Kerala Elections: Will the left be washed away by the tides of history?
A look at the last bastion of the Indian left
Hello and sorry this one’s late - one of us was traveling last week and the other just landed a new job. This week, we’d like to talk with you about the elections in a small southern state - Kerala.
After the independence of India in 1947, there were federal elections for the 1st Lok Sabha held in 1951 and they were overwhelmingly won by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Indian National Congress. However, the leader of the second biggest party was no Hindu nationalist - he was instead, A.K. Gopalan, the then head of the Communist Party of India. Though he only won 16 seats, he still demonstrated that the appetite for communist politics was bigger than the desire for religious nationalism. Seventy odd years later, things have changed. The country is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party who won back to back blowout victories in 2014 and 2019 and the Communists are a footnote across much of India with a few minor exceptions. Up until 2011, they were in charge of West Bengal but Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress wiped them away and now the only place they’re especially strong is the South Indian State of Kerala.
Kerala will be heading to the polls this year to determine if the Communists will be able to beat back the tides of history and secure a second consecutive term. Since the 1980s, this has not happened - their alliance (the Left Democratic Front) and the Congress led alliance (the United Democratic Front) have switched power every five years. Adding to the suspense, the BJP will be making a run as well. They came to win and the best proof of this is the person projected as a likely Chief Minister should BJP win: E. Sreedharan, best known as India’s Metro Man for the work he did developing the Delhi Metro and Konkan Railway.
Beyond the seesawing factor, the Congress also has the power of the Gandhi name which is more appealing in Kerala than it has ever been in North India. After Indira Gandhi ended the emergency and called an election, her support collapsed in the north but remained fairly strong in the South. The Gandhi name is still good for a lot out there - Rahul Gandhi currently represents Wayanad, Kerala in the Lok Sabha and he has other colleagues like Shashi Tharoor of Thiruvananthapuram, also from the region. Rahul Gandhi has also played an active role in the campaign along with his sister Priyanka Gandhi. With all of this star power, it should be a little bit easier to eke out a win.
The current polls suggest a second consecutive victory for the Communists which would be unheard of in this region. A number of factors have lined up to help enable this - one related to the Congress themselves and one that was out of their control. The first is that the INC in Kerala like the INC across India is battered by infighting and an inability to keep the party together. Earlier this month, a veteran leader, PC Chacko decided he’d had enough and decamped for the Nationalist Congress Party. These problems are not new - since December 2019, there have been reports of infighting among the members of the Congress led alliance. This has not stopped as polls have gotten closer - just last month, Congress veteran (and former Kerala Chief Minister) A.K. Antony was calling for an end to infighting regarding who got a ticket to contest the election. The second factor has to do with the Kerala government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic - current Kerala Health Minister, KK Shailaja, has said that she believes the response will end up being electorally favorable to the ruling alliance. Kerala was an early success story with regards to COVID-19 but as the pandemic continued, the state’s response has started to lose some of its appeal. It remains to be seen how much further it’ll fall before polling ends.
If the polls are correct, this will be an even bigger setback for Rahul Gandhi and the Gandhi name. The G-23, composed of Congress stalwarts, has been making the point that it’s time for internal democracy within the Congress Party and for the Gandhi family to go. A loss in Kerala, part of which Gandhi currently represents in the Lok Sabha would be an excellent way of making their point for them. Gandhi’s major allies from Kerala aside from Shashi Tharoor, include former Chief Ministers A.K. Antony as well as Oomen Chandy. On paper, they would seem like strong candidates to strengthen support but in practice neither one is especially well connected to Kerala’s politics today - while Chandy is an MLA, he is in charge of the Congress campaign in Andhra Pradesh and while Antony is a sitting Rajya Sabha (Upper House) MP from Kerala, he’s more of a national figure than a local vote-getter. Gandhi’s other problem is that a win in Kerala doesn’t exactly say much - both the CPM and INC have been going back and forth every five years. Even a victory could be seen as something Gandhi had nothing to do with. He has everything to lose and pretty much nothing to gain.
The Communists are in a similar, but not identical, position as he is. They also have a lot to lose but they have more to gain from a victory. If they’re knocked out here, they will not be in power in any state in India which is amazing - given how strong they were just a few decades ago. If however, they manage to defy history and win again, they have a much better position for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
The only party here with nothing to lose and everything to gain is the BJP. A loss in Kerala won’t look as bad as either of the major contenders because the BJP is still nonexistent in most of South India. While their numbers tend to do better with Prime Minister Modi on the ticket (like in 2014 and 2019), they are yet to be able to translate that into actual seats. This can be seen as playing the long game - on the federal level, the BJP can’t expand much more in North India and they need to look elsewhere to pad their Lok Sabha majority in 2024.
Two places especially appealing for this are West Bengal (in Eastern India) where they performed fairly well in 2019 and the south - Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and more. Will Kerala go straight from Lal Salaam to Jai Sri Ram? It’s unlikely, but the BJP is gambling that they’ll be able to reuse the West Bengal playbook and that by breaking the Left Front, it can then help itself to their voter bank by positioning themselves as the chief rival to the Congress. Like in West Bengal, these kinds of investments take time to bear out but the only way for the BJP’s lotus to bloom is to invest early.
That’s all for this week. We’ll see you on Sunday for a look at the overall map of State Assembly elections.
Additional reading on the elections in Kerala:
Rajya Sabha poll before Kerala Assembly results: EC powers, HC ruling - Indian Express
K.T. Jaleel's resignation shows all is not well in Kerala CPI-M - Economic Times
A Turning Point For Left, Congress? Why Kerala Elections Are Not Only About Kerala - News 18
Why Kerala may not swing this time round - Livemint
God's Own Conundrum: What Kerala 2021 May Look Like - Swarajya
What we’re reading this week:
Congress leadership crisis | A divide within G23? - The Hindu
Modern Love: I Tried to Filter Him Out - New York Times