Issue :   
May 2017 Edition of Power Politics is updated.  Happy Diwali to all our subscribers and Distributors       May 2017 Edition of Power Politics is updated.   Happy Diwali to all our subscribers and Distributors       
Issue:May' 2017

KERALA UNDER LDF

APromises gone astray

Santosh Kumar

Pinarayi Vijayan Wednesday, April 5, 2017, was not just another day in Kerala or the nation's history.
That day Kerala was all set to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the coming to power of the first democratically elected communist government in the world. It was on 5 April 1957 that the EMS Namboodiripad government was sworn in. It is indeed an irony of history that Kerala is now ruled by a Left Democratic Front government headed by a hardcore Marxist chief minister, though Pinarayi Vijayan is no EMS Namboodiripad. Instead of celebrations what a stunned Kerala witnessed was the brutalisation of a mother who had come with her family to the DGP's office in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, seeking justice for the murder of her teenage son.
Mahija's son Jishnu Pranoy, a first year student of a self-financed engineering college in Thrissur, the cultural capital of Kerala, was found dead in his hostel room on January 6.

Jishnu Pranoy and his mother Mahija Police tried to write off the death as suicide "out of depression". But from day one Mahija was certain that her son would not have committed suicide and insisted that Jishnu was murdered. Slowly and surely, facts came to light to prove that the teenager was indeed done to death by the college authorities for raising his voice against the injustices practiced by them.
Even after 90 days, during which Mahija had approached everyone including the chief minister who also holds the home portfolio and had handpicked his DGP when he came to power, Pinarayi's police is playing truant, with a proper investigation yet to begin and the killers of Jishnu roaming around freely, many of them securing anticipatory bail. This is when the aggrieved mother decided to sit on an indefinite dharna with her family in front of the DGP's office till the culprits were brought to book. All of Kerala was following her tragic story and what they saw on TV channels was horrifying; a mother's trauma reinforced by the police of a Left Front government.
Despite growing public outrage and dissenting voices within the party and the Front, chief minister Vijayan is unfazed, defending his otherwise indefensible police to the core. True to its tradition, the party too has rallied behind Vijayan saying the police are right in doing what they did and as is its wont declaring that "everyone else is wrong".

VS Achuthanandan It shows how much the ruling party has lost touch with their socalled masses. Any government's first year is an opportunity for the ruling party to score grace marks. Instead this government has been stumbling from one controversy to another in just ten months in power. Two ministers had to quit, one for blatant nepotism and another for alleged "lewd talk" over the phone with a woman. The CPM and the other major partner in the Front, CPI, are at loggerheads on almost every issue including the Mahija one.
The controversy over forcible land acquisition in the hill resort of Munnar is set to explode. It has become very clear with whom the government of the day stands ~ encroachers, small or big. Veteran CPM leader VS Achuthanandan is gearing up for an open fight with the government in Kerala, reopening old wounds within the party.
The death of Jishnu Pranoy has prised open the links between the goons who run private institutions in the guise of educationists and various political parties, with the CPM no exception. It is with horror that an average Malayali who takes pride in Kerala's education system came to know of the existence of "torture chambers" inside those colleges. It was a revelation which launched a chain of student protests across the state which has petered out with the government taking no concrete action whatsoever.

It will be like that till another Jishnu happens for everyone knows that it is the education mafia that fills the coffers of major political players. Narayanan Nair and his communist family continue to run the Law Academy in Thiruvananthapuram after over two months of turmoil. No one is going to touch him or his prime property in the capital.
A Vigilance Commissioner brought in with much fanfare to eradicate corruption is out, so corruption stays put. A government which came to power promising to safeguard women and children is practically forced to hang its head in shame.

The death of Jishnu Pranoy has prised open the links between the goons who run private institutions in the guise of educationists and various political parties, with the CPM no exception. It is with horror that an average Malayali who takes pride in Kerala's education system came to know of the existence of "torture chambers" inside those colleges.

Not a day passes in the state without incidents of wanton violence against them. While the government blames the police squarely for inaction, Pinarayi's DGP continues as if nothing has happened and everything is hunky dory.

It is a pity that even after 60 years it has not dawned upon the communists that they indeed did not win the election in 1957, but it is the Congress which lost it. It would be wise for them to study why the Congress lost then and again in 2016. That is the best the party can do for the present if they have to run the government with Pinarayi Vijayan in charge.
Kerala, which voted enthusiastically for the Left Front government hoping for better days, wants CM Vijayan to change his autocratic ways, say sorry to Mahija and set things right at the earliest. But hardly do they know that Vijayan is no chief minister, he is still the secretary of a bureaucratic communist party.