Pinarayi Vijayan prefers to meet his cabinet every Wednesday. The Kerala chief minister, whom many perceive to be unsentimental to the point of being abrasive, has reasons to be fond of the day. He was born on a Wednesday, as was the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front government he now heads. Known to be a hard taskmaster, Vijayan had called his first cabinet meeting less than an hour after he took oath on May 25 last year.
On May 17 this year, a week before his government was to complete a year in office, he chaired the customary Wednesday meeting of his 19-member cabinet at the government secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram. Two among those who had been at the first meeting were no longer part of the cabinet. E.P. Jayarajan, who was perceived to be the second-in-command in the government, was forced to resign last October as minister for industries and sports over charges of nepotism, while A.K. Saseendran had to step down as transport minister in March after he was caught in a honeytrap scandal. A third cabinet member, Electricity Minister M.M. Mani, had come perniciously close to meeting the fate of Jayarajan and Saseendran, because of his propensity to shoot from the hip on the government’s behalf on critical issues.
By all accounts, the meeting on May 17 was brief and businesslike, much like how Vijayan is known to speak. A dozen major decisions were taken, a list of which was soon published in the website and official Facebook page of the chief minister’s office. What is significant is that, if a single document could give an insight into how the Left government is trying to make good on its electoral promise that “it will put matters right”, it is this list of cabinet decisions.
First on the list is the decision to provide compensation of Rs2 lakh each to the families of “victims of demonetisation”—those who had died while standing in the serpentine queues at banks and ATMs to deposit notes or get new ones. Right from the beginning, Vijayan and his cabinet colleagues have been vocal about their opposition to demonetisation. Vijayan had even termed the move as a “thoughtless act” and a “man-made disaster” on several occasions, pointing out that the shortage of cash will adversely affect all economic activity. With the decision to provide compensations, the state government was effectively cocking a snook at the Centre, which insists that demonetisation achieved its objectives without inflicting pain to both the economy and the public.
The second item on the list identified four demonetisation victims, while the third concerned the cabinet nod to the draft Kerala Clinical Establishments Bill, a potentially game-changing legislation that experts say would significantly improve the state’s health care sector. In January, the government had flagged off ‘Ardram’, which means tenderness in Malayalam, one of its four flagship initiatives under the much-hyped New Kerala Mission. Ardram aims at improving facilities and the quality of treatment at government hospitals.
The other three initiatives are equally ambitious: ‘Haritha Keralam’ acts as an umbrella scheme that includes sanitation and waste management programmes, preservation projects and promotion of organic farming. ‘Life’ aims at providing housing for all, while the Comprehensive Educational Rejuvenation Programme plans to build on the state’s already strong public education system.
Items five to 12 in the list concerns either routine governmental measures (appointment of officials, creation of posts, and so on) or sanctions to big-ticket projects like the second phase of Kochi Metro Rail.
But none of those decisions created the buzz, or furore rather, that item number four on the list did. It concerned the appointment of former minister R. Balakrishna Pillai as chairman of the Kerala State Welfare Corporation for Forward Communities, with cabinet rank. Pillai had held the post during the term of the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front government, too. He had drifted away from the UDF in the run-up to the assembly elections, and his son, K.B. Ganesh Kumar, had won election with the support of the LDF.
The reason behind the furore was that Pillai was perceived by many as the embodiment of the culture of corruption and nepotism, which the Left government had promised to eradicate. In 2011, he had become the only minister, former or serving, to be convicted and jailed in a corruption case. Pillai’s conviction came after a 30-year legal battle against him, waged by none other than V.S. Achuthanandan, former chief minister who is now chairman of the Kerala Administrative Reforms Commission. With the government’s decision to elevate him to cabinet rank, Pillai is now on an equal footing with Achuthanandan, the CPI(M)’s tallest leader in the state.
A section in the CPI(M), however, believes Pillai’s appointment makes political sense. The support of his party, which is backed by the Nair community in central Kerala, was crucial in ensuring the LDF’s good performance in the elections. So it is only just that Pillai be given a cabinet-level post in return, they say.
Good politics? Maybe. Bad optics? Certainly. Because Pillai’s appointment drowned out the other, more significant decisions taken in the May 17 cabinet meeting.
That has been the story of the Pinarayi Vijayan government so far. There has been many a laudable initiative undertaken by the government—crop protection insurance for farmers, education loan repayment scheme for struggling students, distribution of title deeds to the landless, acquisition of land for paddy farming, infrastructure improvement projects, social security pension plans for the elderly, and so on. But, the fact is that such progressive measures have been eclipsed by the government’s proclivity to land itself in controversies.
The list of such controversies far outnumber the gains made by the government: the appointment of senior lawyer M.K. Damodaran, who has appeared as counsel arguing against the government in controversial cases; charges of a fake encounter in Nilambur forests in Malappuram district; sloppy handling of student protests at an engineering college in Palakkad and a law college in Thiruvananthapuram; the increasing number of violent political clashes in north Kerala; the cold war between a section of bureaucrats and police officers; the Supreme Court order to reinstate T.P. Senkumar, whom Vijayan had removed as state police chief soon after the government came to power; encroachment-related issues in Munnar…. The list is seemingly endless.
The latest political hot potato is the Vizhinjam seaport project. On May 23, the comptroller and auditor general tabled a report in the assembly saying the state stands to lose Rs61,095 crore, because of “unfavourable conditions” in the agreement signed between the previous government and the port developer Adani Ports and SEZ Private Ltd. As per the current agreement, Adani Ports is set to earn an additional Rs29,217 crore, while the state government, which has to bear more than 60 per cent of the project cost, had to pay excess equity support and suffer interest losses on loans.
As part of the opposition, CPI(M) leaders had opposed the agreement for the same reasons that CAG has now pointed out in its report. Hence, there are now demands that the Left government cancel the agreement and start afresh.
But it remains to be seen whether the government would indeed act tough and take that decision. After the Wednesday meeting on May 24, the list of decisions were given out as usual. It had no reference to the Vizhinjam issue. In fact, it is not clear whether the cabinet even discussed it. For all its proclaimed commitment to transparency in governance, the Left government is unlikely to reveal the cabinet discussions related to the Vizhinjam project. Vijayan himself holds that such discussions are out of the purview of the Right to Information Act and it is not necessary to make them public.
What the list does contain, however, are 12 decisions. Six of them concerns appointments, transfers and creation of posts; five are about implementing pay hikes in various government institutions; and one about paying Rs5 lakh as compensation to a person who was recently killed in an attack of stray dogs.
And that is how the Left government rolls.
