Skip to main content

Kerala Elections – Random Thoughts


Kerala does not have the tradition of re-electing a government.  So yesterday’s poll results would not have surprised anybody.  Moreover, the UDF government was steeped in corruption charges. 

Kerala Results in a nutshell
Yet the Pala constituency re-elected K. M. Mani who faced serious allegations related to the bar scam.  The people of Pala are neither ignorant politically nor blind in their allegiance to Mr Mani.  Mani has done much for the people of his constituency.  He has intimate relationships with the Catholic church which is a strong force in Pala.  People benefit one way or another if Mani is in power.  That is the secret of Mani’s success.  It has nothing to do with any ideology.

P. C. George who rebelled furiously against Mani’s corruption and became an enemy of both the UDF and the LDF because of his undiplomatic forthrightness and bravado won as an independent candidate from Poonjar, Mani’s neighbouring constituency.  George’s victory indicates that what people really care for is not the Party but the Person.  George is a person with strong mass support because he is a man of the people.  Nobody who approaches him with a grievance will leave his office disappointed.

UDF’s P. J. Joseph won with the largest margin (45,587 votes) from Thodupuzha, a town which has witnessed much development because of him.  His victory shows again that even the people of Kerala will re-elect you if you do something worthwhile for them.

Eldhose Kunnapilly of UDF makes his debut entry to the Kerala Assembly because he has made a mark as a social worker while he served his term as the District Panchayat President.  People voted for service. 

In short, it is not really the party that matters in Kerala; it is what the leader does for the people. 

Jayalalithaa’s victory in Kerala’s neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu also illustrates the same principle.  Amma is certainly not above taint.  Yet she won comfortably because she had extended a lot of support to the poor people in various ways some of which may be scoffed at by the affluent as cheap gimmicks or mere populism.  For the starving man, a cheap meal at a low-cost canteen is as good as god.  Amma became a goddess in the state which still has a sizeable section of the population grappling with poverty.

Nationwide, the BJP is buoyant because of its landslide victory in Assam, “opening its account” in Kerala, and, above all, because of the rout of Congress everywhere.  The Congress deserves its present fate because it had lost touch with people.  It’s not enough to visit the poor in their huts and have tea with them, as Rahul Gandhi did for some time.  People must benefit in concrete terms.  As pointed out above, those leaders who really did something concrete for the people won in Kerala and such people can win anywhere.  So the lesson that Congress has to learn is clear.

Source: The Hindu
The Left atop a 'Right' building
The NDA fared miserably in Kerala whatever the statistics may say.  Vellapally Natesan, whom the BJP espoused in the state, is a crook and swindler who played the most cynical communal card by forming a political party for the Dalits whom he had only exploited throughout his political career.  Even the helicopter given him by the BJP for the election campaign could not take him to any height whatever.  His party did not win even a single seat.  Cynical communalism has no place in Kerala yet though clandestine communalism triumphs!  Mr Modi and his cohorts can learn some subtlety from Kerala.

The BJP won one seat through O. Rajagopal who made it finally after losing 15 times in elections to the Assembly as well as the Parliament!  His tenacity and grit must be admired, if nothing else.

 If the secular parties in Kerala really deliver what they are supposed to, then a party like the BJP will not fare any better than Vellapally’s BDJS in Kerala.  I hope Pinarayi Vijayan will become the Chief Minister and the politics in the state will undergo a radical change.  I hope the party workers of Pinarayi will allow him to do his job.

Post Script

The Cannes Film Festival is showing a number of movies which underscore the revenge of the poor.  Andrea Arnold’s American Honey features people who earn their living by selling magazine subscriptions but augment that meagre income by robbing jewellery from the affluent.  Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake shows the plight of a disabled man who lets out his fury by spraying paint on a job centre with onlookers applauding him.  Joe who lost his farm because he followed the advice of some financial expert on the TV takes revenge by holding the expert hostage in his own studio in the movie, Money Monster.  The French farce, Ma Loute, goes to the extent of featuring characters who murder and eat the rich. 

When the richest one percent owns more than the bottom 90 (in the USA, for example), it is time for revolutionary changes.  Revolutions usually started with literature.  Now it can start at the Cannes too. 

Or in an election in India!
Indian Bloggers




Labels:

Comments

  1. Dr. Priyanka Shanbhag ShroffMay 20, 2016 at 11:19 PM

    Elections! A topic that makes people go crazy despite being 'educated'. And I really don't understand the logic of creating problems, after the results are out, as happened in Kannur yesterday!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 21, 2016 at 6:19 AM

      Kannur is a politically sensitive area because of the Parties involved: both CPM and BJP consider their parties as religions and hence sentiments get heated up quickly. And these party workers are really not "educated".

      Delete
  2. RamaMay 23, 2016 at 9:29 PM

    Good coverage

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
25 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
13 comments
Read more

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes.      Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the
12 comments
Read more