In a place called Malluland there lived a donkey and a washerman.Donkeys in Malluland were are known to be lazy , but washerman's Donkey was very hardworking . It worked from dawn till dusk religiously for the washerman. All other Donkeys hardly worked and were lazy and most of them in Malluland played from morning till evening.Most of them wondered why our Donkey is working so hard even after repeated invites to come and play with them and be lazy. They invited him to live and play with them leaving the washerman . Eveytime they invited him , he replied
" The future is bright" .
Eachtime they adviced him to leave washerman and come and play with them , he replied
"The future is bright".
Once a new baby Donkey came to Malluland and he was surprised to see a donkey who was working so hard . He wanted to know the reason. Each time he replied " The future is bright". Baby donkey became very curious and kept on asking our donkey about : Th Future is Bright". After sometime our donkey refused to speak to the baby donkey anymore. However Baby Donkey pestered our donkey day and night so much that it became unbearable .He dreaded the sight of baby donkey .Each time Baby Donkey wanted to know why the future is bright . At last our donkey could not bear it anymore . One day the baby donkey was pestering him too much and he became tired of replying to him each time ,
" The future is bright" .
One fine day in an all donkey function when he became so tired of replying to the baby donkey " The future is bright" , he called him apart from the group of donkeys and said .
" You know , The washerman has a beautiful daughter. Whenever she does something naughty, he scolds her and tell her that , I will get you married to this donkey if you become more naughty. I am waiting for her to do something really naughty so that I can marry that beauftiful girl . The future is bright" .
Seth Godin may have agreed with this donkey and would have appreciated him for ignoring sunk costs.
Communists in Kerala (not Bengal or India ) are like this Donkey. They are out of touch with the ground realities and situations in the outside world , living like a frog in the well , who don't care what happens outside the well and the surprising fact is that they have been like this for ages.
In 1970s , when agriculture in the entire country was becoming mechanised , communists in Kerala opposed tractors . Their reason being that laboureres will become jobless . They never had the foresight to see about the increased produtivity in farms and increased production . They never knew how it was being used in the Communist countries like Soviet Union in all their communes to increasse food production.Told you that they were like frog in the well.
In 1980s, Computers became " devil's agents" for the communists in Kerala as they viewed it as the ploy of CIA to deviate the brains of Indian (rather Mallu) intelligentia .The ideological opposition to high technology of the Communist Marxist Party, which for long fought against computerization of the workplace, believing it would reduce jobs, caused the state to go back in reverse gear at full speed when everyone else was accelerating in fourth gear in the Information Super Higway. A partial reason for why so many Malayalis (may be you too) had to work in software firms outside the state.
In 1990s , Commuinsts opposed liberalisation and MTV culture for attracting the predatory American giants, and urged people to 'oppose such measures which mortgage our economy and culture to foreign interests'. The same party started a channel later in Kerala to propogate its political interests and it owns and operates an amusement park . It also owns large investments of real estate in various parts of the state and may come second only to church. Whoever said Communists can't be capitalists hasn't heard about the Kerala Communists?
Kerala, which voted in the world's first elected communist government in 1957, ushered in a social revolution in India through land and educational reforms in the tiny state. However, the communists came a long way forward from the peasent revolution and subsequent communist rulers tended to see anything new as a threat to workers hampering their struggle against the bourgeoisie . The history of the Left in Kerala is a history of what might have been, of opportunities lost as increasingly powerful revolutionary forces were suffocated by dictates from Moscow and Delhi.
Classical Communism & Marxism postulates that when an idea ( Karl Marx calls it thesis) clashes with an opposing ideal ( the anti-thesis) , what emerges is not the victory of one over the other , but a synthesis which combines the best of the both world views.This synthesis is the result of class struggles ; but over time , this becomes a new thesis , clashes again with the anti thesis to form new synthesis.This process carries itself till a perfect society , the so called Marxist - Utopia, emerges and Left - Wing Scholars from the monolithic red front in Kerala say that, Kerala is far far away from this (supposedly) ideal state of existence and as a result the class struggle against the bourgeoisie have to carry on. But what happens when the struggle is not allowed to take place and everything is suppressed.Anybody who has watched the communist parties will know how CPM systematically cleansed out any source of opposition either using brute force or character assassination ? Ask to M V Raghavan or K R Gowriamma , the veteran leaders who were thrown out of the party and may be the current Chief Minister V S Achutanandan is also on the same way.
Comrade Achuthanandan believes that drinking products that has its headquarters in USA, which is a byword for ‘MNC imperialism’ will hamper health and well being of his people . When he says this through his limited list of English words through national channels the laughter that emanates from other state capitals echoes through out India and reminds me of the Donkey who says that " The future is bright".
The cola ban was ridiculous not because of the fact that it was done without proper studies based on a study done only by CSE headed by the extremely articulate Sunita Narain who proclaims that anybody who drinks colas is quaffing 25 times the permissible amount of DDT, lindane, malathion, chlorpyritos and other toxins that sound like ingredients of a nuclear bomb but because of the fact that if people still prefer to drink poisonous Coca-cola and Pepsi it is their choice and the government has no role to play in this which Comrade Achu did not realise.
Comrades, why dont you ban all the drinks and order pure drinking water for all of us?
Were Coca-Cola and Pepsi breaking any laws when they gathered ground water , the same ground water that goes into our stomach when farmers in Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu gather ground water for growing high-yielding crops that require vast amounts of water. In both cases, the cost of groundwater is practically nil — the costs being in , transporting and marketing the water. In other words, in India where there is a scarcity in many areas, there is no policy for water withdrawal and what India needs is a policy on from where and on what state ground water can be drawn and not ban on colas to fight against the "imperialsim of multinationals'.
An action like this taken against any company or its products on the basis of any non-governmental organisation’s (NGO) or any other body’s report without taking recourse to a proper regulatory process is ridiulous .CSE has been harping about Cola ban for a long time but have you heard of anybody dying because of consuming colas .Though colas are widely consumed ,there has not been a single case of poisoned death owing to drinking Coca-cola and Pepsi, anywhere in the world. It is true that lots of Coke bottles have been found with extraneous matters with in the bottle and there are pesticide allegations .
However people have died and still die in Kerala because of consuming illicit arrack and endo sulphan attacks and not colas ? Dying people can be a more stronger evidence for banning a drink rather than some gossamer evidence of CSE . Why Comrade Achu is not banning Arrack and liqour is anybody's guess ? It will affect the Communist Vote bank .
Report from CSE in fact says the same thing about all the drinks like Mirinda , 7 Up ,Sprite and all the drinks that come from the Cola companies and the ban is only on Cocacola and Pepsi which shows that comrade Achu wants to be known as the knight in shining armour who is fighting for the age old and almost extinct communist marxist principles. Communists in Kerala had to think a little bit more construcively than giving strike calls and bandhs and destroying private and public property.
Two faces of the same coin .
In Bengal the long-ruling 'Marxist' state government brutally demonstrated its determination to make the state seem attractive to foreign investors by clearing the hawkers off the pavements of the main commercial districts and taking proactive measures to invite IT firms and FDI. May be one of the reasons because of which they were defeated this time.
In Kerala we have a "Communist" government which tries to jeopardise the IT and FDI boom through whatever means, be it opposition to Smartcity or Cola ban. They live in that age of land reforms when ENIAC was the best computer in the world.
Somehow when communism evolved in Kerala, the Kerala commies belived that the idealogy of communism is about opposing everything that (they felt) was American including colas d computers .The presnet crop of communists are not as pragmatic as their previous generation comarades who were able to usher in social changes by using communism as a tool.The current lot have failed to realise the two stage theory that the bourgeoisie revolution had to be completed before proletarian revolution could begin is not happening in India.Communism had to accommodate themselves more and more to bourgeoisie parties allowing marxism to be postponed to an indefinite future. They never got tired of arguing that privatisation per se will benefit the capitalists at the expense of the ordinary workers without seeing the larger benefit to the society and the employment opportunities that is being created for the youth. A reason due to which people like you and me have to come and work outside our state.
Peripheral measures like banning Cocacola only hampered the long term interest of the state which was already being percieved as the most militant and unionised state where three strikes happen in five days. Comrade Achu , you may have scored a point in front of your fellow communists by embracing the ancient and outdated communist marxist ideals through Cola ban in your fight against imperisalism based on some filmsy evidence , but haven't you hurt the interest of the state and the country at large?
Politics in Kerala (not only commies) is full of bald heads and grey hairs like K N M Pillai who are opportunistic and goes to any extent to fulfill their political ambitions.
K N M Pillai is a character in Arundhati Roy's ' The God of Small Things'. An ageing communist in the village Ayemenem who names his son Lenin and who instigate a mini revolt in Paradise Pickles when Velutha is killed by Police . When I see any Kerala politician on the screen a comparison with comrade K N M Pillai brings out the quintessential {mis}qualifications in Kerala Political scene which boils down into opposition to anything that the other front preaches with out analysing whether it benefits the state and homogenisation of the development in the state on a few issues. It is also the personal attacks on the opposition with claps from media and common man by conviniently forgetting more critical issues the state is facing .
E M S namboodiripad , the flamboyant Brahmin high priest of marxism in Kerala who became the chief minister of first elected communist government in the world would have been surprised to see the single homogenised view of the development that is being aired by various television channels voiced by the politicians from the two fronts alike in the umpteen news shows. The worst part is that people in the state are not getting an antithesis or an opposing views when the media is publishing the same with an ardent fan's unquestioning approval.When so many people went to Kerala politicians chorused Make-Kerala-a-Dubai line and now it is almost like Make - Kerala- A -Bangalore line . May be another bangalore in which High tech cohabits with low efficiency in a deepening urban nightmare having pothole filled roads , endless traffic jams , concrete jungles and low indicators of life expectancy.
It has been proven that small dispensaries in lot of places is much more effective than a huge hospital in one city in the state and when the debate about development concentrate on a single project called smart city(which still hasn't progressed other than the foundation stone) which may bring in 20000 job opportunities(both technical and non technical) in the state media conviniently forget that there are different ways of doing the same thing providing more benefits. When media focus on DIC(K)and PDP like parties with out focusing on the real issues like development and a better life for the people in the state, it is imperative that a simple question like what is development is being forgotten?. In a state like Kerala most channels and other media vehicles always forget the thin line between entertainment and news when they report any issue.
Good governance and development is not only about technology , engineering and IT but it is also about developing human condition as a whole in the region . It is not only about providing jobs , but also about developing infrastructure and protecting natural resources. It is as much about preventing the suicides of farmers and jailing those ministers who were accused in sex scandals .Some young heads with black hair should replace the bald heads and grey hairs in Kerala at the helm to convince the same to the junta and agnise them that most of the other states are marching ahead.
Commies, Please dont tell us like the stupid donkey that the "Future is Bright". We heard it from SFI when we were studying, from DYFI when we were searching for jobs and now we are tired of it. We are tired of the hartals, bandhs and the shallow communism that you preach and practice. We are tired of the arrogant, high handed and immature leaders that lead your party in the state. Immature leaders who make dog remarks and #@$$@ stetments. We are not bothered whether you tie up with PDP, DIC or XYZ- If you want votes at least in the next election, Please create jobs in our own state and allow us to lead a peaceful ife.
1 week ago
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