Expectedly, the highly significant political development, which could redraw the contours of future Kerala politics, has rattled the BJP, which has been bearing the brunt of people’s anger over the untold hardships the people have been put to ever since the announcement of the drive by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

To the utter dismay of the central and state BJP leaders, the UDF has also expressed its willingness to participate in any agitation the LDF Government may deem fit to launch to protest against the ‘anti-poor move of the Centre. The BJP’s growing panic over the development is clear from the angry fulminations and reprehensibly illogical statements emanating from the State BJP leaders.

The BJP has also been stunned by the unprecedented support cutting across the political spectrum – with the sole exception of the BJP – the day-long sit in launched by the State Cabinet led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has managed to receive.

The sit-in, which was in protest against the ban on Kerala’s cooperative banking sector in the currency-exchange exercise. saw total solidarity transcending political barriers. The Chief Minister’s blistering attack against the Modi Government’s ‘political conspiracy’ to destroy the cooperative movement in the state, struck a resonantly responsive chord in people’s hearts.

The BJP leaders in the State compounded their original offence of failing to gauge the public mood, by dubbing the agitation as one sponsored by black money hoarders. BJP state president Kummanam Rajashekharan rubbed salt into the wounds of the people of Kerala by blaming their plight on the Malayalees’ penchant for splurging and luxurious life! This was a totally unwarranted insult of the people of the state, a costly political blunder which will exact a heavy political as well as electoral cost from the BJP.

The Chief Minister said the people of the state will fight tooth and nail any attempt to destroy the cooperative sector, which is the backbone of the State’s economy and only source of funds for the poor and down-trodden. The allegations by the BJP that the cooperative banks are storehouses of black money will be dismissed with the contempt the charge deserves, thundered Pinarayi while addressing the massive gathering.

It is necessary to have a close look at the reasons for the BJP leaders’ outbursts against the cooperative banking sector. The BJP is painfully aware of their near-nil influence on the cooperative sector. What galls the BJP leaders is the fact that the sector remains a strong base of their bête noire: the left parties led by the CPI(M). The BJP’s effort is to destroy the cooperative banking sector by accusing it of being the den of black money. The BJP hopes to weaken the hold of the left parties on the sector by launching such wild charges. But in fact, the BJP bid seems to have boomeranged.

It is nobody’s case that the functioning of the cooperative banking sector is flawless. If there are bad eggs among the cooperative banks, there are enough provisions in existing legal system to identify the culprits and punish them. But to say that the entire cooperative sector is a den of black money is an insult to crores of poor and downtrodden who have deposited their hard-earned money in these banks. What the Government ban has done is to prevent them access to their own money. Needless to say, the callous act has put lakhs and lakhs of the poor to great inconvenience and untold hardships. Even the Supreme Court has been constrained to criticize the Modi Government for its failure to ease the people’s difficulties. That is bad enough. What is worse is continued efforts to add to the people’s misery by coming out with fresh restrictions instead of taking quick steps to solve their difficulties.

That the Tughlaqian decision has dealt a severe setback to the BJP’s ambitious plan to ‘capture Kerala’ goes without saying. Already, the BJP’s efforts to cobble together a third front to ‘liberate’ the state from the ‘stranglehold’ of the CPI(M)-led LDF and the Congress-led UDF have come to grief with their newly-acquired ally, the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) voicing its displeasure against the ruling party at the Centre. With the demonetisation drive backfiring and turning large sections of the people against the BJP, the party’s dream of emerging as a credible alternative to the LDF and the UDF will remain what it has so far been: a pipedream and a mere gleam in the eyes of its leaders and cadres. (IPA Service)