# Ajayan |
One step back, one step forward, and then a full circle back to square one. This is the grand choreography of the CPM-led LDF’s approach to "big projects". The latest in them is the seaplane, a venture they passionately shot down during the Oommen Chandy Government's tenure, branded as impractical, anti-fishermen and unnecessary. Fast forward - the very same project resurfaces under the LDF banner, and is now hailed as groundbreaking. This is not a first, it's a recurring act in their playbook, all while claiming visionary leadership.
Back in the early '90s, when computerization was making its cautious entry across India, the Left was up in arms, declaring it a harbinger of doom that would rob workers of their livelihoods. Fast-forward a few decades again, and the very same Left now boasts about putting the State on the pinnacle of the IT map. Transformation comes easy for them - from anti-computer crusaders to self-proclaimed tech trailblazers.
There was a time, not long ago, when the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank were the Left's ultimate villains - symbols of capitalist exploitation. Keralites cannot forget the agitations, the black oil and the high-decibel rhetoric against these “imperialist agents”. But then history twirls and swirls and now the same Left proudly flaunts its ability to secure funding from these very institutions.
A classic case of "then versus now" is the Cochin International Airport. In the late 1990s, it was a battleground, with a senior CPM leader dramatically proclaiming that a flight could only take off over his body. Fast forward to today, and the same airport, along with the one in Kannur (once another Left protest hotspot), has miraculously ascended to a position of pride in the Left's narrative of "success and development". Ask them about their past theatrics, there is then the regular shrug or a sly deflection. Hypocrisy, after all, has always had a smooth runway for takeoff.
The self-financing college protests were yet another in the theatrical masterpieces in the annals of Left duplicity. In the heat of the fiery violent protests against "privatization of education", there was a ‘minor’ twist. A topmost leader quietly whisked his daughter off to a private institute in a neighbouring State, which now in Left parlance can only be a “minor lack of caution”. Forget who benefitted and how many lost because now Kerala is a destination where global universities and private institutions are rushing to set up shop!
The Kochi Metro, now a shining feather in Kerala’s developmental cap, had its rocky beginnings. Let none ask the Minister as to who led the agitation. The Centre’s national highway project and the GAIL pipeline got delayed, not by technical hurdles and all know how. Today, these very projects sit smugly atop the LDF’s list of accomplishments.
The list goes unending. But then the spicy, crunchy, yummy parippuvada and the steaming kattanchaya, nothing to do with the autobiography, where the party believes the author who claims it was not written by him, were quintessential symbols of Leftist grit of a past. The Silver Line appams have gone stale. As for the fish, once allegedly terrorized by Ommen Chandy’s seaplane dreams, have now been conveniently relocated to the mythical “safe lands” of the LDF’s imagination.
Fast forward once more to the bell rung at the London Stock Exchange - it tolls not for celebration, but as a dirge for lost ideals. A casual labourer, observing the party’s acrobatics of justifying today what they opposed yesterday, quipped bitingly witty: “What do they think? That we’re blind to the bluff they pass off as truth? We’re not party bigwigs to spin tales - we live the reality they rewrite.”