If at all Governor Arif Mohammad Khan suffered internal conflicts while reading out speeches prepared by an LDF government, the third one he delivered in the Kerala Assembly on May 28 would have given him the least trouble.
Khan's third Address as Governor did not have the usual belligerence the last LDF government had reserved for the Centre's policies. In fact, nothing that would have disturbed the Centre, and its nominee in the Raj Bhavan, were included in the speech.
There was nothing about fiscal strangulation the Centre was repeatedly accused of, nothing about the Centre's extra-constitutional tendencies, about the marathon farmers' strike, about soaring fuel prices, about even the new vaccine policy that has shifted the burden of purchase to states or even about the administrator's overreach in nearby Malayalam-speaking Lakshadweep. It was as if the LDF government had gone mild within five months.
The Governor's earlier address this year on January 8, his second one, had a sub-section 'National Scenario' to specifically list out the excesses of the Narendra Modi government. Unlike his first address on January 29, 2020, when Khan had openly expressed his disapproval of a paragraph against the Citizenship Amendment Act, the second address was devoid of drama.
Khan stuck to the written text. Without omitting a word and not showing even a twitch of emotion, Khan had read out stinging criticisms of the three farmers' bills and the new labour code.
He denounced the three new farmers' bills, lamented the dilution of federal principles and feared that the Centre was demoralising honest state officials. "These agrarian laws will undermine regulated markets, result in eventual demise of the minimum support price and tilt the balance definitively in favour of corporate middlemen," he said. His speech saw these new laws, along with the "controversial labour code", as the Centre's attempt to abridge state's rights.
Yet, the atmosphere in the House was tense. There was concern of yet another Khan reprisal. In the days preceding the address, the Governor had locked horns with the government on the farmers' issue and was humbled.
Khan had ridiculed the government's request for a special session to be called on December 31, 2020, to pass a resolution on the three farmers' bills. He said the Kerala Government had no jurisdiction to settle the grievances of farmers. Later, when the government insisted, he had to concede.
And during the special session on December 31, it was Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's turn to cut the Governor to size. He said the Governor had to be reminded of various Supreme Court verdicts to make him fall in line. This remark made Khan seem like an unreasonable figurehead, acting beyond his brief. Therefore, this was widely seen as a public chastisement of the Governor. It was in this fraught context that Khan read out portions that were extremely critical of the Centre last January.
But a year ago, on January 29, Khan was as combative as the government. He read out what was written for him on the Citizenship Amendment Act but only after making his displeasure known. "Now I come to para 18 (which speaks about the Assembly resolution that called for the abrogation of the CAA and the suit the Kerala government had filed in the Supreme Court). I have been corresponding with the honorable Chief Minister for the last few days. I have my reservations. But I am going to read this para because the honorable Chief Minister wants me to read this.”
This straying from the written text was unprecedented and was seen as emblematic of frayed Centre-State relations.
Nearly one-and-a-half months later, the Centre-State relations have only worsened. The Centre's post-pandemic policies have further tightened the finances of states; it is reluctant to pay the states their legally entitled GST compensation and the vaccine policy is a shocker for cash-starved states like Kerala. Not to mention the never-ending jacking up of oil prices. Further, in the plight of islanders in Lakshadweep, the policy address of the new LDF government should have seen yet another instance of the BJP government's bigoted and pro-corporate tendencies.
Yet, the new policy address had nothing scathing to say about the Centre.
On the other hand, the speech acknowledges, though grudgingly, that the Centre had conceded a major demand of states. "Consequent to the strident demand of the States including Kerala, the Union Government relented to raise the annual borrowing limit from 3 to 5 percent of the GSDP. However, only 0.5 percent of this additional borrowing limit was unconditional," the Governor said.
Only at this point is there a criticism of the centre in the speech, and that too a guarded one. "Though my Government has its considered opinion on the imposition of conditionalities in this as they run counter to the basic principles of cooperative federalism, we agreed to implement the reforms suggested, in a manner, which did not adversely affect the citizens," the Governor said.
And then, indirectly conceding that the Centre had not smothered its fiscal freedom, said that "we have been successful in getting the entire 1.5 percent additional borrowing limit based on conditionalities".