The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) has made a laughing stock of itself by suspending both Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan and the State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, giving them a month's time for reconciliation before the party's Central Committee meeting in June. Both the suspended leaders have made a public demonstration of their loyalty by accepting the 'punishment'. But as media reports from Kerala indicate, they are far from having reconciled their differences.

It would seem the Marxists have adopted a bulldozer instead of the traditional hammer and sickle as the symbol of their revolutionary rhetoric. An embattled Mr Achuthanandan has discovered the bulldozer as a perfect foil for Mr Vijayan. The demolition of many illegal buildings in Munnar was just a ploy. The Chief Minister has been receiving brickbats from his Cabinet Ministers, most of whom are Mr Vijayan's men.

State Home Minister Kodiyari Balakrishnan, for instance, had openly defied the Chief Minister's order of reinstating a top police officer who had conducted raids on shops vending pirated CDs, and who was suspended after raiding the shop of the wife of another police officer who is Mr Vijayan's favourite. The Chief Minister subsequently used the big stick to discipline his Minister.

Mr Achuthanandan, veteran of several political battles and an orthodox Marxist, had earlier dug up the Rs 120-crore scandal in the Power Ministry, which was headed by Mr Vijayan in the last LDF Government, to embarrass the latter. When the issue came up before the Kerala High Court, the Government had to oppose the CBI inquiry into the scandal, clearly exposing Mr Vijayan while pretending to defend him.

Mr Vijayan's men in the Cabinet made the Chief Minister suffer a huge embarrassment when the State Government representative in Delhi signed the controversial ADB loan offer that Mr Achuthanandan had opposed tooth and nail when he was the Leader of the Opposition in the previous Assembly. The ADB papers were signed even as the Chief Minister was telling media that his Government would not accept the loan.

Mr Achuthanandan found the opportunity he was looking for when he was able to bring round the Dubai-based business group, Tecom, which had proposed to set up Smart City in Kochi, to modify its proposal. The Marxist leader had opposed the project when he was in the Opposition. After the Dubai group modified the draft agreement, however, Mr Achuthanandan as Chief Minister accepted the project. The conclusion of the proposal gave a shine to his image as the project is expected to be a huge job creator in a State where unemployment among the educated is very high. Next, the Chief Minister hit out at Mr Vijayan by launching a demolition drive to project himself as the poor man's champion fighting rich land grabbers.

Mr Vijayan retaliated by alleging that Mr Achuthanandan was using the "media syndicate" for an image makeover while it was the party as a whole that had launched the demolition drive. Mr Achuthanandan did not allow that to go unchallenged. Taking advantage of the media anger at being abused by Mr Vijayan, the Chief Minister hit back, denying any "media syndicate" and accusing Mr Vijayan's camp of planting all sorts of stories against him and the very Government of which the CPI(M) was a part. That started the washing of each other's dirty linen in public.

To push his advantage further, the Chief Minister has turned the bulldozer on to petty shops in other cities and towns, too, where encroachments have been the rule rather than the exception. The community of traders then organised itself to resist what it considered blackmail by politicians. The traders said they were ignorant of the fact that the land titles they had bought were fraudulently made or that the buildings were encroachments. It now transpires that fake land transfer has been a lucrative business in Kerala for the last 20 years.

The CPI(M) has enormous assets in Kerala - their value ranges from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 crore. Obviously, this kind of wealth has not come from legitimate businesses. Kerala is the only State where two fronts - the UDF led by the Congress and the LDF led by the CPI(M) - have alternately been in power for the last 40 years. Each front has been voted out every time for a fusillade of corruption charges. The only exception was the Government led by Mr AK Antony who went on to become a bugbear for his then party colleague, Mr K Karunakaran.

Significantly, the power game in the CPI(M) and the Kerala Government exactly parallels the power game in the other main party in the State, the Congress. Once upon a time, it was Mr Karunakaran versus Mr Antony. The former, now past 80, wanted the State Congress to be in his grip. To do so, he handed the reins of the State unit of the party over to his son K Muralidharan and a Rajya Sabha seat to his daughter Padmaja. The party compromised but Mr Muralidharan could not win an election and the group failed to prevail on Ms Sonia Gandhi. Finally, Mr Karunakaran walked out of the party to the great relief of the other camp. He had never given a moment of peace to Mr Antony when the latter was the Chief Minister. The Congress went on to lose the Lok Sabha election in 2004 and the Assembly election in 2006.

As some commentators have put it, the tragedy of Kerala is that power remains limited to the two fronts. Both have parallel parties as members: If one has Kerala Congress (Mani), the other has Kerala Congress (Joseph), and so on. The political class and the castes or groups that back each segment of that class are happy with the arrangement. It ensures that irrespective of which front is in power, every caste or community is represented. The bulldozer that Mr Achuthanandan has let lose is more likely to turn out to be the mythical demon Bhasmasura. It could expose and, hopefully, destroy this cartel.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, June 01, 2007