Results of the six by-elections to assemblies in five states last week went along predicted lines except for two major factors that could point to what could be in store for the future. The first of these two factors was the inexorable decline of the communists while the other was the exponential growth of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Kerala, the state that has kept the party at more than an arm’s length in successive elections.   
It was a no-brainer who the winner would be in Tamil Nadu’s Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency. The bolder prediction would have been who would have had the courage to take on Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Her arch rival Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam apparently did not have it, but camouflaged its incompetence saying it wanted to focus on the full state assembly elections due next year and, therefore, did not want to waste its energy on a by-election.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) did not want to be seen flinching, but C Mahendran’s challenge was like the proverbial frog standing up to the elephant. There were 26 other candidates in the fray, but it is doubtful if some of them got the nod from even their own uncles and aunts. Jayalalithaa’s 150,722-vote margin of victory was the third biggest in India’s electoral history for assembly polls.
The other predictable factor was in all these elections the party in power in the respective state won, as happens most of the time in Indian by-polls. So the Congress Party won in Kerala and Meghalaya, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) won both the seats in Tripura, the BJP in Madhya Pradesh and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu.
But the one result that took many by surprise, for reasons other than who the eventual winner was, was in Kerala’s Aruvikkara constituency. For the record, the ruling Congress Party’s K S Sabarinadhan defeated his nearest CPM rival M Vijayakumar by a margin of 10,128 votes. But the by-election had more than victory or defeat hanging from its result.  
For starters, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had declared that Aruvikkara would be a referendum on his government. With scandals and scams breaking - but none getting established - one after the other over the last couple of years, it was quite a bold move by Chandy to say what he said. The CPM thought this was the chance to kill two birds with one shot, win Aruvikkara and also fell the chief minister. Its state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan accepted the challenge and mounted a campaign not just against the candidate and his party but against Chandy and the ruling coalition.  
The resounding success of the Congress candidate not only put paid to the CPM’s challenge in Aruvikkara but also perhaps for next year’s full assembly elections as well. It is not surprising though that the communists are slipping down the slope without any hope of reversing the process. Their tendency to take to violence to solve any issue got to the point where even the state assembly was not spared. Violence and vandalism was unleashed on the House as the CPM tried to obstruct Finance Minister K M Mani from presenting the budget proposals. It was a shocking sight for most Keralites. Hardly a month goes by without the state witnessing a “hartal” or strike, mostly initiated by the Marxists, as the hapless people run for cover from the murderous lumpen elements which the party seems to feed on. Even within the party itself, any challenge to the leadership results in brutal violence as is often witnessed in Marxist strongholds like Kannur and Thalasseri.  
Leadership, it seems, is ordained as far as the Marxists are concerned. It cannot be questioned. If Mao Tse Tung (now Mao Zedong) had said that “every communist must grasp the truth: power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, then it shall be so. Mao said it in 1938. This is 2015, but as far as the Marxists in Kerala are concerned, age cannot whither nor custom stale the infinite wisdom of the “Great Helmsman”. If a gun is not available, a machete or a dagger or anything that can maim or kill would do. For long the people of Kerala had suffered under this gun culture. West Bengal ended it four years ago. It is now Kerala’s turn.  
It shall be so because the leadership does not seem to understand the real reason for the party’s loss in Aruvikkara. Instead it is trying to blame the BJP for splitting the anti-Congress vote and the Congress for its alleged “vote-buying” tactics. As if it is for the BJP and the Congress Party not to do anything that would hurt the CPM electorally. Is it the CPM’s case that you can hurt people physically, even kill them, but you should not hurt anyone electorally?
Curiously, a change of guard at the national level has also not done much good to the CPM. Prakash Karat was a “naysayer” to everything that looked even remotely progressive. When he was replaced by a “young” Sitaram Yechuri, 62, much was being made of how the party was going to turn a new leaf and that, in keeping with the times, progress and development would be the new agenda of the party. The need of the hour was not just going back to the drawing board but getting an altogether new drawing board. But not only has Yechuri not tried to do anything new but he has also opposed and ridiculed even simple health-oriented initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi like ‘Swachh Bharat’ and International Yoga Day. (Yoga, says Yechuri, reminds him of dog’s postures!) So, unless the CPM takes some very calculated measures to move away from its tried-tested-failed methods, the party’s case in Kerala is done and dusted.
But even as the CPM is looking down the barrel of the gun, the BJP stock is rising with each election. The quantum jump in the BJP vote share in Aruvikkara - party candidate O Rajagopal won 34,145 votes which was a 500% increase from the 2011election - has done a world of good to the morale of the party which is now hoping to break the jinx in Kerala. (In Tripura too the BJP has done well pushing the Congress to the third place.)
That Chandy has not just managed to hold on but win handsomely for the Congress will give the party some much-needed oxygen as it is floundering nationally under a confused leadership. It also puts the Congress as the frontrunner for the 2016 elections. A victory next year could also trigger the rejuvenation that the Congress Party has been vainly seeking for the past year-and-a-half.

Modi’s silence is deafening

Looks like the honeymoon period is well and truly over for the Narendra Modi government.
Hardly has it completed its first year in office than problems - some grave, some frivolous - have started appearing one after the other and the worst part is Modi is showing signs of Manmohan Singh in the way he approaches these issues.
The Lalit Modi saga gets enlarged with each tweet - and these are dime a dozen these days - that the former cricket czar sends out from his open “hideout” in some agreeable place in Europe. Narendra Modi, known as the ‘great communicator’, has yet to say what he thinks of the issue.
The disagreement between Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over security clearance for Sun TV has finally reached the prime minister’s door but Modi has not said a word about it till date.
If Modi has enough on his plate in Delhi, there are bigger scandals breaking out in states ruled by his party. The ‘Vyapam’ (an acronym for the ‘Vyavasayik Pareeksha Mandal’) scam in Madhya Pradesh has till date cost the lives of 45 people, including that of a senior TV journalist working for the Indian Today group and two top doctors of Jabalpur Medical College. The state’s governor, Ram Naresh Yadav, a BJP acolyte, is under a cloud after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a plea for his ejection for alleged involvement in the scam.
The multi-million rupee scandal involves government officials, businessmen and politicians allegedly putting up proxy candidates in tests for admission to professional courses like MBBS and also for recruitment to various posts.
In Maharashtra, Pankaja Munde, a minister in the BJP-led government, is facing allegations of favouritism in handing out government contracts. The Congress is also charging Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh of embezzlement in a Rs36bn contract for public distribution of rice.  
Amidst all this, Narendra Modi is maintaining total silence. It’s inconceivable that he has not talked to his associates about these issues. But for a man who takes to the social and news media like duck to water, this silence is clearly deafening. Shades of Manmohan Singh, won’t you say?