There is a huge difference between democratic struggles outside Kerala, and those which unfold inside the state at the moment. While elsewhere they strive to make democracy integral to the system, in Kerala we are struggling desperately to keep alive, at least, the traces of something that we had, a fairly democratised society and a tolerably responsive state.

In the last century, we had a state that responded to what Kerala ‘s admirers called ‘public action’, a state that, despite many crucial failings, still acknowledged the presence of a vast entity called ‘the people ‘. Till at least the last decade of that century, when the CPM  moved towards a version of the neoliberal welfarism. In the new century, the state in Kerala began to be gradually securitised, concerned more with security than democracy.   Struggles by marginalized groups have however continued to demand, implicitly, that we want the old left and the state, an improved, more sensitive, social justice -oriented version of it.

The ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala is no exception. These are mostly triple -marginalised women,  mostly working class, dalit-OBC, grossly underpaid, overworked and abused social care workers. Often the sole income earner in female-headed families struggling with debt and the terrible prospect of expulsion through revenue recovery. In other words, people left out of the fable of the Kerala Model knocking at the doors of the state for refuge and relief from relentless capitalism eroding the very possibility of a life worth living.

Now, the CPM has a new national secretary, Comrade M A Baby. He is Malayali, from south Kerala, known to be a liberal of sorts, interested in art, literature and music, cultivated, that is, in a bourgeois fashion that leftists once loved to lampoon.

For me, Baby’s place of origin is perhaps more important. He hails from the Kollam district in south Kerala, the cradle of spectacular workers’ struggles in the history of the communist movement in Kerala. The communist movement in the native state of Travancore in the early half of the twentieth century advanced at the foot of earlier social democratisation led by waves of anti-caste struggles. These were struggles shaped by great figures who overturned the dehumanising morality of caste and planted the seeds of the possibility of society, especially Sri Narayana Guru. Travancore also had a more modernized labour system, with the working class in its coir and cashew factories, a substantial part of which was female.Unlike in Malabar, which was part of the Madras Presidency, ridden far more with feudal structures, unquestioned caste violence and domination. That shaped communism there quite differently. Pinarayi Vijayan and his domineering style were both identified by their origins in this history in which communists built their influence through constituents  not sufficiently de-feudalised (despite the presence of such great anti caste figures as Vagbhatanandan.)

So no surprise that many people expected a different response from Baby on the ASHA workers’ strike. Here is someone who refused to condemn Arundhati Roy when the communists bayed for her blood after The God of Small Things’ unflattering portrayal of their haloed leaders. Here is someone who projects himself as an aesthetically, and not just politically-cultured communist.

But it now turns out, dollops of Kumar Gandharva and T M Krishna do not necessarily humanise. That is what Comrade Baby’s shockingly false and callous characterisation of the ongoing ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala.

So, it seems –it is not those who flaunt their crude, boorish style in the CPM (the CITU patriarchs; Sivankutty, the Education minister; R Bindu, minister of Higher Education), or those who respond to the strike as if they are dead in head and heart (Veena George, A R Sindhu, Brinda Karat),  or the CPM toadie journalists whose serious lack of thinking abilities coupled with blather-talent has served them rather well, who have delivered the unkindest cut. It is none other than the sophisticated Comrade Baby who has brought down the full force of ignorance, meanness, insecurity, and callous disregard on Kerala ‘s best if poorest public workers.

This he did by comparing the ASHA workers’ strike with an infamous episode from the late 1950s when social elites worried about losing their property and wealth joined forces with rival political parties and intellectuals who were bothered by communist intimidation and possible attacks by them against dissidents, and launched an agitation that successfully led to the dismissal of the first communist government in Kerala.

The absurdity of the comparison is not comical, it is outrageous. The women who flooded the streets in the so-called Liberation Struggle were hardly the poor. They were of the propertied classes, seeking to protect the privileges of their families and communities. The fisher communities which were mobilised against the government then were nearly illiterate and very very far from the mainstream, quite unlike the poor in the present protest, many of who are CPM supporters. They are disgruntled with the CITU affiliated union, but they still identify with the left and know well about the legacy of the left in Kerala. In the ‘Liberation Struggle ‘ the social elites came together to protect interests; in the present workers’ strike, women workers of all castes, creeds, and political parties are together in demanding basic rights, and dignity. In the former, the determination to unseat the first communist government was openly declared and pursued; the striking workers have repeatedly declared that they are not part of any such conspiracy and that they just need the government to agree to give them the minimum wage and retirement benefits to ensure their dignity in retirement. We are willing to take an increase of just Rs 3000 in honorarium, and the rest of the demands can be left to a commission set up by the government to be decided later, they said, in the last round of negotiations. In other words, all they are asking for is some attention to their needs from the government, like it used to give to some sections of workers and women at least, in the past century. The intellectuals involved in this are your own fellow travellers to some extent or the other, not those who are advancing Cold War scaremongering and conservative insecurities of social destabilization as expressed, for example, in the glass-of-water theory about sexual activity in the Soviet Union.

But, Comrade Baby, if the poor are asking for basic rights and that puts the Kerala government and the powerful CPM into jeopardy, then what is this regime you are presiding over? What is this place? From your description, it seems more like France on the eve of the French Revolution? Do you realise that you sound like a snooty French aristocrat scoffing at the poor and doffing his hat to the King?

I am asking this because if by any chance you snapped out of this historical daydream-outing, you would notice that we live in a far more democratised society, and you cannot ignore the people. Indeed, in such a society, the poor can make their demands without looking like a threat to your regime — and you can soothe your own fears of such a rising by listening carefully to the poor, negotiating respectfully with them, and doing all that you can to meet their demands.

But then, if you really do believe that the poor social care workers, women of the most disadvantaged social strata, are out to get you, then which are the interests that back you up? A list of those interests would expose you totally, I presume. Everyone knows one intersection at which the CPM and the BJP meet: Adani. But there are many other, less obvious ones, which we all know about, despite the best efforts of the sophists in your court.

Comrade Baby, please shake yourself out of these delusions. No, no one is threatening your government. The BJP leaders who tried to take advantage of the workers’ pain were rebuffed by the striking workers, if politely. Suresh Gopi is no longer smiling at the workers. In fact, the strike gives you a huge opportunity to redeem the CPM  from the damages done by the two Veenas — Veena George and the Chief Minister ‘s daughter T Veena, about to be charged with corruption formally. Settle it now as fairly as you can, and you get out almost every mess the Pinarayi Vijayan government has got the Kerala CPM into.

Please snap out of this nightmarish trance, Comrade. Do not drive the poorest away. Not just because they are the voters, but because empathy is at the heart of socialism.