The Panchayat/ Municipal elections in Kerala are over. There was a steady stream of reports on the political parties’ successes and failures, based mostly on the observer’s political leanings. An independent analysis is increasingly becoming a difficult exercise in India’s fourth estate lately as the power structures have shifted to become heavy-handed and retributory. Therefore, let me confess that it is not easy to make sense of it all while sitting thousands of miles away without necessary interactions with the stakeholders. Nevertheless, given today’s communication capabilities, an NRI perspective may add some value to the overall election outcome assessment.

Left Democratic Front has been claiming a huge victory. However, the data available do not vindicate that claim. Either they have held on pretty much to the status quo or made a slight improvement. That may be a more realistic assessment, especially considering the mushrooming scandals the LDF is engulfed in. However, across the media landscape, the Congress Party is scolded to be the biggest loser, having failed to take advantage of LDF’s defensive posture.  Besides, vested interests have already started writing the obituary of the Congress Party in Kerala. Though the Party’s demise is overly exaggerated, the Party must introspect and take corrective steps before the impending Assembly elections.

What truly ails the Congress party in Kerala? Let us take the story of Bincy Sebastian from the 52nd ward in Kottayam Municipality. Having returned from Sharjah in the Gulf, where she worked as a Registered Nurse, she has decided to plunge into electoral politics to serve the community. Her family consists of traditional Congress loyalists, and she has decided to seek a Congress ticket to run from that ward. The ward committee, which is supposed to know the local people’s pulse, recommended her name to the Party hierarchy. Thinking that no other name has gone to the leadership, Bincy started campaigning, printing posters, and visiting homes seeking their support.

Then the bizarre thing happened. Just four days before the submission of the nomination, the decision came down from the above awarding that UDF seat to a different person, thoroughly discarding the ward committee’s popular decision and dishonoring the sentiment of the locale. However, the people stood their ground and catapulted her towards a great victory, dispatching the UDF candidate into a third-place finish. To add insult to injury to the Congress hierarchy, suddenly, Bincy has become the decisive vote in a hung municipal council where both UDF and LDF were vying to capture the top honors in Kottayam for the next five years.

The Congress hierarchy soon went into overdrive, shamelessly pursuing Bincy while pleading with her to return to the UDF fold. The LDF has already promised her the position of Chairperson if she would join their team. Finally, Bincy’s deep loyalty to the values and principles of the Congress Party brought her back to the UDF fold.  One also wonders why her husband, ShobyLukose, was suspended from the Party because she decided to run!  Nevertheless, it was a storybook ending as BincySebastian took the oath as the Municipal Chairperson last week.

I have narrated this story here to show how disconnected the Congress leadership is from the grassroots. They indeed appeared to have lost the pulse of the people and are living in their ivory towers. Many are hardly in touch with ordinary folks in the street and uninformed of their needs and aspirations. They tend to appear among the voters mostly during the election in their finely pressed white khadi shirts, and that too may be in a monologue mode pontificating to the public. The rich and famous are spared, commanding their attention when and where it is needed.

Many in the NRI community feel that they are privileged to know some of our party leaders closely. Some of them have traveled to America or Gulf countries and are recipients of their generous hospitality. One may think that they are obliged for a few simple courtesies. Do not be so sure! Try to ring one of them up, and most likely, they may not even lift the phone to answer nor return your courtesy call. Okay then, how about sending an email with some valuable suggestions to improve governance in their constituency: do not count on it either; you may not even get an acknowledgment, let alone a serious response. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are just a handful.  This delinquent behavior also points to a much deeper organizational problem that needs to be addressed.

The other serious problem that is plaguing the Party is the relentless groupism within its leadership ranks. The High Command appears to be comfortable about groupism for the purpose of political expediency.  It is the same old concept that we have learned from the British masters: divide and rule. Nonetheless, it is working to the detriment of the Party across the country. The way things stand now in Kerala unless one joins a group, there is no future regardless of the skillset or the potential to succeed. There is an abundant number of stories out there of folks who got their dreams dashed, and their future destroyed just because they refused to sing the same tune.

Kerala, where I grew up, was a place of harmony and brotherhood. Although we have had our issues about the unequal distribution of wealth or casteism, social reformers of that era focused on development and social justice. However, today the emphasis has shifted to the identity politics that borders communalism. The previous UDF government appeared to have encouraged this idea granting special favors to minority groups, thereby opening the pandora’s box. When a particular minority group demanded most of the critical portfolios that constitute the bulk of the money for mandatory and discretionary spending, the previous UDF government readily gave in. The capitulation to those demands led to even more demands for additional ministerial births and government land allocation for spurious projects in further alienating the majority community.

In Pathanamthitta, another minority-dominated district, Congress does not even have a single Legislative Assembly member. The reason for such an outcome could be several. However, there is a growing perception that the Congress leadership is afraid to speak out or help when religious freedom is threatened, or the faithful’s lives are at risk.  Many folks in those districts would attest that the LDF is more committed to preserving secularism and freedom of worship than the hesitant leaders of the Congress party. As people are quite concerned about the rising power of RSS/BJP and the menace associated with it in their lives, the Congress party leadership in Kerala appears to be feeble and unreliable.

Finally, secret dealings and electoral understandings of some in the leadership with extremist groups might have backfired in the just concluded Panchayat elections. The Party will be better off disavowing any links with extremist groups even for electoral gains and unequivocally condemning extremism no matter where it emanates. Moreover, Keralites do not need to hear any sermon about corruption but instead, like to see them walk the talk. They are an educated electorate who wants to know what the plan of action is for the next five years to improve the lot of the people left behind, especially the unemployed youth, landless poor, and the downtrodden tribal Adivasis. Kerala is indeed at a crossroads facing this upcoming election. The Party has a choice of listening to those inner cries of the party faithful or be prepared to be relegated to a secondary role in the not-so-distant future!

(Writer is a former Chief Technology Officer of the United Nations. The views expressed here are strictly personal.)