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Iron man at the helm

From leader of innumerable agitations to head of government. With the Polit Bureau, the State Secretariat, and the State Committee of the Communist Party of India(Marxist) endorsing him as the next Chief Minister of Kerala, V.S. Achuthanandan needs to make a quick mental crossover from the opposition to the treasury benches. After spending an entire political career crusading for people's causes, the veteran Marxist leader finds himself entrusted with the power and the responsibility to bring about the change he wanted to see in Kerala all these years. His task is not going to be easy. To start with, he will have to rise above the intense inner-party factionalism at which he is widely seen to be a past master. Good governance will be possible only if he is able to take along with him the entire party as also other constituents of the Left Democratic Front. Secondly, the Chief Minister-designate needs to transcend his `anti-development' image, although this qualification would be in order: his political rivals and influential sections of the media were, in part, responsible for branding some of his pro-labour and anti-privatisation agitations as `anti-industrialisation' and `anti-modernisation' campaigns. What Mr. Achuthanandan needs to act on is the realisation that there can be no ideological defence of stagnation and unemployment.

Socially, Kerala is way and ahead India's most advanced State. The literacy rate is better than 90 per cent and virtually all girls and boys are in school. At 73 (11 years higher than the all-India average), life expectancy at birth belongs to the first world. Land reform, people's struggles, health care, and a functioning public distribution system have ensured for its ordinary citizens a better quality of life than the people of any other State enjoy. Nevertheless, Kerala has not been able to move forward in terms of industrial development and generate anything like adequate employment for the youth. It is also a State that has witnessed, over the past five years, a distressingly large number of farmers' suicides. High population density, the consequent non-availability of land for industrial purposes, and strongly organised labour unions are conventionally identified as the factors that made the State `unattractive' for profit-seeking private investors. Certainly, over the long term, Kerala's labour movements have contributed to the rise in living standards and the increase in purchasing power of the working people. But old ideas need to change if the Left in government is to do well, as Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has demonstrated brilliantly in West Bengal. Instead of ruing missed opportunities on the industrial front, the LDF government must go all out to tap the potential provided by information technology and information technology enabled services (ITES). While continuing to build on the existing strengths of Kerala — aside from the high social indicators, commercial agriculture and tourism — the State must provide the required policy and infrastructural thrust to the service sector and the development of human resources. Rather than try and undo worthwhile projects initiated by the previous government, Mr. Achuthanandan must concentrate on better delivery and more efficient and honest performance by the new projects, and generally on taking Kerala to a higher growth trajectory. The people's expectations of the new Chief Minister — whose ideological flanks are well protected by his clean, austere, and severe image — and his talented team will be higher than usual.

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