Kerala   

Ravi gets his due reward, at last

C. Gouridasan Nair

A leader who found a place on Congress Working Committee as early as 1972

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For someone who was in the Congress Working Committee (CWC) over three decades ago, the Ministerial berth should have been his long ago. But for Vayalar Ravi, who was inducted into the Union Cabinet on Sunday as the Minister of Overseas India Affairs, it has been a long wait, often missing the bus by a whisker. And when it came, he is hardly in a position to enjoy it, for his grandson died only on Friday.

A politician known for his outspokenness, Mr. Ravi was at one point of time the symbol of rebellion and anger in the Congress in Kerala. He, along with A.K. Antony, led a group of youngsters up the ranks of the party in what could easily go in the political history of Kerala as a generational change. It was often bloody, as had happened when the youth brigade of the 1960s fought a pitched battle with the master of political gamesmanship, K. Karunakaran. The ups and downs in Mr. Ravi's life also had to do with the changing contours of his relations with his old comrades, the closest of whom, Mr. Antony, he defeated in a no-holds-barred battle for Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president, in the early 1990s.

Son of M.K. Krishnan and Devaky Krishnan, Ravi was born on June 4, 1937, at Vayalar in Alappuzha. His wife, Mercy Ravi, a fine speaker and columnist, is currently a member of the Kerala Legislative Assembly.

The law graduate, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, fills a long-felt gap of a Congress Minister at the Centre. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1971 and re-elected to the House in 1977. On being elected to the Kerala Assembly in 1982, he became Home Minister of Kerala, but was eased out of the position by the then Chief Minister Mr. Karunakaran, in what has come to be known as the `image burnishing exercise'. He made up with Mr. Karunakaran later and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1994. He returned to the Upper House in 2003.

A prominent leader of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), Mr. Ravi has been an outspoken critic of economic liberalisation and globalisation and his failure to make to the Cabinet so often used to be attributed to this. Founder-leader of the Kerala Students' Union, which gave birth to a whole new generation of leaders in the Congress in Kerala, Mr. Ravi also played a pivotal role in organising the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) and soon rose to become the general secretary of the Indian Youth Congress. He became a member of the AICC in 1967 and the CWC in 1972 and later an AICC general secretary. A fine orator, he has also led several Indian delegations to the UN.

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