Pinarayi Vijayan’s thankless job!

K Raveendran

Without mincing …….. by K Raveendran

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan loses no opportunity to blame all the troubles of the state on the Centre. For everything that is not to his or his party’s liking, from the fiscal constraints on borrowing to the distribution of the humble Bharat rice, the blame is invariably put at the door of the Modi government. To add further effect to the claim, he often brings up a comparison on how the Centre is biased in favour of the states ruled by the BJP and that how Kerala is suffering due to the Centre’s indisposition towards it because it is ruled by the CPI-M.

But by overdoing this, little does he realise that, wittingly or unwittingly, he may be planting a thought in the minds of his listeners that it may well be a good idea to have the same party to rule both the Centre and the states. Unfortunately, his party can’t even dream of ruling the Centre. The closest that the CPI-M came to leading a government at the Centre was when Jyoti Basu’s name was proposed as prime minister, but the party’s monumental blunder in rejecting it consigned that vision into oblivion. The only possibility in the given situation then is to bring the saffron party to power here if the equation has to come true. Pinarayi Vijayan and company dare not think so, but their orchestrated campaign against the Centre might prompt people to wonder whether they should start thinking on those lines.

The biggest comedy of errors, however, is that the BJP itself is not realising the potential of Vijayan’s criticism, which any sensible leadership would have turned into their biggest ammunition in its quest for a footing here. But then, one does not expect anything more from a naïve leadership of the state BJP, which is doing everything in the book and outside to prevent the party from growing an inch in the so-called secular soil of Kerala, a highly illusory conjecture. Apparently, the core competency of the state party leadership is petty business and not lofty politics, least of all electoral politics. It is a pity that K Surendran, who appeared to be a firebrand during the Sabarimala strife as well as at the peak of the solar scam, turned out to be the biggest flop as he was elevated to lead the state party. Every election fought under his presidency has seen the BJP lose seats and votes. From the fiasco of his losing from both Kasargod and Konni in the assembly election, which witnessed the farce of his helicopter hopping to file nomination papers at both places on the same day, Surendran hasn’t got anything right throughout his tenure as state party chief.

In fact, state BJP is a confederation of BJP units formed around individual party leaders. There are camps, outposts and even single-man denominations in the party’s informal hierarchy, with the net result that its dream of having an MP or two in parliament remains as distant as it ever was., not to speak of the chance to have its voice heard in the state assembly, where the venerable O Rajagopal had once created history, although for most part he was a misfit there.