US professor denies role in People’s Plan campaign

Richard W. Franke, the American academic who was linked with the People’s Plan in Kerala, has denied any ‘‘official’&#14...

Richard W. Franke, the American academic who was linked with the People’s Plan in Kerala, has denied any ‘‘official’’ role in the campaign. CPI(M) hardliners, owing allegiance to Politburo member V.S. Achuthanandan, had alleged that Franke had helped with the campaign on decentralisation under the LDF government.

In a statement e-mailed from the US, Franke said: ‘‘It has come to my attention that the Malayalam Press has published an accusation that I played a role as a consultant to the Kerala People’s Campaign for the Ninth Plan.

This accusation, if it has been made, is apparently based on information from a Montclair State University website containing an annual report of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

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As I have stated earlier, I did not prepare the website and I have nothing to do with the information on it. Considering my consistent and deep academic involvement in studying Kerala’s case, particularly the People’s Campaign, about which I had intimated my department at MSU, some over-enthusiastic university personnel might have inserted such an item without prior approval or verification from me.’’

He also denied involvement in the campaign. ‘‘I was never a consultant, never an advisor and did not have any influence on the origins or the course of the campaign…I was never in the pay of the US Government or of any NGO or other similar organisations…My only role in this entire period was to assist T.M. Thomas Isaac and interact with various other scholars in different disciplines to document and analyse the campaign plan from an academician’s point of view.’’

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