The brouhaha over prime minister Narendra Modi comparing Kerala to Somalia just serves to show a light on one key issue facing the state this campaign season.
This may sound counter-intuitive but this is one election season where no one wants to address the issues key to Kerala and Keralites. Yes, corruption is an issue, development is, environment is, minority appeasement politics is, heck, even law and order is. But no front wants to address those issues. Not the UDF, not the LDF, not even the NDA.Because for the LDF and UDF, pointing an accusing finger at the rival would mean pointing several fingers at oneself. Both fronts have been complicit in bringing Kerala to where it is now. Hence the reluctance to take to an issue-based campaign.
For the BJP-led NDA, the first election it has become a serious contender in Kerala's political scene also shows how unprepared its state leadership is to the electoral challenge. They just hope to scrape by, garnering as many disgruntled caste and communal votes as they can get.
For the LDF and UDF, unleashing their trolls on Modi was the easiest way to score brownie points without exposing themselves to any blowback from the electorate about what they have done to Kerala.
Yes, Kerala is high on development indicators. But the foundation for that was not laid by the last two ministries anyway. And Kerala's current prosperity is clearly due to remittances, from a population forced to emigrate to dig themselves out of the jobless mess the state has become. But the trolls are trying to turn that into "achievements" of the LDF and the UDF.
When tribal leader C.K. Janu backed Modi, the immediate response was to shoot the messenger: that she is a NDA candidate. Well, does that take away from the painful existence that she and her people have been living?
And talking of issues, what about the killers of Jisha, the law student who was raped and murdered in Perumbavoor more than two weeks back? Chandy's government was quick to refuse an offer by the centre for a CBI probe. But his cops have still not been able to catch the killers. Their own incompetence or cover-up during the initial days of the crime have not been redressed either. It is as if Chandy and the UDF are trying to lie low and ride out the storm. Just that Modi came in handy to deflect attention.
Also, why is the LDF not taking up this issue in right earnest, after the initial round of protests?
Clearly there seems to be an "adjustment politics" here at work between the UDF and LDF, just as they have been accommodating each other for the last couple of decades.
It is this accommodation, this unwritten sharing, that has devastated Kerala. It is this that Keralites are fed up with. Public relations machines of both fronts may try to point to various development indicators to deflect from the truth but the scary part is, if even a fraction of those Keralites working in volatile countries start coming back, this great Kerala story will start to come apart at the seams. And the two fronts, or even the BJP, do not have any plan for that.
