# Ajayan | “When the finger points to the moon, the idiot stares at the finger.” If this ancient Chinese adage captures the ruling front’s response of the general public in Kerala, most clearly in the recent local body elections, it is not misfortune but self-inflicted farce. What it exposes is a slow, stubborn decay, most evident in the major party that claims leadership.
From the Sabarimala gold heist, where party leaders remain in jail but accountability is endlessly deferred, to the silence over tainted senior police officers; from extravagant spending on the Chief Minister’s security and hollow showpiece schemes to loud complaints of a fund-starving Centre, the contradictions were glaring. The public read the signs clearly; the party either looked away or failed to read the room. The “secret” PM Shri deal, trampling democratic norms, and now the Governor-CM agreement over two VC appointments, have only deepened the backlash. Disaster followed disaster, yet the party, ostrich-like, buried its head and brandished vote-share statistics as consolation, a gesture that reads less like reassurance and more like a slap on the face of the people.
Nothing illustrated this arrogance better than the knee-jerk fury over a parody song that struck home by distilling the Sabarimala heist into popular ridicule. Party leaders across the spectrum rushed to denounce it, precisely because it struck a nerve. In a bout of spectacular misjudgment, the government gave the go-ahead to file a case, cried hurt sentiments, and even flirted with Election Commission intervention, muttering darkly about communal discord. Reality refused to oblige. The case was untenable, the proposed communal card from which it hoped to earn dividends threatened to backfire, and the party belatedly retreated. By then, the damage was done. The song will now outlive the episode, echoing into the next Assembly elections, puncturing dreams of a third term.
The CPM leadership appeared to believe the public would obediently swallow its line like a section of its cadre. The State secretary, armed with theory-laden justifications that often provide comic relief, claimed the party was yet to be convinced of the crime of its jailed leaders in the Sabarimala theft. But public memory is longer than party convenience. It recalls how the Pathanamthitta unit once stood with Pinarayi’s bete noire, VS Achuthanandan, during the height of factional warfare two decades ago; then came somersaults and switching sides, who engineered them, and why it still matters. It also explains why certain “crimes” remain conveniently ambiguous. For if discarded and the leader decides to speak, innocence will not be the only thing proclaimed; there will be beans to spill, with tremors reaching the very top of the party hierarchy.
What remains indelibly etched in public memory is the furtive escorting of two women into Sabarimala under police protection at the height of the agitation against women’s entry, followed by the quiet retreat from that very stand, court orders notwithstanding. Add to this the much-touted reformation wall that soon crumbled into irrelevance, the controversial car journey for the joke of Sabarimala summit with SNDP leader Vellappally, long known for communal rhetoric and the continued justification of both the act and the man. Taken together, these episodes underline a persistent refusal to acknowledge, or reckon with, public opinion.
In the PM Shri episode, brokered in secrecy, with even the Cabinet sidelined and a Union Minister pointing to a party MP as the bridge, the CPM was forced into retreat only because its junior partner, the CPI, unexpectedly showed spine. Yet there was no admission of error, only a hurried defence of the MP whose sudden clout puzzles not just the rank and file but senior leaders, many of who privately fear a deeper, unspoken understanding with the party ruling in Delhi.
Those fears deepen with the recent Governor–Chief Minister understanding over vice-chancellor appointments. The party now twists itself into knots explaining how a candidate it vehemently opposed, especially after she flagged mismanagement in its pet Digital University, was appointed VC, why its student wing was violently unleashed against her, why a Registrar was dumped for toeing the party line, and how ministers declaring a VC “unacceptable” were casually overruled by the Chief Minister over tea with the Governor the next day, surprising even the two Ministers.
The irony peaked when this moral outrage over parody coincided with lofty sermons on free speech; the Chief Minister announcing that films blocked by the Censor Board would be screened at an international festival, a stance quietly swallowed the very next day. Principles, it seems, are eminently digestible. As one leader paraphrased VKN in private: “Word’s plus one, deed’s minus one,” before quoting Tolstoy with cruel accuracy: “Men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.”
Perhaps the most telling snapshot of Kerala’s political future came from BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who has predicted a straight fight between a Congress-led UDF and a BJP-led NDA from now, pushing the CPM to irrelevance soon. Ironically, even as the BJP’s vote share dipped after the local polls, the UDF briefly surged with confidence, only to see it steadily eroded by relentless bickering, squandering a moment that promised much and now delivers little. And the CPM pins its hopes not on its own strength, but on the accumulating weaknesses of its opponents.