IN POLL POSITION
The local body election results have injected new life into the Left Front election campaign. Can the CPI(M) chief minister ride them to victory?
The results of local body polls have given the CPI(M) campaign a new life
FFor almost four decades now, Kerala has voted the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and United Democratic Front (UDF) to power alternately. The 2021 assembly election, though, could spring a surprise. The ruling LDF’s surprise performance in the local body election in December (just as everyone thought it was down and out after the gold smuggling scandal and Enforcement Directorate investigations) suggests a change in the script for the assembly election in May. The worry lines are gone and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is back to his imperious self. He is keen that the LDF, led by his CPI(M), consolidate the 40.2 per cent vote share it got in the local body polls (the Congress steered UDF managed 37.9 per cent while the BJP-led NDA got 19 per cent of the vote).
The true Marxist that he is, Pinarayi, now 75, has never believed in fate. Nothing’s come easy for him, which may be why when he was finally chosen to head the LDF government in 2016, he already had a blueprint in mind for his tenure. It helped that, unlike with earlier Left Front regimes, there was little interference from AKG Centre, the state party headquarters. “Pinarayi has had full control over the decisions of his government. No chief minister of Kerala has had such privileges. He has used the opportunity to leave his imprint on the government while also emerging as a sole power centre,” says a former state chief secretary, on condition of anonymity.
Pinarayi has also worked to widen the LDF’s mass base from day one, adopt new technologies to improve delivery of government services and got experts onboard as advisors (including Gita Gopinath, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund). His biggest visible successes were the four ‘missions’—‘Haritha (green) Keralam’ to make the state eco-friendly and sustainable, the Life Mission to provide homes for the poor, ‘Aardram’ to develop infrastructure in government hospitals and the Education Mission to set up high-tech classrooms in state-run schools.
Under the garb of the ‘Nava (New) Kerala’ initiatives, he also brought his unruly party workers to heel, banning the ‘nokkukooli’ practice in the markets where head-load workers demanded pay even for not doing the job and making attendance compulsory in government offices.
“We managed to create a novel platform to integrate three major sectors—waste management, agriculture and conservation of water resources under the Haritha mission. The best part was developing the many great models in managing waste with people’s participation,” says Dr T.N. Seema, a former CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP and vice-chairperson of the Haritha Keralam Mission.
But if there’s anything that will give Pinarayi’s government a chance at a second term, it is the goodwill generated by its performance during the multiple crises that have hit the state since its term began. It started with the Nipah virus outbreak, then the consecutive floods in 2018 and 2019 and, finally, Covid-19.
The CM’s hands-on approach during the calamities has to an extent endeared him to the people of Kerala. It’s hard to believe that just a decade ago, in the battle for top honours in the state CPI(M), the media was painting Pinarayi as the arrogant, corrupt and reactionary leader while projecting veteran Communist leader V.S. Achuthanandan as the leader of the masses. But Pinarayi has now emerged as Kerala’s most credible chief minister in a long time with a major fan following on social media.
“During the post-flood periods, the CM’s Disaster Relief Fund received Rs 4,912 crore in donations; Rs 523 crore during Covid-19. But more than these donations, it’s Pinarayi’s appeal for land to build homes for the homeless that proves his standing among the people. We got around 100 acres of land as donations from the public,” points out a senior IAS officer. Of course, this was all before the gold smuggling racket in 2020 implicated some of his trusted officials in the CM’s office.
Second-term strategy
There’s no denying that the local body poll results have lifted a faltering LDF campaign going into the assembly election. After the results, the CM has had elaborate discussions with opinion-makers in the districts to chart out the election manifesto, the government’s annual progress card is being widely circulated and, most importantly, the party cadre have a spring in their step again. The CPI(M) leadership, meanwhile, is trying to consolidate the community votebanks and topmost on the agenda is getting back the upper-caste Hindu Nair voters (who abandoned the party after protests against the entry of women in Sabarimala) and winning more of the minority community votes.
A big boost has been the Kerala Congress-Mani or KC-M faction
The CM’s hands-on approach during the calamities endeared him to the people, which explains the overwhelming response to his call for donations
joining the LDF. It improves the front’s chances considerably in central Kerala; the 2.5 per cent vote swing will be a major drain on the UDF’s secure base. But more than the vote drain, Pinarayi has found a new ambassador, KC-M leader Jose K. Mani, to connect to the Syro-Malabar Catholic community in the region. He is also trying to link with Muslim community leaders to counter the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)’s dominance in Malabar in the north.
Youth and women are the other focus groups. Pinarayi has already had a series of personal interactions with youth to assess their problems and aspirations. The intention is to get a 45 per cent-plus vote share from these two groups and undercut the caste/ minority card using the development agenda. Plans are also afoot to field the best possible candidates against prominent Congress leaders (and his fiercest critics) such as Ramesh Chennithala, Mullappally Ramachandran, Oommen Chandy and V.D. Satheeshan.
Veteran journalist and former Kerala Press Academy chairman N.P. Rajendran argues that the “biggest advantage for the CPI(M) and the CM is that they have to a large extent won the confidence of the Muslims, who make up 27 per cent of the population. The community feels secure under LDF rule and their shift from the Congress to the CPI(M) may play a decisive role in the assembly election”.
The Congress gameplan
The Congress seems to be in a flux after the poll debacle in December. Party leaders had banked on the gold smuggling scandal and the corruption allegations in the Life Mission to carry them through, but the vocal campaigns seem to have had little impact and, as one media critic put it, it’s as if the voters only remembered the family kits during the pandemic, the 250,000 houses delivered and the Rs 1,600 social security monthly pension for 5.5 million poor people when they went to the polling booths.
The Congress is now pinning its hopes on reviving the Sabarimala issue and is drafting a new legislation banning menstruating women from entering the hill shrine with a two-year jail term for violators. The party says it will implement the new rule if it wins the election. The move looks like a futile exercise aimed solely at minimising the BJP’s hold over the Sabarimala issue and winning over the Nair votes, especially since the matter is under the consideration of a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court. And this is a big fear now. “Analysing the voting pattern, trends indicate that if the BJP gains in Kerala, it will be at the Congress’s expense. The UDF will need a miracle to return to power, and stunts like reviving the Sabarimala sentiments alone will not help it win,” Rajendran points out.
LDF convenor and CPI(M) state secretary A. Vijayaraghavan warns that the Congress is playing a dangerous game, unleashing a “communal virus that could be more dangerous than Covid in the coming days”. He says the “Congress is playing a loser’s final in Kerala. They are spreading multi viruses into a democratic system invoking caste and religion to gain space”.
A BJP ‘super winner’?
Like the Congress, the BJP, too, is perplexed by their current political position in the state. The issues they have held up for long—Sabarimala and the gold smuggling scandal—have little oxygen left, and they need new weapons to fight Pinarayi. There’s also a realisation that banking on the CM’s detractors like former vigilance director Jacob Thomas to do the job may not get them votes. But since 2016, the BJP-led NDA has gained political momentum in Kerala and improved its vote share. In the 2016 assembly poll, the NDA got a 15 per cent vote share and by the time of the local body polls in 2020 had improved it to 19 per cent. According to Rajendran, if the BJP improves its vote share by another 3 percentage points, the Congress will be routed in the state.
And that seems to be the current gameplan of the BJP. The party’s campaign manager-in-chief and Union home minister Amit Shah wants the party to focus on victories in 25 constituencies (in the 140-seat house). The BJP state leadership will be happy if they win seven, including Nemom, the first seat it won in Kerala (in 2016). Seven constituencies and a 23 per cent vote share in the coming election will make the BJP the “super winner” in Kerala. BJP sources say they don’t mind Pinarayi winning another term; their agenda is to decimate the Congress after playing its B-team against Pinarayi for the last four years and nine months. A Congress rout will also offer the BJP a chance to become the main opposition and have its leaders flock to their side. The strategy has worked in other states, but may falter in Kerala with its caste and community mix. ■
“The Congress is playing a loser’s final in Kerala... unleashing a communal virus that could become more dangerous than Covid in coming days” A. VIJAYARAGHAVAN CPI(M) state secretary and LDF convenor