All red faces: ADB loan and a divided party

Urban infrastructure building and improvement of services, including urban water supply, sewerage and sanitation, urban drainage, solid waste management, roads and transportation

8226; Empowering the poor by providing basic infrastructure and facilitating more and better livelihood

8226; Providing city corporations the technical inputs for urban infrastructure sub-projects

8226; Capacity building for sustaining infrastructure building and improving services

WHO ARE OPPOSING IT?

Kerala8217;s Left, rather a considerable section of it, still thinks accepting an ADB loan means giving into an 8220;exploitative capitalist agency8221;, and cannot be ideologically consistent with basic Communist premises, anyway.

The chronically cash-strapped Kerala Government first did the spadework for this loan nine years ago, when CPIM8217;s E K Nayanar headed the then Left Government. The loan idea went to the party secretariat and V S Achuthanandan, the then CPIM state general secretary, agreed. But the effort went cold in the wake of post-Pokhran sanctions that brought squeezing of international loans.

When the subsequent Congress-led state government revived the idea in 2002, the same V S Achuthanandan who now opposes it, as well as his rival and current state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan who is rooting for it, led a virulent Left campaign against it. Party workers stoned buildings and vehicles, held hostage and then chased away scared ADB officials, blackened their office, fought cops on the streets.

But by 2005, when the Left was certain to take back power from the Congress-led coalition the Left began a slow somersault by last year. Mayors of all the Left-ruled municipal corporations resolved there really wasn8217;t anything wrong with taking an ADB loan, and that they needed it. The official CPIM, led by Pinarayi Vijayan, seconded that8212;but not the hardline camp of Achuthanandan, and certainly not the CPI, the second largest constituent in the Left front. Other Left constituents, including the Janata Dal and the RSP want no part of the fight, and has decided to go whichever way the wind blows, or 8220;the majority view8221; in the front.

WHAT ARE THE GROUSES?

CHIEF MINISTER V S ACHUTHANANDAN: He runs a cabinet populated by his arch party rival Pinarayi Vijayan8217;s men. He claims he was not consulted, not taken into confidence and the deal was blatantly signed behind his back. He has vowed to get to the bottom of it, possibly take a re-look at the idea.

CPI: It thinks the loan is a sellout, and a sabotage of Left principles and premises. It has vowed to fight it, its youth outfit, the AIYF, is already out on the streets against it. A big point of opposition is that the loan conditions imply that there could be no more free public water supply, which could be a big blow for lakhs across the state subsisting on public tap water. Though the CPIM claims the ADB has been made to agree that the local bodies, not individual water consumers, would be made to pay for water, the detractors contend that it simply means an indirect levy.

CPIML: Several splinter groups have already declared they would not allow it. One of them had earlier attacked and blackened the ADB8217;s local office.

WHAT DOES IT IMPLY?

The Left Government8217;s image and credibility has taken a big hit. The CM says the deal was inked without his knowledge. The Finance Minister says the CM did know. The Local Administration Minister says the papers were with CM for many days and he may have missed seeing those. The party state secretary says the CM had discussed the loan, while the the CPI is openly fighting it. All that apart, the Congress-led Opposition is making a good deal of hay, asking the Left why it had sabotaged its effort to get the same loan when it ruled. It has successfully got the Speaker to agree to consider allowing an Assembly discussion on it this Friday, after staging a walkout on Thursday.

If it turns out that VS really was in the dark about the loan, it would underline his plight at his job, in a Cabinet nearly full of party men from his rival camp.

If VS overturns the loan deal or gets to freeze it with CPI backing and the party central leadership8217;s support, his detractors in the party would be flat on their face, and may possibly shift power equations his way. That would also spawn the bigger question: Does Kerala, in the red and running on overdraft, have another acceptable option?