In May 2019, the trading at London Stock Exchange was opened, for the first time in global history, by a politburo member of a communist party. The party may defend tapping global finance through masala bonds at a high coupon rate for accelerating growth and welfare, but the irony of a communist tolling for arousing the speculative instincts of global investors cannot be lost on any.
The CPM-led Kerala government’s foray into the murky waters of international capital-financed high-growth projects has been marked by non-transparent procurements and contracts. In the last two financial years, no fewer than a dozen project management consultants have been positioned in critical projects, citing inefficiency and incapability of public services.
These consultancies are providing technical or managerial assistance to projects such as the e-mobility one worth Rs 4,500 crore for switching over to electric public transport, implementing ease of doing business and improving investment climate for entrepreneurs (estimated at Rs 1 lakh crore), providing technical architecture to the post-flood Rebuild Kerala programme (Rs 10,000 crore), rooftop solar programme of the electricity board (Rs 3,000 crore) and the cleaning up of navigable canals in Kochi for the water metro project (Rs 2,000 crore).
About 80% of all awarded consultancies have benefitted a particular London-based consulting company that is alleged to have links with the highest corridors of power. Most selections are noncompetitive nominations. The chief minister’s obsession with high-value international consultancies has undermined public service to the extent that his general administration department advocated formally establishing a “backdoor office’” in the secretariat to overcome the incapacity of the IAS and the secretarial service. These show how a professedly pro-public sector government has become aligned with the spoils of crony finance capital-led aggressive “growth-only” approach.
The present credibility crisis engulfing the chief minister is largely a making of his own approach and style. Undermining the consultative Cabinet and constitutional services, the CM has positioned a dozen advisors and consultants, the chief of whom has been intensely questioned as a suspect in the `120-crore airport gold smuggling case. The 360-degree involvement and the centrality of the CMO in facilitating the crime stand established and have eroded the chief minister’s credibility in the public eye.
The suspected criminal mastermind in the case has associated herself with the CM, key ministers and senior officers since 2017 and was instrumental in facilitating several international visits and parleys. Her crimes in prior employment were hushed up by the state crime branch, admittedly at the behest of the CM’s police advisor and principal secretary, despite the High Court’s admonishments. A case was finally registered only after her arrest in the gold smuggling case.
After being terminated at the friendly foreign state’s consulate, the mastermind was immediately re-employed through a consultancy—with no verification of antecedents—in the prestigious and high-security space park project of the IT department, led again by the principal secretary to the CM. Contravening every norm of public service, the individual continued to work for the foreign government, receiving emoluments while serving the CM’s IT department. The principal secretary, now under suspension, allowed his flat located 100 metres away from the CM’s office to be used as the base of criminal conspiracy. The Customs and NIA have seized gold and cash worth Rs 2 crore from the lockers co-owned by the principal secretary and the mastermind.
The mastermind stated in court that the proceeds were commissions received from the housing for the poor project (Life Mission). The CM’s principal secretary was also the CEO of the Life Mission for which the UAE Red Crescent had donated Rs 20 crore in July 2019 to build 140 low-income flats. The CM will be hard-pressed to explain how a suspected criminal mastermind, described as the kingpin of the gold smuggling case by the NIA, enjoyed simultaneous employment with a foreign government and a state government project, frequented his office at will, associated with his chief of staff and extracted a commission from his housing project without the active connivance of his ministers and senior officers.
No CPM-led Left Front government has ever survived incumbency so far.
They have not lost elections for want of propaganda or rhetoric. The state government’s highly publicised early gains in containing Covid-19 now stand exposed in the face of the reality that it was ill-prepared for the present surge in infections. Its testing rates and containment measures have been tested by the emerging gaps in providing sufficient quarantine and timely hospitalisation. No government can be faulted for acts of nature or unexpected pandemics. What is being criticised is the ambitious appropriation of public activity in containing disasters and pandemics and the use of statist propaganda to hide the yawning gaps in governance.
The Opposition is merely pointing to the glaring failures of governance. It has a very open agenda of exhorting the people to disapprove of the Left government on well-stated grounds of multiple failures. The crisis the comrades of Kerala find themselves is paradoxically due to their cheating the capitalists at their own game. Instead of ensuring a level-playing field for the forces of production, Pinarayi Vijayan’s regime has unveiled an aggrandised and vitiated genre of crony capitalism. The bell he chimed enthusiastically at the London Stock Exchange could be the last ever by any member of a communist party for a long time.
Ramesh Chennithala
Leader of the Opposition, Kerala. Views are personal
(rameshchennithala@gmail.com)