In the brave new world of Kerala politics today, what matters is not ideology but power. Power worship is the new religion, whatever the party. The preparedness of parties and fronts to welcome to their fold disgruntled elements migrating from their rivals is only one of the many instances that justifies such a conclusion. One is free to argue that there is nothing wrong in this in terms of political grammar as parties/fronts are not private limited companies i.e, closed entities. Further, this is the new common sense in Indian politics today with popular representatives crossing from party to party in large contingents with BJP being the major beneficiary of this process.
However, the fact remains that parties are fast becoming borderless and are in for a DNA change. As Congress, BJP, CPM and others ‘blood’ get mixed, the resultant entity will be a curious admixture of discreet elements. Interestingly, this migration of partymen is not always a linear process or one-time affair i.e., moving from one party to the other once and for all and then settling there for the rest of the career. It can be a cyclic process - hopping from one party to another and finally returning to the parent party itself.
Coming to Kerala, there are innumerable examples of such migrations with no party being exception to this trend. Present assembly election itself offers ample proof to this.
For instance, CPM has offered tickets to at least five such opportunists, two of whom (M S Viswanathan in Sultan Bathery and P V Sreenijan in Kunnathunad) are former Congressmen and the rest (P Midhuna in Wandoor, Sulaiman Haji in Kondotty and K P Muhammed Musthafa in Perinthalmanna) previously affiliated to IUML. Interestingly, two erstwhile CPM members – P M Pramod Narayan and Sindhumol Jacob - now figure in KC(M) list for Ranni and Piravom constituencies, respectively! KC(M) has a turncoat from Congress too - Dennis Antony contesting from Chalakkudy. Similarly, CPl candidate in Mananchery is a former IUML leader and at the time of writing this piece, P C Chacko, who resigned from the Congress, is negotiating his way to NCP.
On the other side, two former CPM activists (P S Jyothis and K C Sanju) are now with NDA along with a former KPCC general secretary, Vijayan Thomas, former CPI district council member (Alappuzha) Thampi Mettuthara and former RSP candidate, Mohammed Nahas, who unsuccessfully contested from Kaipamangalam last time. This is only the tip of the iceberg and does not include early birds like K T Jaleel, V Abdurahiman, P V Anvar, Shobhana George, Dr K S Radhakrishnan, Alphonse Kannanthanam, A P Abdullah Kutty, Dr K S Manoj, Manjalamkuzhi Ali et al.
Interestingly, one can find here a striking parallel with the throwaway culture of present day neoliberal consumer capitalism. The only difference is that here, the party substitutes the consumer product: use the party to satiate one’s interest and then throw it away. As stated earlier, this throwaway politics has not merely affected party ideology, but also party discipline. This, in a sense, is paradoxical. On the one side, parties are getting centralised today with party leaders behaving like sultans and at the same time, on the other side,they become loose entities with individual members/leaders discarding them and migrating to other parties.
This struggle for power actually eclipses the last vestiges of dignity and decency in politics and is proving disastrous to the party system and to the democratic order itself. The million dollar question is, will all these lead to a slow cancellation of politics? When everybody wants to be the man and woman of power, who will be the man and woman of ideological politics and democratic values?