Payyavur portent

Payyavur would have remained an obscure village in Kerala and an unknown one to the outside world, had not a happening there a few months...

Payyavur would have remained an obscure village in Kerala and an unknown one to the outside world, had not a happening there a few months ago aroused the Marxist rage. No, it was not a case of feudal oppression stoking revolutionary fires. What stung the state CPIM into action was the threatened loss of power in the 10-member panchayat, which it controlled with the help of outside support.

The CPIM saw red the moment the panchayat-level allies won earlier in unrecorded ways saw greener political pastures and cast their lot with the local Congress. Payyavur then hit the headlines. And, it stayed there as the leader of the country8217;s Left went all out to keep Payyavur regardless of elementary arithmetic. It became a household name inside Kerala when the defectors, who received the denunciation the CPIM normally reserved for hated class enemies, were forcibly prevented from participating in a no-confidence vote against the Marxist president of the local body.

For the first time the comrades realisedthe power of the media, particularly the electronic, which camped at Payyavur to record the undemocratic means to defeat the no-confidence motion. The ensuing Congress agitation which evoked a good response from the public only strengthened the party8217;s resolve to hold on to what it evidently regarded as its pocket panchayat.

The wheel has turned a full circle now. The personage of august pettiness has been removed at last from his elective post, in a court-ordered no-trust vote that the commissars could do nothing about. The lessons are obvious, but there would seem to be very little chance of the Marxists accepting them, far less acting on them. Chief Minister E. K. Nayanar himself has taken Payyavur as nothing but a partisan challenge to the CPIM. And, his as well as his party8217;s response has been to pretend a larger concern. This was done through the promulgation in October of the Kerala Local Self-Government Institutions Prevention of Defection Ordinance.

Less notable for its democratic substancethan the length of its title, the ordinance was no revolution in a single panchayat. Its main provision, making a panchayat and municipal-level defection an offence punishable with a disqualification for two terms, in effect, was incompatible with a by now widely accepted proposition: what a reformed system should really demand of the defector is that he face a fresh election.

The ordinance did not become an advance upon the existing anti-defection Act by legitimising a panchayat or municipal party8217;s split if only a half of the members split away instead of a third. The CPIM-led government has not strengthened grassroots democracy by resorting to tactics of a transparent ploy.

Local bodies cannot be strengthened by making them part of a larger power structure, whatever may be its party label. Panchayati raj cannot serve its purpose if it cannot be insulated at all from the repercussions of partisan conflicts at national and state levels. Decentralisation of power can help objectives of development onlyif those who pay it lip-service let it do so. This is a lesson the CPIM may be loathe to draw. It can ill afford, however, to ignore the one taught in Payyavur.