Showing posts with label Vijayan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vijayan. Show all posts
Thursday 26 August 2021
Monday 24 May 2021
Modi II: Kerala’s Communist CM borrows from PM Modi’s playbook in his second innings
D K Singh in The Print
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at a press conference after the Left Democratic Front won the assembly election, at Kannoor in Dharmadom Sunday | Photo: ANI
Of all the wannabe Modis in Indian politics, this one must make the Prime Minister’s 56-inch chest swell with pride and satisfaction — a dyed-in-the-wool comrade from Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Though often dubbed as “dhoti-clad Modi” for what his critics believed was his autocratic style of functioning and intolerance to dissent, Vijayan has started copying Narendra Modi’s governance model in earnest only in his second innings as CM.
His first act after winning another term in Kerala last week — picking up his ministers and allocation of portfolios — had Modi’s imprint all over. The CM has entrusted himself with the charge of “all important policy matters”, apart from 27 departments.
This means that no minister in the Kerala government would be able to take any policy decision without the approval of the CM. All ministers in Kerala will effectively be puppets, with Vijayan pulling the strings. It’s straight out of PM Modi’s playbook.
The ‘Modi model’
After assuming office in 2014, Modi had done the same thing, taking charge of “all important policy issues”, apart from other portfolios. It dawned on his ministers soon that they were mere puppets with a symbolic role in policymaking, if at all.
In another move, the Vijayan-controlled Communist Party of India (Marxist) secretariat has decided that private secretaries of the ministers would be nominated by the party. It was similar to what had happened after the Modi government took over in 2014. It issued guidelines that any officer, official or private person, who had worked as personal staff (PS) of a minister in the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government wouldn’t be appointed for the same role in the NDA government. The reason cited was: “Due to administrative requirements.”
It was so strict that even Rajnath Singh, then home minister, couldn’t have a PS of his own choice — an IPS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre who had served as PS to a UPA minister — despite personally taking it up with the PMO. As it is, while bureaucrats who have to serve as PS of Modi’s ministers are closely vetted, most others, including officers on special duty (OSDs), are drawn from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or affiliated organisations, especially its students’ wing — the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
Pinarayi Vijayan has now got the CPI(M) to adopt this model in his government. The idea is simple: to watch over the ministers through their personal staff. In fact, a couple of years after this model had come into place in New Delhi, Vijayan seemed to have gotten drawn to the idea of having control over the personal staff of ministers. In December 2016, he had convened a meeting of these staff, which caused much heartburn among ministers.
Five years later, the CM has got the party to take away the ministers’ discretion in choosing their private secretaries.
Emulating Modi
It may be too early to say how far the Vijayan government would go in emulating the Modi model of governance in his second innings. Many in political circles are already drawing a parallel between the two, given how the Kerala CM dealt with his rivals and potential challengers in the party.
After taking over as Kerala CM in 2016, Vijayan had virtually shunted his arch-rival and former CM V.S. Achuthanandan into a sort of margdarshak mandal, making him chairman of the administrative reforms commission and keeping him out of poll campaigns. With pre-poll surveys predicting a historic second consecutive term for the Left, Vijayan went about getting rid of potential challengers, denying party tickets to those who had had two consecutive terms as legislators; it resulted in five ministers’ removal from the poll race. After the elections, he got rid of the rest of his potential challengers, dropping all ministers from the previous government in the name of inducting ‘fresh blood’.
Many comrades in Kerala may not be surprised by the turn of events in the first week of Vijayan’s second innings. The most powerful Communist leader in India today, Vijayan was dubbed as “dhoti-clad Modi” by his detractors to denote his authoritarian style of functioning and the use of the government and the party apparatus to promote his personality cult.
He was also accused of turning Kerala into a sort of police state. There were allegations of fake encounter killings of Maoists, custodial deaths and torture, and apathy to political violence and murders. Months ahead of the 2021 assembly election, he brought a controversial amendment to the Kerala Police Act, which was seen as an attempt to curb free speech in the garb of preventing social media abuse. The government later withdrew the amendment following much criticism.
In an interview to ThePrint in the run-up to the assembly polls, this is how Vijayan responded to his description as Kerala’s Modi: “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years. I don’t now have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.”
Seven weeks after that interview, Vijayan seems to have found merits in that description as he starts his second term, emulating Modi.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at a press conference after the Left Democratic Front won the assembly election, at Kannoor in Dharmadom Sunday | Photo: ANIOf all the wannabe Modis in Indian politics, this one must make the Prime Minister’s 56-inch chest swell with pride and satisfaction — a dyed-in-the-wool comrade from Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Though often dubbed as “dhoti-clad Modi” for what his critics believed was his autocratic style of functioning and intolerance to dissent, Vijayan has started copying Narendra Modi’s governance model in earnest only in his second innings as CM.
His first act after winning another term in Kerala last week — picking up his ministers and allocation of portfolios — had Modi’s imprint all over. The CM has entrusted himself with the charge of “all important policy matters”, apart from 27 departments.
This means that no minister in the Kerala government would be able to take any policy decision without the approval of the CM. All ministers in Kerala will effectively be puppets, with Vijayan pulling the strings. It’s straight out of PM Modi’s playbook.
The ‘Modi model’
After assuming office in 2014, Modi had done the same thing, taking charge of “all important policy issues”, apart from other portfolios. It dawned on his ministers soon that they were mere puppets with a symbolic role in policymaking, if at all.
In another move, the Vijayan-controlled Communist Party of India (Marxist) secretariat has decided that private secretaries of the ministers would be nominated by the party. It was similar to what had happened after the Modi government took over in 2014. It issued guidelines that any officer, official or private person, who had worked as personal staff (PS) of a minister in the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government wouldn’t be appointed for the same role in the NDA government. The reason cited was: “Due to administrative requirements.”
It was so strict that even Rajnath Singh, then home minister, couldn’t have a PS of his own choice — an IPS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre who had served as PS to a UPA minister — despite personally taking it up with the PMO. As it is, while bureaucrats who have to serve as PS of Modi’s ministers are closely vetted, most others, including officers on special duty (OSDs), are drawn from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or affiliated organisations, especially its students’ wing — the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
Pinarayi Vijayan has now got the CPI(M) to adopt this model in his government. The idea is simple: to watch over the ministers through their personal staff. In fact, a couple of years after this model had come into place in New Delhi, Vijayan seemed to have gotten drawn to the idea of having control over the personal staff of ministers. In December 2016, he had convened a meeting of these staff, which caused much heartburn among ministers.
Five years later, the CM has got the party to take away the ministers’ discretion in choosing their private secretaries.
Emulating Modi
It may be too early to say how far the Vijayan government would go in emulating the Modi model of governance in his second innings. Many in political circles are already drawing a parallel between the two, given how the Kerala CM dealt with his rivals and potential challengers in the party.
After taking over as Kerala CM in 2016, Vijayan had virtually shunted his arch-rival and former CM V.S. Achuthanandan into a sort of margdarshak mandal, making him chairman of the administrative reforms commission and keeping him out of poll campaigns. With pre-poll surveys predicting a historic second consecutive term for the Left, Vijayan went about getting rid of potential challengers, denying party tickets to those who had had two consecutive terms as legislators; it resulted in five ministers’ removal from the poll race. After the elections, he got rid of the rest of his potential challengers, dropping all ministers from the previous government in the name of inducting ‘fresh blood’.
Many comrades in Kerala may not be surprised by the turn of events in the first week of Vijayan’s second innings. The most powerful Communist leader in India today, Vijayan was dubbed as “dhoti-clad Modi” by his detractors to denote his authoritarian style of functioning and the use of the government and the party apparatus to promote his personality cult.
He was also accused of turning Kerala into a sort of police state. There were allegations of fake encounter killings of Maoists, custodial deaths and torture, and apathy to political violence and murders. Months ahead of the 2021 assembly election, he brought a controversial amendment to the Kerala Police Act, which was seen as an attempt to curb free speech in the garb of preventing social media abuse. The government later withdrew the amendment following much criticism.
In an interview to ThePrint in the run-up to the assembly polls, this is how Vijayan responded to his description as Kerala’s Modi: “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years. I don’t now have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.”
Seven weeks after that interview, Vijayan seems to have found merits in that description as he starts his second term, emulating Modi.
Monday 3 May 2021
Pinarayi Vijayan is Kerala’s ‘Modi in a mundu’
Jyoti Malhotra in The Print
In his home village of Pinarayi in north Kerala’s Kannur district, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan arrived one early April morning to inaugurate a Yoga-cum-Kalaripayattu camp at the local convention centre. He sat right through the exploits of enthusiastic children lining up to show off their skills and awarded long-haired Yoga and Kalari teachers spouting the values of the ancient, Hindu spiritual and martial arts disciplines, raising his hand occasionally to bless them all.
---
If there wasn’t a huge red hoarding outside the centre, saying ‘Captain’ picturing Vijayan in his spotless white ‘mundu-veshti’ and red CPI(M) flags and bunting leading towards it, you would be forgiven for thinking that a transformation of the state’s iron-fisted Communist leader was in the offing.
But this is Kerala, dotted with hundreds of temples and churches and mosques and for the first time since 1977, won by a Communist party for the second time running. In the intervening years, the state has always alternated between the Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front.
This time around, the 75-year-old Pinarayi Vijayan has created history not just by keeping the state, with 99 seats — eight more seats than won by his bete noire in the party, former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan in 2011 — but by restricting the UDF to 41 seats.
For Kerala, the question of “who is Pinarayi Vijayan” is irrelevant. The state knows him as a strong CPI(M) leader who joined the party the year it split in 1964, became the state president of the Kerala Students Federation, was arrested and tortured during the Emergency, had a public spat with fellow Politburo member V.S. Achuthanandan in 2007 over the latter’s demolition drive against illegal resorts in the Munnar hills — for which both were suspended — and remains unapologetic about the fact that he won’t let much come in the way of building the party organisation.
With this victory, he has proved his worth not just to the party, but also to the national opposition. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s roots in the party are seen to be linked to Bengal, because of his acknowledged proximity to former chief minister Jyoti Basu, although he is also seen as a VS (Achuthanandan) protégé — it was VS who had helped deliver Yechury to the top job at the party congress in 2015.
But the Left has been totally wiped out in Bengal, down to zero from 76 seats in the last election, and it lost Tripura back in 2018. Today, in only one corner of India, it is because of Pinarayi Vijayan that the hammer-and-sickle is still flying.
‘Mundu udutha Modi’
Vijayan’s political strength is magnified by the fact that he has prevented the BJP from winning even one seat — in the outgoing Assembly, the BJP had the Nemom constituency on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in its kitty.
And yet, for someone as seemingly hardline as Vijayan, he has for years been dogged by a pro-corporate image. In 1997, when he was electricity minister, Vijayan converted an MoU with the Canadian firm SNC Lavalin into a fixed price deal for supply of equipment and services to renovate projects for Rs 239.81 crore.
The 2007 spat with VS took place because Vijayan wanted the resorts to stay.
In February 2020, his government signed an MoU with a US-based company, EMCC Global Consortium LCC, for an upgrade and promotion of deep sea fishing in Kerala, provoking Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala to say the LDF government was “cheating the fishers”. Also last year, he allowed the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Board Fund to issue masala bonds at the London Stock Exchange so funds could be raised from the market to fund welfare activities in the state.
Interestingly, Vijayan is widely known across the state as “mundu udutha Modi” or “Modi in a mundu (similar to dhoti or lungi)”, because of the manner in which he has, systematically, finished off his rivals.
There was VS, of course, who wanted to be chief minister in 2016, but even Yechury realised that it was better to give the state to Vijayan than to the warm and fuzzy “Fidel Castro of Kerala”. There is the former industries minister E.P. Jayarajan, a former Vijayan confidant from Kannur who has retired from politics because he was denied a ticket in this election. Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, fellow Politburo member and rival, stepped down because of cases against his son Bineesh. And outgoing finance minister Thomas Isaac, who reinvented KIIFB, was not allowed to contest because of the two-term rule.
In an interview that early April morning, after he was done with the Yoga and Kalari event in Pinarayi village, I asked the chief minister why he was called the Narendra Modi of Kerala. He laughed softly, and said: “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years. I don’t have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.”
Certainly, unlike Modi, Pinarayi Vijayan doesn’t pretend to have a vaulting national ambition. Moreover, unlike the former leaders of the former Soviet Union, he understands that it is important to first protect the home turf, and then think of expanding Communism abroad.
‘Communism with Malayali characteristics’
In the interview, he believed it was important for the Opposition to come together to take on the BJP and Modi, and insisted there was no contradiction in the Left fighting against Congress in Kerala and alongside the Congress in West Bengal.
“There is a unique situation in West Bengal. We took a stand keeping in mind this unique situation. This does not mean the Congress has been absolved of its sins,“ he said.
Certainly, multi-religious Kerala’s uniqueness stems from the fact that it was the first democratic state in the world to elect a Communist government in 1957. Cut to 2021, when Pinarayi Vijayan makes history by beating anti-incumbency and bringing a Communist government to power for the second time in a row.
Asked why Kerala continued to choose Communist governments when the Soviet Union broke itself up in 1991, Vijayan told ThePrint that the CPM was able to “correctly analyse and speak out within the party” about what was happening in the Soviet Union…we were able to carefully preserve the CPM. We were able to take the stand that Marxism-Leninism was right. Fact is, in Kerala, the CPM & Communist parties were strong before and continue to be strong.”
In Vijayan’s mind, Marxism-Leninism is about both Marx and market, just another way into the hearts of people. That’s why Yoga camps as well as the London Stock Exchange are par for the course.
As Pinarayi Vijayan takes the reins of Kerala again, this is a description he would be comfortable with.
Here's Why Pinarayi Vijayan Can't Be Called a 'Modi in a Mundu'
P Raman in The Wire
The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front is set to retain power in Kerala, with the trends projecting it as leading or having won at least 94 of the 140 assembly seats.
The LDF victory will curb a four decade-old trend of the state electing communist and Congress-headed governments alternatively.
Two years ago, soon after the Left Front suffered a stunning defeat in the 2019 parliamentary elections, prominent Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi carried a series of edit page articles.
The commentators were in a celebratory mood. One of them gleefully concluded that religion and spiritualism – Sabarimala – had finally triumphed over materialism and Marxism. The commentators concluded that Marxism is archaic, and communists neither change nor learn from past mistakes. Thus, they said, the Left rout in its last sanctuary – they got just one out of 20 Lok Sabha seats – heralded the extinction of communism in Indian peninsula.
I was born and brought up in a communist village in old Malabar. I am familiar with the lifestyles and practices of early communists. To say they have not changed is sheer moonshine. Most early communist workers were scions of landlord families. They left their comforts and moved from village to village, spreading Marxian ideals. They lived on cheap tea without milk and dal vada, like a romanticised proletariat.
Abnegation and monkish life were part of the communist culture. Perhaps it was derived from the Gandhian ethos. Members took the party’s permission even on personal matters like marriage. In early 1960s, I remember Indrajit Gupta, then a young trade unionist, arriving at Calcutta’s 33, Alimuddin Street in a Fiat car with a red flag on it. It was a cultural shock – a trade union worker travelling in a car. It was explained that Gupta found it difficult to reach half dozen trade union functions by travelling in trams. So some richer trade unionists pooled funds and bought an old, creaking Fiat.
Six decades later, I found half a dozen private cars parked at a CPI(M) area committee office in remote Kerala. Even middle level CPI(M) leaders move in their own cars. They have none of the qualms that their 20th century comrades felt.
How can you say the communists never change? Before 1952, the parliamentary route was ‘revisionism’ for communists. The ‘national bourgeoisie’ debate continued for another two decades. For decades, editorial writers attributed the communist success to foreign money. Today’s communists are shorn of all such baggage.
So how has the Left managed to romp back with such a huge majority?
The most simplistic explanation is that the communists have also become another regional party under a charismatic autocrat. Thus, Pinarayi is called a ‘mundututta Modi’ or ‘Modi in a mundu’.
This strongman cult, like Modi’s, has clicked with the people.
Pinarayi Vijayan, who was the general secretary of the Kerala CPI(M) for 17 years, is the party’s senior most leader – barring, of course, the 97-year-old retired veteran V.S. Achuthanandan. Vijayan has a domineering say in the party organisation and the government he heads. But is this enough to call him a ‘Modi in a mundu?’
Is it true that Kerala communists, in their desperate bid to remain, have relevant opted for an authoritarian model?
The first parameter to gauge the degree of authoritarianism in a political party is the level of its internal democracy. In India, CPI(M) and CPI are the only political parties that hold regular elections as per their constitution. For over a decade, all members of the Kerala state committee (as also other elective posts) were chosen by secret ballots at the state party conference. The results with details such as the number of votes each contestant got were released soon after the counting. All this under sharp media glare and endless interpretations.
As per the BJP constitution, its national executive must meet once in every quarter and national council every year. Under the pre-Modi BJP, the two bodies did meet at regular intervals. How many times did the NE and NC met during the seven years under Modi? Elected autocrats – a term used by the Sweden-based V-Dem to describe the Modi regime – never tolerate a lively, functional party organisation.
The other parameter to measure authoritarianism is free internal debates.
For an authoritarian populist, the party must function as his or her appendage. What about the ‘Modi in a mundu?’ In the past two years, AKG Bhawan (the Kerala CPI(M) headquarters) made at least half a dozen interventions. It formally asked the government to reverse many of its decisions. Sections of the media interpreted such interventions as grassroots rumblings. Will any BJP committee – NE, NC or parliamentary party – dare to make such critical remarks about Modi or his actions?
Sample these:
The CPI(M) secretariat on February 20, 2021, attended by Pinarayi Vijayan, directed the latter to initiate minister-level discussions with agitating job-seekers. It said the opposition should not be allowed to take political advantage of the agitation. And Vijayan promptly did.
The CPI(M) state secretariat, after its meeting, observed that the continuing controversy over the gold smuggling has affected the party’s image and that it is a major setback to the party. It asked the chief minister to take corrective measures.
The CPI(M) secretariat on May 25, 2019, asserted that the government’s Sabarimala policy had badly affected the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections. It asked the government for a relook. Vijayan obliged.
Following pressure from within the CPI(M), Vijayan (on November 4, 2019) said that the government did not support the police’s move to invoke the UAPA against workers for Maoist links.
A closer look will reveal that AKG Bhawan acted as an alert watchdog and monitor rather than the CMO’s appendage. Will hard-headed ‘elected autocrats’ like Narendra Modi tolerate such interventions?
Pinarayi came closest to the personality cult trap when his image makers began projecting him as ‘Captain Pinarayi’ – for his leadership in tackling the floods and the Nipah outbreak. This came in for sharp criticism within the party and soon the CPI(M) leadership cried a halt to it – first, senior leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and then Prakash Karat.
“Pinarayi is our ‘comrade’, not ‘captain’,” Balakrishnan said. Soon Vijayan himself washed his hands off the ‘captain’ epithet, in what was yet another example of the the CPI(M)’s embedded corrective mechanism working.
In his home village of Pinarayi in north Kerala’s Kannur district, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan arrived one early April morning to inaugurate a Yoga-cum-Kalaripayattu camp at the local convention centre. He sat right through the exploits of enthusiastic children lining up to show off their skills and awarded long-haired Yoga and Kalari teachers spouting the values of the ancient, Hindu spiritual and martial arts disciplines, raising his hand occasionally to bless them all.
--- Also watch
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If there wasn’t a huge red hoarding outside the centre, saying ‘Captain’ picturing Vijayan in his spotless white ‘mundu-veshti’ and red CPI(M) flags and bunting leading towards it, you would be forgiven for thinking that a transformation of the state’s iron-fisted Communist leader was in the offing.
But this is Kerala, dotted with hundreds of temples and churches and mosques and for the first time since 1977, won by a Communist party for the second time running. In the intervening years, the state has always alternated between the Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front.
This time around, the 75-year-old Pinarayi Vijayan has created history not just by keeping the state, with 99 seats — eight more seats than won by his bete noire in the party, former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan in 2011 — but by restricting the UDF to 41 seats.
For Kerala, the question of “who is Pinarayi Vijayan” is irrelevant. The state knows him as a strong CPI(M) leader who joined the party the year it split in 1964, became the state president of the Kerala Students Federation, was arrested and tortured during the Emergency, had a public spat with fellow Politburo member V.S. Achuthanandan in 2007 over the latter’s demolition drive against illegal resorts in the Munnar hills — for which both were suspended — and remains unapologetic about the fact that he won’t let much come in the way of building the party organisation.
With this victory, he has proved his worth not just to the party, but also to the national opposition. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s roots in the party are seen to be linked to Bengal, because of his acknowledged proximity to former chief minister Jyoti Basu, although he is also seen as a VS (Achuthanandan) protégé — it was VS who had helped deliver Yechury to the top job at the party congress in 2015.
But the Left has been totally wiped out in Bengal, down to zero from 76 seats in the last election, and it lost Tripura back in 2018. Today, in only one corner of India, it is because of Pinarayi Vijayan that the hammer-and-sickle is still flying.
‘Mundu udutha Modi’
Vijayan’s political strength is magnified by the fact that he has prevented the BJP from winning even one seat — in the outgoing Assembly, the BJP had the Nemom constituency on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in its kitty.
And yet, for someone as seemingly hardline as Vijayan, he has for years been dogged by a pro-corporate image. In 1997, when he was electricity minister, Vijayan converted an MoU with the Canadian firm SNC Lavalin into a fixed price deal for supply of equipment and services to renovate projects for Rs 239.81 crore.
The 2007 spat with VS took place because Vijayan wanted the resorts to stay.
In February 2020, his government signed an MoU with a US-based company, EMCC Global Consortium LCC, for an upgrade and promotion of deep sea fishing in Kerala, provoking Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala to say the LDF government was “cheating the fishers”. Also last year, he allowed the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Board Fund to issue masala bonds at the London Stock Exchange so funds could be raised from the market to fund welfare activities in the state.
Interestingly, Vijayan is widely known across the state as “mundu udutha Modi” or “Modi in a mundu (similar to dhoti or lungi)”, because of the manner in which he has, systematically, finished off his rivals.
There was VS, of course, who wanted to be chief minister in 2016, but even Yechury realised that it was better to give the state to Vijayan than to the warm and fuzzy “Fidel Castro of Kerala”. There is the former industries minister E.P. Jayarajan, a former Vijayan confidant from Kannur who has retired from politics because he was denied a ticket in this election. Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, fellow Politburo member and rival, stepped down because of cases against his son Bineesh. And outgoing finance minister Thomas Isaac, who reinvented KIIFB, was not allowed to contest because of the two-term rule.
In an interview that early April morning, after he was done with the Yoga and Kalari event in Pinarayi village, I asked the chief minister why he was called the Narendra Modi of Kerala. He laughed softly, and said: “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years. I don’t have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.”
Certainly, unlike Modi, Pinarayi Vijayan doesn’t pretend to have a vaulting national ambition. Moreover, unlike the former leaders of the former Soviet Union, he understands that it is important to first protect the home turf, and then think of expanding Communism abroad.
‘Communism with Malayali characteristics’
In the interview, he believed it was important for the Opposition to come together to take on the BJP and Modi, and insisted there was no contradiction in the Left fighting against Congress in Kerala and alongside the Congress in West Bengal.
“There is a unique situation in West Bengal. We took a stand keeping in mind this unique situation. This does not mean the Congress has been absolved of its sins,“ he said.
Certainly, multi-religious Kerala’s uniqueness stems from the fact that it was the first democratic state in the world to elect a Communist government in 1957. Cut to 2021, when Pinarayi Vijayan makes history by beating anti-incumbency and bringing a Communist government to power for the second time in a row.
Asked why Kerala continued to choose Communist governments when the Soviet Union broke itself up in 1991, Vijayan told ThePrint that the CPM was able to “correctly analyse and speak out within the party” about what was happening in the Soviet Union…we were able to carefully preserve the CPM. We were able to take the stand that Marxism-Leninism was right. Fact is, in Kerala, the CPM & Communist parties were strong before and continue to be strong.”
In Vijayan’s mind, Marxism-Leninism is about both Marx and market, just another way into the hearts of people. That’s why Yoga camps as well as the London Stock Exchange are par for the course.
As Pinarayi Vijayan takes the reins of Kerala again, this is a description he would be comfortable with.
-----Here's another view
Here's Why Pinarayi Vijayan Can't Be Called a 'Modi in a Mundu'
P Raman in The Wire
The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front is set to retain power in Kerala, with the trends projecting it as leading or having won at least 94 of the 140 assembly seats.
The LDF victory will curb a four decade-old trend of the state electing communist and Congress-headed governments alternatively.
Two years ago, soon after the Left Front suffered a stunning defeat in the 2019 parliamentary elections, prominent Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi carried a series of edit page articles.
The commentators were in a celebratory mood. One of them gleefully concluded that religion and spiritualism – Sabarimala – had finally triumphed over materialism and Marxism. The commentators concluded that Marxism is archaic, and communists neither change nor learn from past mistakes. Thus, they said, the Left rout in its last sanctuary – they got just one out of 20 Lok Sabha seats – heralded the extinction of communism in Indian peninsula.
I was born and brought up in a communist village in old Malabar. I am familiar with the lifestyles and practices of early communists. To say they have not changed is sheer moonshine. Most early communist workers were scions of landlord families. They left their comforts and moved from village to village, spreading Marxian ideals. They lived on cheap tea without milk and dal vada, like a romanticised proletariat.
Abnegation and monkish life were part of the communist culture. Perhaps it was derived from the Gandhian ethos. Members took the party’s permission even on personal matters like marriage. In early 1960s, I remember Indrajit Gupta, then a young trade unionist, arriving at Calcutta’s 33, Alimuddin Street in a Fiat car with a red flag on it. It was a cultural shock – a trade union worker travelling in a car. It was explained that Gupta found it difficult to reach half dozen trade union functions by travelling in trams. So some richer trade unionists pooled funds and bought an old, creaking Fiat.
Six decades later, I found half a dozen private cars parked at a CPI(M) area committee office in remote Kerala. Even middle level CPI(M) leaders move in their own cars. They have none of the qualms that their 20th century comrades felt.
How can you say the communists never change? Before 1952, the parliamentary route was ‘revisionism’ for communists. The ‘national bourgeoisie’ debate continued for another two decades. For decades, editorial writers attributed the communist success to foreign money. Today’s communists are shorn of all such baggage.
So how has the Left managed to romp back with such a huge majority?
The most simplistic explanation is that the communists have also become another regional party under a charismatic autocrat. Thus, Pinarayi is called a ‘mundututta Modi’ or ‘Modi in a mundu’.
This strongman cult, like Modi’s, has clicked with the people.
Pinarayi Vijayan, who was the general secretary of the Kerala CPI(M) for 17 years, is the party’s senior most leader – barring, of course, the 97-year-old retired veteran V.S. Achuthanandan. Vijayan has a domineering say in the party organisation and the government he heads. But is this enough to call him a ‘Modi in a mundu?’
Is it true that Kerala communists, in their desperate bid to remain, have relevant opted for an authoritarian model?
The first parameter to gauge the degree of authoritarianism in a political party is the level of its internal democracy. In India, CPI(M) and CPI are the only political parties that hold regular elections as per their constitution. For over a decade, all members of the Kerala state committee (as also other elective posts) were chosen by secret ballots at the state party conference. The results with details such as the number of votes each contestant got were released soon after the counting. All this under sharp media glare and endless interpretations.
As per the BJP constitution, its national executive must meet once in every quarter and national council every year. Under the pre-Modi BJP, the two bodies did meet at regular intervals. How many times did the NE and NC met during the seven years under Modi? Elected autocrats – a term used by the Sweden-based V-Dem to describe the Modi regime – never tolerate a lively, functional party organisation.
The other parameter to measure authoritarianism is free internal debates.
For an authoritarian populist, the party must function as his or her appendage. What about the ‘Modi in a mundu?’ In the past two years, AKG Bhawan (the Kerala CPI(M) headquarters) made at least half a dozen interventions. It formally asked the government to reverse many of its decisions. Sections of the media interpreted such interventions as grassroots rumblings. Will any BJP committee – NE, NC or parliamentary party – dare to make such critical remarks about Modi or his actions?
Sample these:
The CPI(M) secretariat on February 20, 2021, attended by Pinarayi Vijayan, directed the latter to initiate minister-level discussions with agitating job-seekers. It said the opposition should not be allowed to take political advantage of the agitation. And Vijayan promptly did.
The CPI(M) state secretariat, after its meeting, observed that the continuing controversy over the gold smuggling has affected the party’s image and that it is a major setback to the party. It asked the chief minister to take corrective measures.
The CPI(M) secretariat on May 25, 2019, asserted that the government’s Sabarimala policy had badly affected the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections. It asked the government for a relook. Vijayan obliged.
Following pressure from within the CPI(M), Vijayan (on November 4, 2019) said that the government did not support the police’s move to invoke the UAPA against workers for Maoist links.
A closer look will reveal that AKG Bhawan acted as an alert watchdog and monitor rather than the CMO’s appendage. Will hard-headed ‘elected autocrats’ like Narendra Modi tolerate such interventions?
Pinarayi came closest to the personality cult trap when his image makers began projecting him as ‘Captain Pinarayi’ – for his leadership in tackling the floods and the Nipah outbreak. This came in for sharp criticism within the party and soon the CPI(M) leadership cried a halt to it – first, senior leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and then Prakash Karat.
“Pinarayi is our ‘comrade’, not ‘captain’,” Balakrishnan said. Soon Vijayan himself washed his hands off the ‘captain’ epithet, in what was yet another example of the the CPI(M)’s embedded corrective mechanism working.
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