Delhi Diary/By A K B Krishnan

If you can’t beat them, join them. That’s old hat. If you can’t beat them, beat them up. Even that’s passé. So here’s the latest: If you can’t beat them, bite them!
As with most revolutions that have spilt blood, this too is the brainchild of communists/socialists. But unlike the earlier instances where the cadre did all the spilling and the leader stood aside and watched, this once it’s the leaders who are in the thick of things, scratching and biting their opponents. (Perhaps a sign of the times that there are more leaders than cadre!)
Luis Suarez of Uruguay can possibly learn a thing or two from the lawless lawmakers of Kerala’s CPM who last week scratched and bit their way to the speaker’s podium in the state assembly in their attempt to stall Finance Minister K M Mani from presenting the annual budget. We don’t know if the agitators knew anything about Suarez and his infamous “biting football” but they had surely heard of Mohandas Gandhi.  
Jameela Prakasham, the Janata Dal legislator who sank her teeth into the shoulder of Congress lawmaker Sivadasan Nair as he tried to protect Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, says she was inspired by Gandhi. “Father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said when women come under attack they should fight tooth and nail,” says Prakasham. Women were certainly not under attack in the Kerala assembly. If anything, the women were the attackers. And no one seems to have reminded her that Gandhi was the apostle of non-violence and what Prakasham and her cohorts carried out that day was violence most foul.
It was not for the first time in India that lawmakers had displayed their loutish side inside assembly halls. States like Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and even Jammu and Kashmir had witnessed chaos and violence as entrenched political parties forgot their primary function - to debate, discuss and decide. Educated and, therefore, enlightened Kerala was supposed to be in a different league. Or so one thought until last Friday.
For those who are superstitious, it was Friday the 13th and it was also the 13th time, a record, that Mani was presenting the budget. To make it more interesting, this is the 13th assembly since the formation of the state. Naturally, the communists cannot be superstitious because they don’t believe. But they want us to believe that Mani is corrupt and, therefore, should not be allowed to present the state budget.
Mani is not your ordinary politician. At 82, he is the longest-serving member of the Kerala assembly beating his arch-rival and leader of the opposition V S Achuthanandan by a long margin though the 91-year-old Marxist veteran is by far the most senior member of the House. Mani is also the longest serving minister ever in the state and has continuously represented his Palai constituency since its inception in 1965.
All this is not say that Mani is incorruptible. He may well have taken money from a hotel owner with the promise of granting him a bar licence. Despite vehement denials from Mani, a case has been registered against him and an investigation is on.
Of course you don’t expect politicians, senior or junior, to own up their wrong-doings, big or small. So the law will decide. And the law says you are innocent until proven guilty. But the Leftists in the state have no time for such niceties. They have their own kangaroo court and Mani has been found guilty by that court.
The long grapevine in Delhi has it that it was Chief Minister Chandy who had originally wanted to “fix” Mani because the finance minister said to be trying to usurp his chair. The bar licence scam, it is said, is the brainchild of the Chandy camp. But all along Chandy has been overtly supporting Mani, declaring the budget would be presented by none other than Mani.
The rumour gained further currency when Chandy’s Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala initially said no action was warranted against the rioting lawmakers and that the state police would not be required to inquire into the incident. But Chennithala had to swallow his words when Governor Palanisamy Sathasivam, himself a former chief justice of India, took serious note of the incident after he received a report from Speaker N Sakthan and even threatened to invoke the constitutional provision under Article 356 to dissolve the assembly.
The vandals in the Kerala assembly however have impacted the nation’s parliament in somewhat different fashion. The state unit of the BJP had also objected to Mani presenting the budget but since it has no representation in the assembly it could only shout from the outside. So suddenly one finds Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party making common cause with the Leftists from the state as well as from West Bengal in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha as they attack the Congress Party for what happened in Kerala. Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows.
Chandy’s three-and-a-half year-old government has been having a roller-coaster ride but the scams and scandals - Swiss Solar, Leeds Capital, the bar bribe, to name a few - are dragging it down further.
Kerala is a state known for its anti-incumbency sentiment and many political observers have predicted hard times for the Congress in the elections due next year. The state’s exchequer is near-empty and many development projects have either been delayed or scrapped altogether. If the situation were to continue in the coming year, the Congress would have to surrender yet another state.
But with the Marxists letting loose their rogue elements inside what is generally accepted as the temple of democracy, the Kerala voter could not be blamed if she dumps the party again.
It’s about time too. The ideology has been dead since long in the country of its birth. Although Kerala was the world’s first state to have an elected communist government (1957), the comrades there now look poised to become irrelevant. If that happens, Chandy’s alleged plan to fix Mani can only be described as a blessing in disguise for the Congress. Even the chief minister could not have forecast such a turn of events. It would also suit Achuthanandan who could settle a score with party colleague Pinarayi Vijayan who is tipped to be the party’s chief ministerial candidate next year. A win-win situation if ever there was any.

In the news for all wrong reasons
It’s turbulent times for Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju, thanks mainly to the national carrier, Air India.
If it’s not delayed departures and, consequently, late arrivals, it’s ill-mannered and apathetic staff that is keeping Air India in the news for all the wrong reasons. Earlier this month Raju had to apologise in parliament for the poor ‘On Time Performance’ (OTP) of the airline. Statistics revealed that close to 100,000 passengers were distressed because as much as 70% of Air India’s flights were delayed or cancelled in the first two months of 2015.
A video showing passengers beseeching Air India staff at the check-in counter in Mumbai - with one lady breaking down uncontrollably - went viral on YouTube earlier this month. It was carried by most national television channels eliciting sharp responses from viewers condemning the airline.
Curiously, Raju had started off as a no-nonsense minister who was ready to go the extra mile to make sure that Indians took to the skies without hassle even as the airline industry turned the corner after years of being in the red.
In one of his first pronouncements, Raju had said that the 5/20 rule, which stipulated domestic carriers to have a minimum of five years flying history and at least 20 aircraft before they can apply to fly abroad, was a “stupid one and will have to go.” And sure enough Raju has acted on his promise and reduced the period by half and cut the fleet numbers to just five.
But with Air India Raju seems to have met his match. He had begun his stint by hinting that privatisation of the national carrier was indeed a possibility. But not only is there no talk of any such move, Raju is not even successful in getting flight crew to report on time. (Last month there were 167 late arrivals leading to as many as six delayed flights every day of the month. Earlier this month Air India’s Delhi-Sydney flight took off more than eight hours late forcing cricket fans heading for the India-Pakistan World Cup match in Adelaide to miss all the action) . The more things change the more they remain the same. How true, if you know what Air India is like!