It is almost a week since ‘Maoists’ attacked two forest outposts and outlets of the KFC and McDonalds in Palakkad and Wayanad districts. The attacks capped reports in both the electronic and print media about ‘sightings’ of Maoists by villagers living in proximity to the Wayanad forests. But the attacks and the arrest of two youths in connection with them have left many wondering how real the Maoist threat is.
From day one, there were many who refused to buy the ‘Maoist attack’ story hook, line and sinker. The media reporting reflected this, where nobody seemed ready to place the responsibility for the attack at the Maoists’ door and qualified their reports to an unprecedented extent. Now, some in the State administration have begun to point at a different possibility, that of the ‘Maoist attacks’ having been ‘staged’ so that the budget earmarked for anti-Maoist offensive does not lapse when the current financial year ends in three months.
Nobody knows for sure and it is impossible to say for certain if the threat is for real or an illusion created by vested interests.
The way the standoff between Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Kerala Pradesh Congress president V.M. Sudheeran over the government’s liquor policy ended has a hare and tortoise feel to it. After remaining at the receiving end for weeks, Mr. Chandy made his moves to let the argument of ‘pragmatism’ prevail over Mr. Sudheeran’s contentions of idealism, the end result being watering down of the liquor policy.
But Mr. Chandy probably did not bargain for the kind of backlash from the Church. The prohibition arm of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC) came out strongly against the dilution of the liquor policy and even organised a three-hour ‘stand-up’ stir against it. Here too, Mr. Chandy was at his patient best, allowing his lieutenants to do all the talking. They did their job, not mincing words and telling the Church to mind its flock before meddling with State policy. The Chief Minister stepped in at the last minute, calling on Thamarassery Archbishop Remigiose Inchinaniyil. What transpired at the meeting is a secret but insiders say that enough happened at the meeting to leave the Chief Minister a happy man.
When the State government attempted democratic decentralisation in the mid 1990s, the big promise was that the three-tier local bodies would become local governments with powers and functions that were till then the exclusive preserve of the State and Central governments. But, after some 18 years later, local body functionaries are finding to their dismay that they have neither the promised functions nor the powers to enforce their will on the local administrative machinery.
Members of the Kannur district panchayat were once again reminded about their true strength when they wanted to initiate action against the headmaster of a school under the district panchayat’s control for failing to furnish expenditure details of the school’s parent-teacher association.
When they made the preliminary move to initiate disciplinary action against the headmaster, the Education Department authorities told them in uncertain terms that they could do nothing of the kind.
What they can do is to pass a resolution against the person in question, send it to the State government and wait for a decision somewhere up there. Last heard, the district panchayat members are squirming and fretting, even as life goes on as usual for the headmaster.
