The ‘People’s Resistance March’ led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s state secretary in Kerala, M.V. Govindan, is the first major political project he undertook after assuming charge last August. Govindan’s month-long roadshow, which Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan flagged off on February 20 at Kasaragod in the state’s northern tip, would culminate in Thiruvananthapuram in the southern end. The march is ostensibly intended to highlight the Central government’s alleged anti-people policies and economic discrimination against Kerala. Yet, its veiled agenda looks like a counter-offensive against a fresh upsurge in widespread attacks against the 21-month-old Left Democratic Front government. The march also kick-started the LDF’s campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Since its return to power in 2021 — for the first time — the LDF, especially the CPI(M), has been embroiled in a slew of unseemly controversies that have sprung up on top of the state’s deepening financial crisis. So much so that last December, the CPI(M) state committee launched a ‘rectification’ campaign within the party after a break of 12 years to stem the party from falling for ‘bourgeois tendencies’ like greed for positions, money, nepotism, and other forms of moral degeneration. The document noted that the return to power has led to the strengthening of such tendencies as well as of bureaucratic hegemony inside the organisation. Govindan even publicly said that vigorous self-criticism would be enforced from the top to the bottom in the party. This was against the backdrop of several controversies, including the appointment of family members of prominent leaders, including ministers, in universities. This also led to a public duel between the chief minister and the governor, Arif Mohammed Khan, who, as chancellor, had questioned these appointments besides unleashing a political attack on the CPI(M). Almost all of the media have been ballistic against the government over these issues. The government was also forced to shelve its much-trumpeted Rs 64,000 crore, semihigh speed rail line project (SilverLine) following widespread opposition and a defeat in the bypoll (Thrikkakara) to the assembly in May 2022.
A spate of new incidents has now put the government in the dock again. The upward revisions in the taxes and duties along with an additional cess of Rs 2 per litre on petrol and diesel in the state budget presented on February 3 have attracted a near-unanimous condemnation. According to the finance minister, K.N. Balagopal, the revision was made unavoidable by an unprecedented economic crisis caused by the discriminatory ways of the Central government. Notwithstanding its impressive annual growth of 12.01% in 2021-22. Kerala faces a slew of contingencies like high fiscal deficit, mounting debt, stagnant tax collection, unabated unemployment and so on. Balagopal blames the Central government, which deprived Kerala of Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal year. Yet, according to the critics, the crisis was primarily of the government’s own making on account of inefficient tax mobilisation, lack of vision, and profligacy.
Even as agitations by the Congressled Opposition and the Bharatiya Janata Party against the budget proposals were picking up, the government suffered yet another major embarrassment when the Central Enforcement Directorate arrested M. Sivasankar, the former principal secretary of the chief minister, once again, on February 14. The arrest was connected to a scam related to the government’s housing project (LIFE Mission) backed by the United Arab Emirates and headed by the chief minister for the 2018 flood victims. Sivasankar was arrested twice before by the ED and the Central customs department; he spent 90 days in jail in connection with another case related to the gold smuggling scam involving the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. The senior IAS officer was picked up by the ED days after he retired from service following charges by Swapna Suresh, a key accused in the smuggling case and a former employee at the UAE consulate. According to her, Sivasankar and the UAE consul-general had received shares in the Rs 4.5 crore-kickback she took from the contractor for awarding him the housing project. Immediately after Sivasankar’s arrest, Suresh reiterated her earlier charges that Vijayan and his family too were beneficiaries of the deal. She said Sivasankar was the conduit for the chief minister and his family. Earlier, she had named prominent CPI(M) leaders of financial and moral turpitude.
The government and the CPI(M) maintain that Suresh is a willing tool in the hands of Central agencies to corner the party leaders as they have been doing in every Opposition-ruled state. But critics ask why neither the government nor the party initiates any action against Suresh who has been making serious personal allegations for some time now. Neither Vijayan nor the party has responded to the charges yet.
Even after the CPI(M)’s rectification campaign, there has been no let-up in the incidents of ‘degeneration’. New incidents have surfaced pointing to a nexus with drug peddlers and real-estate swindlers. There are also charges of sexual harassment (even of fellow women comrades), extravagant lifestyle, wasteful public expenditure for personal needs, factionalism, paranoia against protests. The chief minister’s excessive security arrangements, such as his elaborate motorcade which caused enormous difficulties for the public, have attracted wide disapproval in particular.
There has also been a resurfacing of factionalism within the CPI(M). The decade-long war between Vijayan and the ailing former chief minister, V.S. Achuthanandan, subsided only recently, with the former establishing his sway and the latter retiring from active politics due to age and ill health. New tussles are now emerging in the party citadel, Kannur, within the Vijayan camp. The spat has led to skeletons tumbling out in Kannur, the state’s capital of political violence. Akash Thillankeri, allegedly a CPI(M) henchman in Kannur and an accused in many criminal cases, posted on Facebook that all his crimes were committed at the leadership’s behest. Thillankeri’s ‘confession’ came after the party disowned him.
Although the Lok Sabha polls are more than a year away, the LDF’s recovery from its debacle in the 2019 elections appears laborious as there has been no significant fire-fighting measure yet to salvage its sinking image.
M.G. Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram, has worked with various print and electronic media organisations