The Hindu : Untimely end to a life of promise

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 15, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

Untimely end to a life of promise

By C. Gouridasan Nair

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Nov. 14. E. M. Sreedharan Namboodiripad could have ended as yet another chartered accountant, with his illustrious father's name as a calling card. But EMS' son could not allow his life to go in vain, earning and spending. He wrote to his father sometime in 1973 seeking to know whether he could follow on the footsteps of his father. The rest, as they say, is history.

He did not rise to giddy heights in politics. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to enter the State Assembly and the Lok Sabha. He also had to live down a low-intensity murmur campaign about his being the son on the rise. Like many other young leaders in the party, he too was caught in the vortex of a fierce faction struggle and could hardly come out unscathed. But, through it all, Sreedharan demonstrated a rare forbearance, very much like the way he fought against lymphoma that claimed his life just a year after it was detected.

Sreedharan was not tied down by dogma and had an open mind on developmental issues. It would not be correct to call him an economist, but his grasp of the nuances of public finance was solid. He displayed his financial acumen by teaming up with the LDF's 1987-'91 Finance Minister, V. Viswanatha Menon, to present the Kerala's first-ever zero-deficit budget and introduce Turnover Tax (TOT) for the first time in the State.

As member of the State Planning Board during the 1996-'2001 LDF Government, he teamed up with T. M. Thomas Isaac to draw up and implement the People's Plan Campaign, a bold initiative to usher in participatory democracy. At the same time, he also headed the State Task Force on Information Technology, thereby playing a pivotal role in formulation of the State's first-ever IT policy. When the CPI(M) as a whole was shouting from the roof top against any increase in tuition fees in colleges, Sreedharan had no hesitation in writing a well-researched piece on why college fees should be enhanced.

He was not just a run-of-mill politician and showed his class as a writer penning some well-crafted columns in Malayalam. He could quarrel with intensity, but he chose to tread a lonely path whenever doubts and differences of opinion haunted him. He could love with passion, the proof for which is the only short story he has written: a poetic tale about his eldest son, the `blue child', who died very young.

That he could reach out to the needy in unorthodox ways is clear from his decision to donate his eyes. He did so in other ways also. By sponsoring children in foundling homes, for instance. In his death, at least one child at the SOS Village at Choondy near Aluva has lost a benefactor. He had taken EMS to the village a year before the Marxist veteran's death to let the children spend some time with him. And if there are any in Kerala who even now wonder how suddenly letters from SOS Village seeking sponsorships landed on their doorsteps a few years ago, the answer is no more.

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Untimely end to a life of promise