting bribes for posts in the Kerala Public Service Commission, then a senior leader’s son was accused of gold smuggling. Hasn’t the CPI (M) taken cognisance of this ‘degeneration’ within the organisation? 

No, not enough. I don’t want to go into individual cases and there are many similar  cases, all this has been discussed at party conferences in the last few years but rectification has not been enough, it has only slipped further.

The party has taken cognisance of it but taking cognisance and acting on it are not the same, and we have not succeeded in taking action yet. The central committee has also identified the demeanour and arrogance of party workers from top to bottom as another reason for the disconnect between party and the people. There will be no leniency in tackling corruption.

However, I would add that it’s not a complete collapse but it has certainly gone beyond the normal. The difference in the voting pattern in parliamentary and assembly elections is not to be dismissed, we have to do course correction, beginning with critically examining government functioning and re-prioritising government programs.

The Pinarayi Vijayan government has been accused of arrogance and high-handedness.

I don’t want to comment on Pinarayi Vijayan, or any individual because the media is trying to create an image of the party leadership, but everyone has their own style of functioning which is natural —  but in these present times unless you are careful it can create an image which gets stuck. Yes, the central committee at its meeting has said arrogance is present at every level, but it’s also democratic that every party member is free to air their criticisms and the party must patiently hear grievances.

Is it being done? It’s not happening sufficiently and must therefore be rectified.

How are you going to stem the slide for the coming local bodies and assembly elections beginning next year?

We have a big political and ideological fight with the BJP and Hindutva; we have to match the BJP’s money power with their central schemes and counter it by rolling out our welfare schemes; the challenge before the Left in Kerala is can you take forward the democratic project which we established in the state? We have given good education, healthcare and better life and human dignity for so many generations of Malayalis. Now times have changed. People also change. Their demands change. How do you take it forward? We are meeting at the end of the month after having heard party workers at the district level, we will discuss and decide a program of future action. We have to reimagine the idea of a new Kerala, an even more democratic and progressive society.

 

Five Ways Rahul Gandhi Has Gone from Drift to Grit

Rahul banished the ‘here again, gone tomorrow’ politician image he’s courted over the years, and instead, demonstrated legitimate commitment that went beyond helicopter appearances.

Now, when did Rahul Gandhi, Congress heir and now gung ho politician go from being a breezy ‘liberal’ to becoming a gritty ‘progressive’ ? For over two decades, ever since he leapt on the electoral stage in 2004, Rahul Gandhi has come a long way from being perennially gone in a gap year, to swooping in to save the sacred hills of Niyamgiri tribes in Orissa, to riding on a bike to Bhatta Parausal in western UP at midnight to show solidarity with farmers who were killed by then Mayawati government; or spending a night with a tribal family in their mud hut in Bundelhand, UP.

Rahul has swung from slamming big corporations and crony capitalism to eco- austerity, religious faiths and inclusivity–and all the rest in between that so captivates liberal elites. Typically, they are mostly urban, upper caste, alumni of top dog league universities and have top jobs from multi-national corporations to policy institutes to pulpit journalism.

They’ve been mocked as Latte Liberals, Bollinger Bolshoviks, and a lot more, with a side of smashed avocado on sourdough bread and chocolate rubble. Their noble mission is to save the millions of poor unwashed and brainwashed masses from autocracy and dictatorship, even though ironically, as the just concluded election has shown that it was not the urbane city slicker who rejected the divisive BJP and Narendra Modi, but the poor and impoverished in the vast outbacks of the dustbowl of India, who cut Modi’s dream of yet another brute majority in Parliament.

This, despite the fact that they will be kicked in their stomach when booth wise results are released and their daily meagre sustenance stopped by a vengeful administration.

Yet, the lib will swoon at the thought of being, well liberal, as they return to their velveteen homes and swirl their Chardonnay, thrilled they’ve saved the country for the day. So, how is Rahul different today from the elite lib club of which he was the big honcho to being a dogged progressive?

As is oft pointed out, a progressive believes in institutional change and not saviour syndrome, forcing regulation in institutions and watchdog agencies, confrontation, legislation through government and activism:

Here are five ways Rahul has gone from drift to grit:

By accepting the LoP post and making it Rahul vs Modi in the parliament 

First, he’s got a day time job now to pursue his agenda – after two decades of enjoying power without commitment and saying a big fat No all these years, Rahul has finally accepted the constitutional post of the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, which the Congress finally clinched after getting 99 seats, more than the required 10 per cent of the strength of the House.

For starters, he will be pitched one on one against Modi in Parliament now, a position he has always taken on with aplomb, despite the propaganda of mockery and jeers from the BJP side. He will have cabinet rank, its status and perks, to selecting various parliamentary committees which were summarily junked in Modi’s last two terms, apart from being part of selection panels of crucial posts of heads of CBI, CVC, CIC, NHRC and the much-maligned EC.

More importantly, Rahul’s dogged and unrelenting election campaign which took on Modi on the latter’s hypocrisy, false promises on jobs and the economy and on safeguarding the Constitution, should be followed up by a combative Rahul chasing Modi in the House demanding answers.

The Congress leader has come a long way from publicly tearing up the ordinance by his own government that allowed convicted legislators to not be expelled pending a hearing on their appeal.

One can expect demands for legislation on his pet theme of jal, jungle and zameen (water, forests and land), economic rights and increasing reservation of SCs, STs and OBCs, livelihood and social justice issues such caste census among his other demands raised in the parliament.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra

Then came the yatras – Rahul’s ambitious Bharat Jodo Yatra, from Kanyakumari to Srinagar in 2023, of uniting the country with love and compassion through his slogan, Nafrat ke bazaar mein, Mohabbat ki dukkan (In the market of hate, a shop of love) was a first serious bid by any political leader to take on the RSS-BJP fuelled murderous and hate mongering politics.

It was also Rahul’s go for broke attack on Modi and the government, which not just catapulted him as the most raucous and determined national leader to take on the latter but also energised party cadre and voters and state leaders that he walked the yatra.

The second edition, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, from Manipur to Mumbai, in March this year, was built on the theme of social justice, barely a month before the Lok Sabha election. It seems to have gotten the Congress electoral benefits.

More importantly, Rahul banished the here again, gone tomorrow politician image he’s courted over the years, not helped by a cloying media always ready to serve the Modi government. Instead, here was a legitimate and demonstrable commitment that went beyond helicopter appearances.

It was an earnest bid to build a counter narrative of unifying the country while celebrating its pluralism, as opposed to a monolith Hindutva Rashtra, a political purpose for the party and for Rahul in particular. While the end of the first yatra saw Rahul as a shaggy Majnu with his flowing grey beard in the Mohabbat ki dukan (love shop), the second Nyay yatra was a walking-talking pragmatic demo of the Congress’ election manifesto of justice for all, to raise the voice for social, political and economic  rights and empowerment for farmers, Dalits, OBCs, minorities, jobs and all in his 10,000 km-long two yatras.

All this while Modi and his dutiful followers were running in the other direction to Ayodhya for the consecration of the RSS Ram temple.

Rejuvenating the party cadre through the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan

Now, what could be more authentic to instil the demand for rights and justice among the cadre than the BJA or Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, under the umbrella of civil society. It was decided in February this year that the BJA will take the help of civil society and rights activists to train party workers and cadres in states where the Nyay yatra was traversing (which covered a 100 targeted Lok Sabha seats from east to west in Mumbai) and clone it in other states too.

It was adopted in the Bharat Jodo yatra too, and all state units were instructed to participate in the workshops conducted by the BJA henceforth. Party workers were instructed to collaborate with state teams of the BJA on door-to-door campaigning, constitute communications teams to counter government propaganda, promote political coordination among INDIA allies, and take on the « BJP’s troll army with the truth army, as BJA convenor Yogendra Yadav had said.

Rahul’s refusal to be pulled into the are-you-a-true-Hindu trap of the RSS-BJP

In fact, ahead of the Ayodhya consecration, the BJA launched a campaign for communal harmony to counter what it said was a brazen attempt to polarise voters on religious sides.

Here was another attempt by Rahul who refused to be pulled into the are-you-a-true-Hindu saffron rag waved by the RSS-BJP Modi government when it sent an invitation to the Congress troika of Rahul, Sonia Gandhi and party president Mallikarjun Kharge for the consecration of the newly built Ram Temple in Ayodhya, built on the ruins of the 16th century Babri Masjid torn down by kar sevaks.

After days of suspense and irresolution, Rahul and the rest declined and rightly said they would skip the celeb-studded temple opening as it was a ‘political project’ of the BJP and RSS. All this knowing full well that it could be political suicide for the Congress in the run up to the general elections, and gold for the Hindutva BJP which did not hesitate to scream minority appeasement on the Congress’s part.

It was a calculated gamble played by Rahul and the party, and they had come a long way from being jeered at as the B-Team of the BJP for peddling soft Hindutva and to shake off the allegedly pro-Muslim tag over the years, including Rahul’s publicised feeble attempts at being a Shiv bhakt to a janeudhari (thread wearing) Kashmiri brahmin in his many Hindu avatars.

Did the new resoluteness pay off? Yes, in Modi’s and the RSS-BJP’s embarrassing defeat in Ayodhya a few months later.

The five pillars of justice and 25 guarantees of the Nyay Patra

And finally, Rahul has shown his true grit by installing all that he now believes in, in the Congress’ Nyay Patra or justice paper or the party election manifesto, which Rahul says was gleaned from his conversations with thousands of people.

It focusses on the five pillars of justice and 25 guarantees – from demanding a caste census (2021, under Modi rule was the first time the population census conducted every 10 years, was postponed in 150 years) to the promise that the 50 per cent cap on reservation in jobs and education will be removed as 85 per cent from underprivileged category, to filling up lakhs of government jobs that have been left out by the Modi government, guaranteeing personal freedoms, right to education, press freedom, et al.

Already Rahul’s vociferous attack against the corruption in NEET, his vow to revisit NEP in consultation with state governments, his caustic remarks about the fair and impartial role of the Speaker in the House in his first speech in Parliament, to registering his protest with the Speaker for reading a resolution after the latter took over the post, condemning the Emergency of 1975, saying it was a deliberate political snipe, is a beginning to bring institutional change.

And, please spare the country the cordiality and pleasantries with the ruling BJP, because the people voted the Congress this time for an alternative vision that came from the party’s aggressive, combative style.

Odisha: How Did Adroit Naveen Patnaik Let Victory Slip from His Masterly Grip?

The just dethroned formidable chief minister of Odisha, who won every election since 2000, and ruled the state for an uninterrupted 24 years, was ousted by once friend and foe, the BJP.

Pappu’s shrewd. How did he lose? It has simply stunned political pundits and drawing room occupiers to watch the Original Pappu or Naveen Patnaik, throw away both the Parliament and assembly elections held a day ago. The just dethroned formidable chief minister of Odisha, who won every election since 2000, and ruled the state for an uninterrupted 24 years, was ousted by once friend and foe, the BJP, in a lacklustre contest on Patnaik’s side. The BJP swept the state bagging 20 of the 21 seats in the Lok Sabha poll (the Congress retained its lone seat of Koraput); in the assembly poll the BJP scooped 78 out of 147 seats, Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) had to be content with 51 seats, while the Congress got 14 assembly seats.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Naveen Patnaik is no ‘Pappu’ of the jeering, contemptuous label the BJP tagged Congress heir Rahul Gandhi with, he was the Pappu of family and friends, a term of endearment given to him as the youngest of siblings, of the late author Gita Mehta and older brother Prem Patnaik, and was darling of glitterati salons from London to New York, apart from the swirl of salonistas in Delhi’s drawing rooms.

And, so, it was the same finesse and command of an accomplished society virtuoso that guided Patnaik’s political intuition and judgement as the chosen political heir of his father, the late Biju Patnaik. Naveen broke away from the Janata Dal, of which his father was an illustrious member, and formed the Biju Janata Dal in 1997; and even forged an alliance with the BJP to the horror of his father’s Janata Dal colleagues; and he has never looked back ever since. He became minister of steel and then mines in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government in 1999, and became chief minister for the first time in March 2000, which Patnaik won wresting power from the incumbent Congress.

Typically, the wannabe BJP was kept at arm’s distance in the state by an astute Patnaik through the first decade, after all, he didn’t want the BJP to take the place of a has-been Congress in Odisha, and despite the fact the Congress-led UPA came to power in 2004 after dislodging the Vajpayee government at the Centre, Patnaik kept equidistance from both parties. Patnaik took sides with the deftness of a society wizard – his fortunes were unaffected by the Vajpayee government’s downfall, he went on to win the assembly elections and got 12 MPs in 2004; but dumped the BJP in 2009, after Hindutva activists attacked and vandalised churches in Kandhamal, to keep his ‘secular’ image intact.

In 2014, the BJD swept the state with 20 out of 20 seats despite the Modi wave, and won an even bigger majority in the assembly to become CM again. The feat was repeated in 2019 too, but the BJD dropped from 20 seats to 12 in the Lok Sabha poll with a voracious BJP snapping at his heels, but won the majority to become CM again.

Also read: Decoding BJP’s Odisha Win: ‘Overconfident’ Naveen Patnaik, Modi’s Aggressive Campaigning

The Odisha supremo was guileful to keep the ambitious and marauding Modi government in favourable spirits – Patnaik has supported and helped the latter in several political crises in the last 10 years – from giving the numbers to pass contentious bills in Parliament like scrapping of Article 370, moving triple talaq, and passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill; to even supporting BJP candidate and Railway Minister Ashwini Vasihnav for Rajya Sabha from Odisha with the requisite numbers which the Modi government was falling short of. To support the controversial Delhi Services Bill that would give the Modi government control of the state administration, which not surprisingly flies in the face of federal democracy of which Patnaik should also beware of – yet, the BJD went ahead; and also went against the no-confidence motion passed by the Opposition against the Modi government on the Manipur violence last year.

So, when did this fragile bonhomie and mutually beneficial liaison unravel? After all, the state also received generous grants from the Modi government which the BJP never let the people forget with their propaganda, even as Patnaik cleverly continued with his welfare schemes that stood him in good stead over his two-decade and more reign.

Did the succession question become the biggest concern for voters this time? After talks failed between the BJD and BJP for an alliance in both elections, an ambitious BJP saw a sliver of opportunity when it realised that Patnaik was depending heavily on the former bureaucrat cum political aide now, VK Pandian. It was not the first time that Patnaik chose a bureaucrat to be his confidant – in the early years, he made Pyari Mohan Mohapatra, another IAS officer and close aide of his father, for his administrative skills and to take care of party affairs.

Rising clout of V Karthikeyan Pandian: Most ministers and legislators queue up before him if they are to get an audience with the chief minister. Photo: Special arrangement

Modi launched an aggressive campaign where he not only intensified his attack on Pandian on how the “outsider” Tamil Nadu former bureaucrat had hijacked the state and made Patnaik captive; a charge that stuck with voters as Pandian was the only aide seen to accompany Patnaik in his campaign meetings which were anyway very few and far between – unlike the BJP which went all out to have hundreds of meetings from a combative Modi, to Union ministers to party heavyweights.

Worse, Modi didn’t restrain himself when he harped on Patnaik’s alleged ill health and alluded to the fact that it was being kept a secret.

While voters may have succumbed to the Modi propaganda as the results show, how could a seasoned and adroit politician like Patnaik let victory slip from his masterly grip? After all, to stay equidistant from two national but opposing parties and win five elections requires crackerjack skills. Even if the electoral landscape was looking uncertain, Patnaik could have appealed to voters by saying it was his last election, as a close former party parliamentarian said – and he could have got two bumper victories with one stroke – breaking the record of being the longest serving chief minister, and winning the hearts of his voters with sentiment and promise.

Instead, Patnaik handed over the state to the BJP on a silver tray.

When a Voter Takes the Election Commission to Task for Denying Her Right to Vote

Simantini Dhuru of Mumbai was shocked to know on polling day that her name was deleted from the electoral rolls, as it was recorded that she was dead. She is now determined to fix accountability. 

In the pitched atmosphere of election season, of colourful campaigns and animated public meetings and speeches, what should have been a smooth free and fair poll mandated by the Constitution on the Election Commission of India has instead turned out to be a spectacle mired in suspicion and intrigue, as is on display since the last few weeks. The EC has none other than itself to be blamed for this mess – you don’t have to look too far behind as the EC’s mandate is littered with doubtful decisions on the part of the constitutional body’s three commissioners, just consider the EC’s actions since polling began on April 19. First, conducting an election spread over 8 weeks whipped up a lot of apprehensions on the unusually long time table; next, to make matters worse, the EC first refused to release absolute voter turnout numbers, and released only the percentage of voter turnout on April 30, only 11 days  after the first phase of polling.

Worse, the data showed a sharp increase by about five to six per cent as compared to the initial percentages announced by ECI on the day of polling (leaping from 60% to 66.14%) as the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) pleaded in court later. This trend carried on for another couple of phases on the EC’s part with increased revised figures so much so it is calculated that almost 2.8 crore absolute votes were polled in the last six phases even though the turnout is lower than the last election in 2019.

However, it was voter name deletion rather than addition that stunned special educationist Simantini Dhuru, who went to her polling booth in Mumbai South constituency, which spreads from Girgaum to Malabar Hill, on the day of voting, May 20, only to discover her name did not exist on the electoral list. Dhuru was stumped because it was only on December 18, 2023, that she received her spanking new voter card, for which she had applied in September, to replace her old lost card.

Election Commission of India.

Now, if the EC has come under scrutiny for an unexpected increase in voters after initial counting, stories of voter name deletion are legion, where lakhs all over the country have gone back from polling booths because they have been told their name is not on the rolls. But Dhuru was not going to back down like the lakhs of dejected voters who returned home without casting their vote; and when she got this dire news, she marched out of her polling booth in Queen Mary School, and headed to Wilson College where she was directed to go by the booth official to find out what happened and lodge a complaint.

It set off an intriguing plot of death, deceit, impersonation and forgery.

At the zonal office of the Election Commission located in a corner of Wilson College, Dhuru met officials who simply shrugged off her complaint as a routine protestation. Unhindered, a nonchalant Dhuru produced her spanking new voter ID card and demanded to know why her name was struck off the voter list. To her surprise, the official who checked the list on his computer found her name but it said that it was deleted as she was declared ‘dead’.

Says Dhuru, “This was simply shocking as I had received my voter card after going through the whole process of applying for a new card to replace my old, lost one; lodging a lost complaint at the local police station, taking the FIR and handing it to the EC office in Prarthana Samaj in Girgaum, all this only in September last year; and now they tell me I’m dead!’’

Pushing the officials further, she asked a helpful R.B. Chavan, the zonal officer, to show her the computer screen to see for herself what was her legitimate status. Under the category of name deletion, she was astounded to see that a person, Keval Chiman Shah had asked her name to be struck off by claiming she was dead. Screenshot below:

“According to the form on the screen in front of me,’’ explains Dhuru, “it seems the application was made by this Shah on January 2, 2024, and the name was deleted promptly on January 9, barely a week later. It was pretty swift.’’ Chavan explained to her that the application was done offline, but he could not give her any details of the form submitted to her immediately as it had to be hunted down.

Dhuru then spoke to Chavan’s senior, Balasaheb Vakchaure, the returning officer, who was not helpful she says, barely acknowledging her complaint but saying he would look into the matter. However, it’s the random pick of Dhuru that is intriguing for she says, no one in her house had a problem, her house helps nor does her partner.

So, how did it happen? Could those who had applied for a lost card become eligible to be declared dead, maybe? After all, there is a name Keval Chiman Shah, who is not known to either Dhuru or her neighbours, who marched into the zonal office in Wilson College, and submitted Dhuru’s name for deletion, without any documents or death certificate to prove it? Dhuru has demanded that all valid papers and the form filled by Shah be handed over to her.

The Wire spoke to Vakchaure, who did admit there could be something wrong but he needs time to get to the bottom of the story. Says Vakchaure, “Prima facie, it seems there was some mischief done as we don’t know on what basis her name was deleted. We get lakhs of applications for name addition, deletion etc; however, I am not sure what documents were handed over to delete her name. We can only know after we find Shah’s application in the first place. I’ve asked her to fill Form 6 to get her name back on the rolls again. After all, Madam is alive as she has come before us.”

So far, the intriguing part is: Who is Keval Chiman Shah? Does he exist?

Keval Chiman Shah exists only on the form; his given address is Malabar Hills, but no name of building, street etc. There is no mobile number on the form either even though it is mandated; he has an EPIC (election photo identity card) ISD5275243 — and the screenshot on the computer of the zonal office says, “In case of Form submission mode PSE, DSE and migrated old forms, the applicant’s details are not available hence the bow details are coming null. This will not create any problem processing, please proceed further.’’

Is it common to delete names without a death certificate, to which Vakchaure replied that it is not possible and he can only know how Dhuru’s name was deleted after he finds the form that was submitted in January this year. Both Chavan and Vakchaure say they joined the zonal office only after January 2024 so they are clueless about how it happened.

Meanwhile, Dhuru is determined to take this cliched Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare to its logical end.

Are Coalition Governments Better Than Single Party Rule in The Indian Context?

In a discussion, Vrinda Gopinath put the same questions on coalition governments to two political scientists.

If many in the world are shuddering today at the prospect of the return of Republican candidate Donald Trump as the next president of the United States after the elections to be held at the end of the year, consider this: today, the US government has gone all out to support Israel in the seven-month brutal war it has unleashed on Palestine, from sending shipments of arms and bombs that have pounded Palestine killing thousands of civilians, including children; sanctioning billions of dollars of arms sales to Israel; fiercely cracking down on peaceful student protests demanding divestment from Israel (which means withdrawing funds of university endowments that have been invested in companies linked to Israel) with student encampments in top dog universities, from MIT, Columbia, Harvard, and dozen others, were attacked by riot police who swooped down with tear gas, pepper bombs, batons, assaulting and arresting students inside campuses.

And this is under none other than the so-called liberal, Democrat President Joe Biden.

Do ideological differences between Republicans and Democrats blur when it comes to foreign policy, Israel, Islam and other pet hates so much so that in this well-entrenched two-party system, there has not been a candidate outside who has won a single state in a presidential system in the last 50 years? Are American voters stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea in a two-party system?

A Pew Research Centre report of 2022 in the US reveals that nearly four in 10 interviewed (39%) wished there were more political parties to choose from and supported having a greater choice of parties.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

In India, as we hurtle towards the results of the ongoing general elections, which will be decided on June 4, one of the two dominating themes for voters to choose from is ‘strong leader Narendra Modi’ versus the ‘INDIA coalition of regional parties.’ In fact, a Pew Research Centre report of 2023 revealed that a high of 85% of respondents here believed military rule or rule by an authoritarian leader would be good for the country – India’s share was the highest among the 24 countries surveyed.

Yet, while there’s a collective groan at the prospect of a coalition government at the Centre, because of its tumultuous history, after 10 years of ‘strongman Modi’, the INDIA coalition has not been cast away entirely, in fact, it seems to captivate people desperate for an alternative idea of governance.

So, is a coalition government the right way to go to represent a truly plural, diverse country like India, with its myriad languages, distinct cultures, regional contrasts, etc? Due to the lack of a proportional representation system where such diversity could have been accurately represented, are coalition governments the answer to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system that is here today?

To talk deeply about coalition governments, The Wire spoke to two academics Professor K.K. Kailash of the University of Hyderabad, who has written extensively on federal coalitions and regional parties; and Professor Neelanjan Sircar, visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, who has worked on state-level elections through data work and ethnographic methods which he underlines below.

Here are the excerpts from the roundtable discussion:

Why does the idea of coalition governments bring the spectre of instability and unreliability?

Kailash: Despite the early experiences of unsteadiness, coalitions have always gone one step ahead over a period of time and become much better than in the past. Every subsequent coalition sorted out shortcomings, and have rightfully recognised there will be two types of tensions or pressures: one, tension about competing with each other and, two, the need to cooperate with each other.

Coalition partners have recognised that they have to keep a balance between the two pulls, and also be aware who they are competing with outside. I think coalitions have learned over a period of time and it’s been a conscious learning process, as leaders have articulated after a coalition government has fallen – in 1989, for instance, when the V.P. Singh government fell, Singh admitted that there was a need to have more consultations within the coalition and outside, for it to sustain.

Sircar: If you begin with the Janata Party in the mid-70s, it was a period in which parties across different ideological social groups came together against Indira Gandhi and the Emergency, but soon significant differences emerged leading to its collapse in three years. By the late 1980s, the Congress began to crumble and you ended up having governments that were quickly dismissed – the V.P. Singh and Chandrashekhar governments were weaker because there wasn’t one party which had enough seats to be able to protect itself when under threat. Neither was there a strong leader or set of leaders who could command a coalition government.

This changed in 1999 with Vajpayee and his NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government, then came Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi in 2004 with their two UPA (United Progressive Alliance) governments, and all three completed their full term. Allies could have jumped sides and brought down these governments but the difference was the power both the BJP and Congress leaders and parties commanded, and coalition partners saw benefit in keeping the governments afloat and staying in power.

Also read: Three Myths About Coalition Governments You Shouldn’t Believe

Were coalition governments successful in making a difference with effective governance, in passing laws etc?

Kailash: The V.P. Singh government set up the Interstate Council under Article 263, recommended by the Sarkaria Commission, which had found that problems in Indian federalism came from a lack of consultation and dialogue between the Centre and states. It was found that the interstate council worked whenever regional political parties had a major role to play at the national level. If you were to look at the website of the Interstate Council, the maximum number of times the council met was in the United Front government, which was not led by the Congress but was supported by it; it met only once in the NDA government under Vajpayee and maybe once during the UPA government.

Centre-state relations have had a very good run when you had coalition governments – let’s take the Vajpayee government, in foreign policy for example, which is in the domain of the central government. Yet, Vajpayee invited the Akali Dal to be part of foreign policy talks when he visited Lahore as Punjab is a bordering state; similarly, Jyoti Basu as chief minister of West Bengal participated in the Teesta river water sharing agreement with Bangladesh; Tamil Nadu was invited for talks with Sri Lanka.

Sircar: The nineties was a period of extraordinary churn — there was caste mobilisation, the rise of Hindu nationalism, and governments were falling, but there was a continuity to what was happening with these governments. A lot of difficult legislation was passed at the time, reforms around economic liberalisation, later on, reforms around political decentralisation, all started coming into play. These very difficult reforms were being made by coalition governments, from the 73rd and 74th Amendments which brought in panchayati raj and municipal systems through state governments, and this continued on to the early years of Vajpayee as well.

What kind of mechanism works in a coalition government? After all, coalitions are about a consensus of diverse interests as opposed to being bludgeoned into submission by a brute majority government.

Kailash: It was started primarily by the Vajpayee government, the mechanism called the Group of Ministers (GoM), but was taken up a lot more by the Manmohan Singh government. It was basically a set of cabinet ministers, sometimes even state chief ministers were involved, even the governor, when they took decisions on particular issues. Let’s say telecom regulation – If it was a DMK telecom minister, there would also be members from the NCP, RJD and other parties too, so there was a wide consensus on policy formulation. At the highest level, the prime minister himself met the leader of the main supporting parties; for example, Manmohan Singh had a great rapport with the CPI(M)’s Har Kishen Surjit in the first UPA government, so you had multiple levels at which dialogue took place and tensions were nipped in the bud.

So this idea of policy paralysis is not completely true because they had great decision-making mechanisms which took hard decisions. And there was the CMP or Common Minimum Programme which set the baseline for policy making.

Sircar: Paradoxically, the Modi government has not been able to take difficult decisions like the UPA coalition’s economic liberalisation reforms, as the former had to back down from pushing the farmer laws. Because being in a coalition government means the person at the top does not have to have an appeal nationally, like say, Mamata Banerjee, who knows she gets the lion’s share of her seats from West Bengal. In her political calculation, she needs to make sure she’s not going to lose seats in her state, so what happens in Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu or UP would be the function of her coalition partners.

It is very different from what Modi faces if he takes a wrong decision, it affects his power that he accrues to himself from every part of the country. In a very strange sort of way, having to appeal to all of the masses constrains a political leader from being able to make very difficult choices.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah at the party's Central Election Committee meeting for the Gujarat assembly elections in Delhi. Credit: Twitter/BJP4Gujarat

File photo. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah at the party’s Central Election Committee meeting for the Gujarat assembly elections in Delhi. Credit: Twitter/BJP4Gujarat

However, in a coalition government, you cannot have the kind of centralising force that both Modi and Amit Shah have brought into the NDA, including eating up its allies whether in Maharashtra and Bihar – and that’s good for federal consensus. It worked very well in UPA-I because in terms of expanding the state, it reached poor segments of society from NREGA to the rights agenda. These had genuine impacts. So policies are important, as they work like glue. When you see a policy is that popular, all of the pressures of keeping coalition partners together, the infighting, sort of withers away because allies have an incentive to reap the electoral and political benefits.

Why have coalitions got this reputation of every ally only wanting to grab as much for themselves even though corruption dogs every government, including single-party rule? Is it valid?

Kailash: UPA-II did complete its full term but yes, there were all these corruption charges and it weakened the government, but remember the biggest scam, the 2G scam turned out to be a notional loss.

It is important, therefore, to keep institutions independent of politics, from the Election Commission, Finance Commission, the CAG, etc; also the media, the Constitution has a fabulous set of checks and balances which takes care of any pitfalls. It was the CAG chief Vinod Rai, at the time of UPA II who came up with this idea of a notional loss. He got influenced by the mahaul (uproar), at that time, whipped up by the media, I think it was a sort of a planned attack on the government, it had very little to do with the coalition.

However, the coalition also needs to be more effectively communicating to clear the air, you can’t just sit back and let it overtake you. Also, 10 years is a time in government when anti-incumbency would kick in so that’s another factor that could have failed UPA-II but I think the coalition as such cannot be blamed for what happened.

Sircar: Every party in India has its share of corruption but when you have a coalition government and you are necessarily doing business to keep your coalition partners together, whatever it takes to grease the wheels between coalition partners can create a perception of corruption. And in UPA II, the perception of corruption did a lot of damage.

Regional parties have all along been vehicles for certain regional elites, often framed around a single person or a small set of people who negotiate for the entire party. For what role could a JDU play at the national level unless it was compromising and making accommodations vis-a-vis the Centre if it’s going to be involved, where the state is also taken seriously and you can also contribute to the national policy, it is not a situation where states have fared badly.

The pound-of-flesh logic is not so bad if you see things from the perspective of your state. It is a government that is disproportionately invested in winning in that state, and in so far as it’s making accommodations at the national level may do so for its own personal benefit, but those benefits will also disproportionately accrue to that particular state. For instance, Mamata Bennerjee and Lalu Prasad Yadav as railway ministers benefitted their states and that is valid.

Can ideology be a glue to keep coalitions intact as they do in some countries in the West like Sweden?

Kailash: Most parts of Western Europe have had the coalition experience for a much longer period than us. Also, they have a proportional representation system so coalitions are natural, their politics is born into dialogue, conversation, and consensus right from the campaign itself. We have the plural, first-past-the-post system where it’s a more adversarial system, and it’s about winning for each party. The scope for dialogue is very low in our system, it is executive-dominated.

In the proportional representation system, parties sell themselves in such a way that it becomes a sort of a median player where everybody would want to ally with you, whereas in our system, you don’t need to be attractive to others. Only when it’s highly competitive that you attempt to be attractive, like what the BJP did in 1999 when it went all out to woo allies by setting aside contentious issues like the Ram temple, Article 370, etc, but the BJP under Modi completely switched back in 2014, 2019.
In the West, they have put in place coordination mechanisms, steering committees, etc over a period of time.

Sircar: In the US for example, you have a bipolar system in principle because you have ideological consolidation – so, if you’re more left, you should be voting for Democrats; if you’re more right, you should vote for Republicans – that’s the general belief rightly or wrongly. In India, we don’t have that kind of ideological consolidation even in terms of welfare, policy or capital issues. Instead, we have ethno-nationalism where they say I’m pro-Hindu or pro-caste, which is not ideology. So descriptive representation, identity-based representation, both in your linguistic identity and your caste identity, becomes far more important, and you have winners and losers spatially. The BJP say, got 60-70% from six states, Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat; it’s a spatial concentration of support and the sheer lack of support in certain other parts of the country yet policies are made by representatives disproportionately representing only one part of the country.

Are coalition governments the way ahead for a central government to be truly equitable, pluralistic and democratic? How do you make coalitions more robust?

Kailash: Apart from setting up mechanisms for dialogue and consensus, from a CMP, to steering and coordination committees, there should also be a method to keep leaders in touch with grassroots, who are not necessarily in government, much like the NAC under Sonia Gandhi in UPA; there could be a Sharad Pawar or someone of such stature.

Right now, the INDIA alliance seems to have gone back to a period where allies just have a seat-sharing arrangement like at the time of VP Singh, and the agenda is singularly about saving democracy.
If the India alliance comes together, it should do what successful coalitions have done in the past – put in programmes culled out from the manifestos of the various allies. It can be business as usual. As for strengthening the alliance, it’s important to give back autonomy and independence to constitutional institutions that they deserve, from the Supreme Court, EC, CAG etc.

As for regional parties in a coalition, they are all acting within their rights of having their own agenda like any other party, like BJP and Congress. One cannot institutionalise how coalitions must politically handle themselves but it has to do more with political acumen and being two steps ahead.

Sircar: Paradoxically, given the massive rise of inequality and farmer distress, this is when the Left parties should have been the most powerful and yet they have totally withered away. Devoid of an ideological glue between citizen and party or parties and coalitions, nothing prevents a candidate or coalition ally from jumping from one side to the other.

However, true decentralisation is crucial for a certain kind of federation, and it must go beyond the state level too – putting in mechanisms that ensure certain kinds of fiscal and policy power to the panchayat, and municipal councils, rather than to MLAs and MPs. It would develop an accountability link between citizens and politicians. Overnight you would get rid of money power and go to people who can actually enact policy.

Federalism is not about giving power to autocratic leaders at the state level versus autocratic leaders at the central level, that should not be the bargain. It should be about true decentralisation.

In Kerala’s Vadakara, CPI(M) Candidate Spotlights Secularism, Chides Congress For ‘Being Mum’

Vadakara’s CPI(M) candidate K.K. Shailaja – the face of the party’s victorious COVID-19 war in Kerala – says democracy is in danger in India and takes the cue from her party leadership, which has accused the Congress of being slack in attacking the BJP and Modi.

Kappad Beach (Vadakara): The Kerala Lok Sabha polls are brimming with irony – the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) rules God’s own country, with its voters, many of whom are religious and worshipping believers; the BJP and Prime Minister Modi have dumped majoritarian and divisive Hindutva politics in the state as it actively woos minorities, which include several sects of Christians, apart from putting up two Muslim candidates, in Malappuram and Ponnani.

This is a complete turnaround from the BJP’s exclusionist policy in the rest of the country.

While the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) characteristically falls between two stools even as it refuses to acknowledge its powerful ally, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the latter’s official green flags (Hindutva’s dog whistle for all things Muslim, Pakistan, etc.) were banned at Rahul Gandhi’s rally in his constituency in Wayanad.

The local saying in response to this was that the Congress feared Modi-kodi (flag), while Modi used it to whip up communal disunity.

Perhaps Kerala’s good fortune for all those who are anti-RSS/BJP is that both dominant political forces, the LDF and the UDF, are patently anti-Hindutva forces, and thus the voters have the luxury of choosing the UDF and LDF for their schemes and policies, those which are progressive and beneficial, rather than vote to keep the BJP out of the way.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, though has certainly been increasing its vote share pretty impressively from 10.85% in 2014 to 15.20% in 2019 – the BJP itself got 12.93% of the votes, according to Election Commission data – falls short of even remotely jettisoning the two biggies in the state.

So, what do voters look for when they choose their candidate in a Lok Sabha poll? Are their stance and intentions, as also preferences, different in a state assembly election, as opposed to a national election?

The obvious answer is a yes – if you look at the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, where the Congress-led UDF swept the state, winning 19 out of the 20 seats; but two years later, in 2021, the LDF swept the assembly polls in a surprise second term win, defying anti-incumbency because of its commendable work during the devastating floods and in the COVID-19 period.

This dualism is handled deftly but turned on its head at the colourful rally of the CPI(M) candidate in the Vadakara constituency in north Malabar, the redoubtable K.K. Shailaja (or Shailaja Teacher, as she is fondly called) – the face of the party’s victorious COVID-19 war – in the little beachside town of Kappad Beach.

The call now is for strong local leaders to be elected to parliament to raise issues that are pertinent to the state, at the national level.

It’s almost 9 pm, but the crowds lining the corniche along the beach snaking a mile down to her meeting ground has women, children and men waving party flags, even as a disco van with upbeat party songs get the young dancing as they follow the music and slogans blaring from the speakers.

This crowd is mostly dominated by Muslim locals – older women in hijabs while the young have thrown a scarf carelessly over their heads, even as the sea breeze knocks them off cheerily – the men manage to keep the mild crowd on the side to ease the sporadic traffic.

Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

Anirussa is a 25-year-old working in a cooperative bank, married and is a committed CPI(M) voter.

She explains, “We need a strong voice in parliament to take up issues about the CAA, UCC and the like. Yes, in Kerala, we don’t have problems like in the north about how we live – we can dress the way we like, what we eat is a personal choice, what we talk  … we live the way we like, but we need someone who is committed to our secular ideals and there’s no one other than like Shailaja Teacher who will represent us best in parliament.’’

But wouldn’t Shailaja be a better candidate for the state – she is a sitting MLA from Mattanur – to take up local issues, which she had handled so deftly in the past?

Laavya, a 12th-class schoolgirl, is vivid when she says, “Shailaja Teacher was recognised all over the world for her swift and skilful handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as Kerala’s health minister, and it’s time that she is recognised in parliament, as she will raise the right issues nationally for us.”

Is it not a blow to the Congress and its ally, the IUML, who believe they are best suited to raise in parliament pertinent questions that affect the community and the locals?

A K.K. Shailaja supporter. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

The small throng of curious women who are more inclined towards the Congress are, however, sarcastic when they laugh and point out that all the Congress is known for today is the drove of leaders leaving the party and joining the BJP.

“How can we trust the Congress to take up our issues if leaders keep joining the BJP?”, they chorus.

It was not long before K.K. Shailaja and her convoy appeared and a boisterous procession led her to the meeting place, as she waved to bystanders standing in an open van. She is accompanied by Kanathil Jameela, the MLA from neighbouring Quilandy, and it’s a firm Shailaja who addresses the gathering immediately as there can be no public address after 10 pm.

Typically, she takes the cue from her party leadership, which has accused the Congress of being slack in attacking the BJP and Modi; rather, the latter has been brutal in attacking the CPI(M) instead, as well as its chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, even asking why the CM has not been arrested by central agencies for an alleged IT scam involving his daughter’s company.

“The Congress not only failed to protest when Article 370 was abrogated,” says Shailaja firmly, “the Congress has not even mentioned the CAA in its manifesto; and while the [CPI(M)] has vowed to repeal draconian laws like the UAPA and PMLA, the Congress makes weak noises.”

Later, speaking to The Wire, Shailaja elaborates, “Today, the constitution and secularism are in danger because of the BJP, and our fight is to save it, and we have to raise our voice to save democracy, but the Congress is keeping mum on these issues – they are hesitant and are not giving their opinion freely.”

Shailaja also blames the IUML for not even visiting Gujarat during the 2002 riots when she says, “How can the IUML claim to protect the interests of the Muslims when its two MPs did not even visit Gujarat after the riots? Our women leaders, from Subhasini Ali to Brinda Karat, went to the state to meet victims, but [the IUML did not].”

It’s a do-or-die battle for the CPI(M) in Kerala, which needs a few seats in parliament to stay relevant nationally after its complete rout in 2019, even as it has been wiped out in West Bengal and Tripura. And party leaders have been berating the Congress for not raising its voice in parliament on crucial issues, from Kashmir to Kerala.

Young people dance at K.K. Shailaja’s rally in Vadakara. Photo: Vrinda Gopinath.

It seems to have hit a chord with people when they say strong local leaders now have to be in parliament to raise issues nationally, whether it’s about getting tax dues from the Union government for development of the state, or communalism.

M. Rijish is a 30-year-old interior designer who candidly admits that he voted for the Congress but is disappointed that the sitting Vadakara MP, Congress leader K. Muraleedharan, did not manage to get any additional passenger trains to the state, which is the cheapest way for people to commute; or even small scale industries to Vadakara, which drive development.

As Rijish says, “The Congress MPs together could have collectively raised their voices for the development of the state, which did not happen. It’s time we have a more diverse and forceful voice at the national level.”

So, is the CPI(M) poised to win a few states in the state?

In Vadakara, the Congress candidate Shafi Parambil is also a sitting MLA from Palakkad, and the 41-year-old MLA defeated Metro Man E. Sreedharan of the BJP. He has now been foisted on Vadakara against Shailaja, after the incumbent Muraleedharan has been moved to Thrissur.

Shafi Parambil. Photo: X/@shafi_parambil.

Parambil has launched an energetic campaign against his rival, even though he was attacked for the anonymous misogynistic posts against Shailaja, but he was quick to turn it against the CPI(M) when he filed a counter suit against its party workers for the cyber campaign against him.

Both Shailaja and Parambil have filed suits against each other too.

However, Parambil is determined he wants to steer clear of unseemly controversies, as he told a rally, and focus on development issues.

While Parambil is also new to the constituency, political observers believe Shailaja would have been better off if she had fought in the neighbouring Kannur constituency, further north, which is more pro-CPI(M) and also Shailaja’s home town.

Could a better candidate selection have worked better for the CPI(M)?

The Vadakara result could perhaps reflect the fortunes of the LDF and UDF in the state.

Interview | ‘Our Endeavour Is to Ensure the India Alliance Is Made Forceful’: MK Muneer

‘It is the Congress which has a national footprint today to take on the BJP in the country. We have to strengthen the Congress to increase its numbers as it has alliances in many states, from Tamil Nadu to Maharashtra and other states,’ says Muneer, who is a member of the Indian Union Muslim League.

Dr. M.K. Muneer has been an eminent member of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) ever since he headed the youth wing and was appointed secretary of the organisation, but he gained prominence for his unorthodox vision as a minister in the former Congress state government and continues to do so as an IUML MLA from Kozhikode South.

He has been advocating for initiatives such as pushing for ‘ethical capital’ status for Kozhikode, introducing mandatory psycho-social counselling for teenagers in schools, renovating public libraries, and implementing the country’s first transgender policy.

Muneer says that he is simply continuing the IUML’s doctrine of public participation and inclusiveness, as explained in the interview, with excerpts provided below.

Vrinda Gopinath: The last few days have seen Prime Minister Modi’s persistent jibe at the Congress saying its manifesto carries the imprint of the Muslim League and reeks of appeasement and of breaking up India. It has certainly put the League out there in the national imagination?

M.K. Muneer: First of all, Modi has not pointed out anywhere in his speeches where the Congress manifesto has made concessions to the Muslim community. He has not given a single example [to support his own statement]. This is typical of Modi’s game in every election, making statements that can polarise Hindus and Muslims – the only election strategy they [the BJP] know is to break community unity.

[Do you] remember the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, [which erupted] just before the 2014 general election? It was certainly used by the BJP, and eventually, Yogi Adityanath won Uttar Pradesh.

Similarly, in 2019, the BJP and Modi played up the Pulwama attack in the run-up to the general election. However, one must pay heed to what then J&K governor Satyapal Malik had said. He’d said that Pulwama was a game played by Modi for electoral success, and in yet another interview, Malik said that Modi might orchestrate the killing of a top BJP leader or cause damage to the Ram temple to vitiate the atmosphere as he will stop at nothing to win the 2024 election.

Fortunately, people have not responded to this blatant communal call by Modi.

VG: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has said Modi’s jibes reminds the Congress of the RSS-IUML friendship of the past?

M.K.M: Typically, Modi referred to the League before Independence – so Kharge responded by referring to Jinnah’s All-India Muslim League, which had colluded with the Hindu Mahasabha ideologue Shyama Prasad Mukherjee to help the British fight the freedom movement.

Our organisation, the IUML, was formed in 1948, by M. Muhammad Ismail, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly. Naturally, Ismail sahib clearly laid out that the constitution is of primary importance, that if Muslims want to be part of the mainstream and participate in nation-building, they have to be political, and not reactionary. We must obey the constitution, and join politics too.

While religious organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami insisted Muslims should keep aloof from politics as it is not ordained by god, the IUML encouraged community members to get government jobs, join national organisations, and become a true citizen.

VG: Would you then say the broadcast of The Kerala Story is yet another attempt to polarise people on religious grounds? The Congress has complained to the Election Commission about Modi’s Muslim League jibes and the deliberate ploy behind the screening of the film?

MKM: Isn’t it obvious it is yet another game by Modi to inflame communal passion? What was the need to broadcast The Kerala Story on Doordarshan, that too on the eve of elections? [Was it] to inflame rural areas? It’s well-known, [as] even the director and scriptwriter of the film has conceded that the theme of the film, ‘love jihad’, is a work of fiction. They climbed down from 32,000 cases of ‘love jihad’ to just two and three. A parliamentary question elicited a similar answer of just two to three cases. Modi and the BJP only want to spread hate.

VG: It must be said here that several Christian organisations, including some bishops in Kerala, are organising shows of The Kerala Story and warning about love ‘jihad’. Is it because Christians are unhappy with the Congress for the party’s undue importance given to IUML and the community?

MKM: I don’t believe the Christians are unhappy with the Congress. There are extreme elements in every community and religion whether Muslim, Hindu or Christian. It is a trend among extremist youth to stoke hatred through social media, etc. Idukki diocese and the the Kerala Catholic, etc. has screened the controversial movie in all its units. However then, another church ordered screening of a documentary on the Manipur violence. The parish priest said at least this was real and not fiction, and that the Kerala society must be vigilant about propaganda films like The Kerala Story.

However, we are all in politics, and there are some churches close to the BJP. There are Christian candidates contesting under the Congress-led UDF too, of which we are also part of, and the IUML is supporting them, and vice versa.

VG: What about extremist elements in Muslim organisations?

MKM: The League has always stood against extremism within the community. We have fought tooth and nail against the PDP (People’s Democratic Party), which created the ISS or Organisation of Islamic Servants; also, the banned SIMI has incarnated as the NDF, or National Development Front.

Then it became the Socialist Democratic Party of India, where members have been arrested on charges of political murders and communal protests. The IUML has always taken a firm stand against all these organisations, including the now banned PFI, or Popular Front of India.

VG: Can Christian votes swing a defeat for the Left or the Congress candidates? In Pathanamthitta, the BJP is banking on Christian votes to swing in favour of its candidate, Anil Antony, former Congress minister A.K. Antony’s son?

MKM: The Congress-led UDF has fielded a Christian too, sitting MP Anto Antony.

VG: Would you say minorities are in a safe position in Kerala in the face of the Hindutva onslaught? After all, both dominant parties, the Left and the Congress, are anti-BJP, so it is not a difficult choice?

MKM: Muslims constitute almost 27% of the state’s population, and Christians about 19%. For Muslims, in a state election, it is always local issues, whether it was COVID preparedness or the floods, where the CPM scored in the 2021 assembly polls. The ruling party always has an advantage after a crisis. Similarly, national issues affect the community just like in the rest of the country, and in Kerala, it is always a political vote. By that I mean, we are not just doing a job by voting, we cast a vote as a reflection of our thoughts.

VG: For instance, the CAA is a big issue in the country. However, Kerala is not necessarily affected because it does not have a migrant population. It is also not a border state like Assam?

MKM: We all are against CAA on principle, for when a law is made, there should be a reason, and the reason here is to exclude only the Muslim community.

The CAA excludes countries like Myanmar deliberately because of the Rohingya Muslims, even though it is a neighbour like Sri Lanka, etc. The CAA is specifically anti-Muslim and also anti-democratic.

In Mumbai, Muslims are running frantically to government offices to get their citizenship, and they are afraid whether they will get it as the onus is on them to prove their residency. How can anyone be asked one fine morning whether they are a citizen or not?

These issues affect Kerala Muslims too.

VG: The Left has asserted quite vociferously their anti-CAA stand in demos and public protests, whereas your ally, the Congress, has not even included CAA in its manifesto?

MKM: First of all, Congress leaders from Rahul Gandhi to Shashi Tharoor have all said they will abolish CAA. Perhaps, we should also look at the spirit of the Congress manifesto. After all, most of these discriminatory laws have been pushed through by the BJP-led NDA’s brute majority in parliament without any discussion or consultation in both Houses — from the CAA to UCC to abolishing Article 370 for J&K.

The Congress’s manifesto reflects the letter and spirit of the constitution. It clearly says the party will give all citizens freedom from fear, that there will be no discrimination on the basis of religion, caste, and instead it’ll encourage reform in personal laws in consultation with the communities. It will not interfere in personal choices of food, dress, etc, and such like. The present discriminatory laws fly in the face of Article 14 of the constitution. So, the Congress has pledged to keep aside these brute laws.

VG: But why is the Congress coy about spelling it out?

MKM: It’s Modi’s game again, why did his government bring the CAA on the eve of the election? Because he wants to polarise communities against each other again, apart from diverting the election campaign from the real issues like the massive electoral bonds fraud and corruption, unemployment, inflation, and all. The Modi government has not delivered to the people. It’s yet another diversionary tactic to change the narrative in the election campaign and political parties don’t want to fall in the trap.

M.K. Muneer with former Congress chief minister Oommen Chandy. Photo provided by author.

VG: Why does the IUML prefer the Congress over the Left? There have been backdoor talks between the LDF and some sections of the IUML to come together over time?

MKM: We did have a coalition government with the Left in 1967, my father was a minister too. However, the coalition collapsed and we’ve been with the Congress ever since. More importantly, it is the Congress which has a national footprint today to take on the BJP in the country. We have to strengthen the Congress to increase its numbers as it has alliances in many states, from Tamil Nadu to Maharashtra and other states, whereas the CPM is only in Kerala. In Bengal, the Congress and CPM are on the same side. Our endeavour is to ensure the India alliance is made forceful and every party stays on the same side if there is a chance at power in Delhi.

VG: What are you hinting at? The IUML does not trust the CPM?

MKM: V.P. Singh became prime minister as the CPM stood with the BJP to form his government. The Marxists brought down the Manmohan Singh government in 2009 on the Indo-US nuclear deal, so we cannot predict where the CPM will stand with the India bloc after the elections.

VG: Surely the Left will not support a BJP government?

MKM: No, they will not. But will they join the India bloc government? Will they support it from the outside and pull the rug later? These are anxieties amongst the people and will influence their judgment at the time of voting.

Significantly, people are suspicious about some of the actions, or I may say, inaction of the Pinarayi government here. For instance, there is this surprising indifference of the state government against a core group of RSS police officers inside the force who call themselves Tatvamasi. They go on a pilgrimage to Kanyakumari, I raised this in the assembly but the chief minister has given no reply to this date.

VG: Perhaps, it’s just alleged as there’s no proof. After all, there’s talk about Pachha Valecha (green light) in the force because of PFI infiltration?

MKM: The Opposition has raised the issue of two RSS workers being let off last month in Kasargod for the murder of a maulvi, because the court said the prosecution’s investigation was shoddy. The chief minister’s daughter is being investigated by the ED after an income tax report last year. Former finance minister Thomas Isaac is being investigated by the ED on the masala bond scam. Pinarayi himself is being investigated by the CBI on the Lavalin case. However, every time the case comes up in the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General has taken leave 33 times and the case keeps getting postponed. (The Supreme Court has finally agreed to have a final hearing on May 1). While most Opposition leaders under the ED scan are in prison, Kerala leaders seem to be scot free.

VG: Is this the message of the IUML to the community? Also, since the Left is wooing the community and several organisations like Samasthan have welcomed the overtures, could a split vote help the BJP, which is waiting in the wings?

MKM: Today, the Samastha, Mujahideen, the Jamaat-e-Islami, they are all now with the UDF and have declared to their followers the Congress has to be strengthened wherever it stands, and more importantly, the India bloc has to be consolidated.

The community is also aware that the LDF is refusing to do a caste census which is mandatory every 10 years – the census is crucial as we would know the socio-economic status of the population, including Muslims, as reservations are also given [based] on their economic status.

Yes, we have the Dalit Muslim League, so far, Muslims get 10% reservation in government jobs and 12% reservation in educational institutes, but it is crucial that we know the economic status of all sections of society. Bihar has just discovered it has 65% backward castes and so reservation must increase in the state.

VG: Will a three-cornered contest between the LDF, UDF and BJP go to the advantage of the BJP? For instance, in Thiruvananthapuram, in 2019, the BJP came second to Shashi Tharoor, the Left candidate was pushed to the third place?

MKM:In a triangular contest, a one-two per cent swing can make a difference. However, the real contest is between the UDF and LDF and that vote swing goes only to these two parties. In 2019, the swing went in favour of the UDF, which is why the Left candidate went to the third place. Even an increase in the BJP vote share will not affect the two parties.