KN Ganesh
THE Kerala CPI(M)’s major political campaign, Janakeeya Prathirodha Jatha (People’s Resistance March), was inaugurated at Kasargode on February 20 and it will conclude on March 18 at Putherikandam Maidan in Thiruvananthapuram after marching through all the 140 assembly constituencies in the state.
The jatha is led by MV Govindan, Polit Bureau member and state secretary of the Party, and the jatha team consists of CS Sujatha, M Swaraj, Jaik C Thomas and KT Jaleel with PK Biju as the manager.
THE CONTEXT
The jatha is taking place in the background of severe financial crisis that the LDF government has been facing in the state and the unrelenting attempts of the UDF-BJP opposition, abetted by the right-wing media, to castigate the LDF for the crisis.
It is known that post-Covid, the Indian economy has reached a point of recession, and its growth rates have plummeted, with no respite or revival seen in the near future. Studies have shown that the division between the rich and the poor has increased unprecedentedly, and the financial management of the Modi government has shamelessly abetted the growth of the rich.
This is demonstrated in the centre-state relations, where the centre garners about 60 per cent of the total states’ income, whereas 63 per cent of the total expenditure has to be met by the states. This has meant that the states have always had to go with a begging bowl to the centre, and the attitude of the centre towards the states has been discriminatory and vindictive.
This is nowhere better presented than in the financial allocations to the states, particularly Kerala, where the political opposition to the BJP-NDA has always been in power.
The transition to the GST regime involved a heavy loss to the income of the states, which was compensated earlier by the centre. After the Covid conditions were relaxed, the centre terminated this compensation unilaterally on June 30, 2022. This involved a loss of Rs 12,000 crores for the Kerala state, which has yet to be adjusted ever since. The 15th finance commission has fixed the allocation of finances to Kerala as 1.925 per cent of the total, which is less than even the population percentage of 2.59 per cent. The previous finance commission had fixed the allotment at 2.5 per cent; even earlier, the tenth finance commission had fixed it at 3.84 per cent. This has implied a steady decline in the financial allocations to the state, amounting to a figure of Rs18,000 crores, even as the state demand has increased substantially. When the GST was introduced, the state received a revenue-neutral rate of 16 per cent of all the goods and services marketed. As the taxes on luxury goods were reduced in the recent budget, the share was reduced to 11 per cent, amounting to a loss of another Rs 15,000 crores. Thus, the policy decisions of the central government have brought the state to the verge of a financial crisis.
THE KIIFB SOLUTION
The state has sought to overcome this financial situation by reviving and activating the KIIFB (Kerala Infrastructure Investment and Finance Board) in 2016. The KIIFB was established as an autonomous organisation for finance mobilisation under the EK Nayanar government (1996-2001). KIIFB was revived to mobilise finances for providing the necessary infrastructure for development and it had provided a yeoman service for the formulation and implementation of several projects, particularly after the havoc caused by the floods in 2018 and 2019 and later under Covid. The centre sought to contain the financial mobilisation of the state and dampen the enthusiasm generated as a result of the establishment of the KIIFB, particularly among entrepreneurs and the general public. This was first seen in the continuous efforts by the CAG to investigate the KIIFB, even to the extent of attempting to book the then finance minister, Thomas Isaac. Later, the centre decreed that the KIIFB accounts should be treated as budgetary expenditure, thus implying that the state can borrow only 3 per cent of the budgetary allocations. The Kerala government protested by pointing out that such a restriction does not apply to any autonomous body such as the KIIFB and the consortium set up for meeting the social welfare requirements of the state. The centre has not heeded to any such protests and has gone ahead with the allocation of a paltry Rs 780 crores under GST. It has also been steadily reducing the ceiling on borrowings by the state, whereas the borrowings by the centre have only been increasing.
CALUMNIES OF THE UDF-BJP OPPOSITION
The above conditions have obviously resulted in a financial squeeze in the state. The current central budget has reduced food subsidies, allocation to MNREGA and other allocations to various social welfare schemes. This has only increased the burden on the state government, which is committed to people’s welfare and poverty alleviation measures as a matter of policy. Reduction in the central allocations to various welfare measures meant they had to be compensated somehow by the state government. The present GST regime implies that the state governments could only tax petroleum, diesel and liquor, which are outside the purview of the GST, besides items like land revenue. In order to find additional revenue for welfare measures, the state government decided to tax liquor and petroleum as social security surcharge and enhance the existing land registration dues. The petroleum surcharge was only Rs 2 per litre, a paltry amount compared to the virtually interminable series of hikes in the prices of petroleum products introduced by the petroleum companies abetted by the central government for so many years. The state government clarified that the additional taxation would be utilised to run the existing social security measures.
The media immediately pounced and called the taxation proposals as ‘thunderbolt’ anti-people oppressive measure. They chose to disregard or deliberately ignore the detailed explanation the chief minister and the finance minister gave on the new proposals. They also sought to sideline the rabid reduction in allocations to social security measures introduced in the central budget. The media also focussed on the answer the central finance minister gave to a question by NK Premachandran in parliament regarding the allocation of Rs 780 crores to the state as GST allocation, stating that the Kerala government has not cleared the CAG queries regarding the allocation. Both the question and the answer were used to sidetrack the much more serious criticisms raised by the state against policy decisions by the centre and put the blame on the state government itself. The right-wing media mounted a calumnious campaign against the state government, raising numerous ‘human interest’ stories regarding non-implementation of social security measures, development schemes, alleged incidents of corruption and nepotism and even revived the old gold trafficking incident by targeting the office of the chief minister. This was taken up by the UDF-BJP forces in a deliberate effort to tarnish the image of the state government, even to the extent of attacking the Z-plus category protection given to the chief minister as an attack on people’s freedom.
CPI(M) CAMPAIGN
The CPI(M) felt that it is not enough to meet this attack through a normal response. The real issue is to counter the confusion and apprehensions created among the people by the misinformation and calumny of the opposition. There is a need to explain to the people the real crisis the Kerala government has been facing and seek their support. During January 2023, a house-to-house campaign was launched in which all our comrades, from the state secretary onwards, visited houses and listened to the opinions and complaints of the people regarding the government and the Party. The jatha now being conducted has been planned as a mode of explaining to the people the realities of the present situation in Kerala, exposing the anti-people policies of the central government and the deliberate efforts by the UDF-BJP opposition to mislead and confuse the people. This jatha is also aimed to mobilise their opinion for building a new, resurgent Kerala.
The jatha so far has been a resounding success. It is attracting a minimum of 25,000 people at each centre, where an audience of 10,000 was expected. Even in centres where the CPI(M) is not strong, public enthusiasm is evident. The speeches in the jatha are attracting public attention, resulting in debates. The right-wing media, which tried to malign the jatha as the ‘jatha of Govindan’, as an attempt by the recently elected state secretary to consolidate his position within the Party, is now silent, and is instead trying to deliberately ignore the jatha or concentrate their attention on trivial incidents that inevitably occur in any such massive effort. But the Kerala people are not fooled by such efforts and are coming to attend the jatha in massive numbers and listen to explanations provided by the CPI(M) leaders.
