Kerala CS hails Gujarat Model as the Best

Thiruvananthapuram, 30 April (HS): The self-styled secularists and intellectuals of Kerala are facing the biggest predicament they have come across in their life. V P Joy, the chief secretary of the State accompanied by his staff officer visited Gandhinagar, met the chief minister of Gujarat and members of his council of ministers to learn about the project implementation and monitoring system in the State. Joy went one step ahead and described the Gujarat Model as the best and opined that it should be replicated in Kerala.

Hell broke loose in God’s Own Country by Friday evening and all news channels organized debates and discussions to question the authenticity of the chief secretary’s findings. Gujarat and Narendra Modi are the two terms that come under attack from all quarters in Kerala barring the Sangh Parivar and the BJP.

Any mention from any corner in the world that Gujarat is doing an excellent job would bring a verbal backlash from all news anchorpersons on TV channels and editorial writers in Malayalam dailies.

People in Kerala saw the unusual scene of the then Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan walking out of a function where Narendra Modi was present in his capacity as the chief minister of Gujarat. It is another thing that Achuthanandan was cheated by his own party after the 2016 assembly election when he had been promised the chief ministership in lieu of his campaigning for the party.

Though the CPI(M) won the polls, it was Pinarayi Vijayan who walked away with the chair of the chief minister. Sitaram Yechuri, the party’s all India secretary, described Achuthanandan as the Kerala Castro, though the nonagenarian leader is not known for his Castro-style escapades. Now in 2022 poor Achuthanandan is lying in his rented house at Thiruvananthapuram waiting for the one-way ticket for his appointment with Marx and Joseph Stalin.

All panellists who took part in the discussion were vying with one another to claim that the development made by Gujarat was not real and was the handiwork of the media to extract good publicity for Modi. One of the panellists, M P Joseph, a retired IAS officer who is the son-in-law of late K M Mani ridiculed the chief secretary for visiting Gujarat to learn about non-existent progress claimed to have been made in Gujarat.

It is time Kerala politicians and people understand what is development. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who does not miss even a single opportunity to abuse and insult Modi, is undergoing treatment at Mayo Clinic in the USA for cancer.

Throughout the pandemic period of Covid-19, Vijayan has been claiming that the Kerala Model of Health Care developed by the CPI(M) was the best in the world. His health minister KK Shylaja (2016-21) claimed that even the President of the USA and Prime Minister of Britain were ringing her up daily to seek clarifications in Covid-19 management.

Later on, it was found that the Government of Kerala had suppressed the number of Covid cases in the state and even the number of deaths. Vijayan and Shylaja had commissioned writers to publish edit-page articles in leading newspapers and presented the writers with the State’s best literary awards in addition to the lakhs of rupees paid as honorarium.

By the end of the tenure of the LDF Government in 2021 Vijayan and Shylaja were fighting a running battle. Vijayan saw to it that Shylaja, who had prepared an impressive portfolio of her to bowl out the party’s leadership, was kept out of the government he formed after the 2021 election. Shylaja continues sulking over the denial of a chance to her to serve the people for another five years.

People in Gujarat say that the State has benefited a lot under the tenure of Modi. “That’s the reason why he got re-elected after each five-year term and ultimately chosen as Prime Ministerial candidate.

Till the arrival of Modi on the scene, the general impression/notion was that women were afflicted with jealousy. Not any more. People in Kerala, particularly the Marxists and Moulavis are fighting a strong war to keep the state away from Modi Magic. But jealousy among politicians and men is the most unbearable sight.