The Bharatiya Janata Party in Kerala hopes to utilise the Prime Minister’s visit as a launch for an outreach drive targeted at attracting young and the Christian community in Kerala. After a roadshow in Kochi, the PM visited a youth development project called Yuvam 2023, which the BJP thinks would be a game changer in Kerala politics. The Prime Minister’s meeting with church leaders, on the other hand, would be the most politically significant event. According to the BJP, the outreach programme has been well welcomed, with numerous members of the Christian community lately joining the party and more reportedly coming to join even before the PM’s arrival. Apart from the Christian outreach the PM himself is setting the tone for development push in God’s own country in a scale never seen before. The deadly combo of outreach to Christian community and the promises of development in a stagnant political landscape is expected to mark a shift in Kerala politics which has been dominated by only LDF and UDF until now and this change might put the Left and the Congress in the state in a tricky political position.
BJP’s Christian Outreach
BJP’s outreach to Christian community making significant strides. On the eve of Modi’s visit in a Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said that it was not the first time that church leaders were meeting the PM. While speaking to reporters in Thiruvananthapuram, he said that after Modi became PM in 2015, many church leaders had met him in Kochi when he arrived in the state to go to Thrissur. BJP is slowly and steadily increasing its presence among the community.
BJP’s outreach campaign received a shot in the arm when a senior Bishop Thalassery archbishop Mar Joseph Pamplany of the influential Syro-Malabar Catholic Church said that if the Centre promised to increase the rate of rubber procurement to ₹300 per kilogram, the party’s dearth of an MP from the southern state would be addressed. Subsequently, the visits to Christian priests by BJP leaders increased in number.
As portrayed by ‘Left-Liberal’ media outlets BJP is a Hindutva party working to establish a Hindu nation. The tag of ‘exclusive party’ has been a burden for BJP since its emergence. But a chain of electoral victories in minority community dominated areas, including the recent elections is helping the BJP to shed its anti-minority tag. The election results were declared for Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland has been significant in this direction. These are states having significant Christian community population; Meghalaya- 75% Christians, Tripura- 5% Christians, Nagaland- 88% Christians. In India, North East (28%), Kerala (19%) and Goa (25%) have a significant Christian population. Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Arunachal, and Goa are states with significant Christian populations in India. In all these states BJP is in power in coalition or on its own. In Kerala BJP is poised to shake the age-old structure of LDF-UDF rule in the state.
Then, there are electoral and population realities behind the coming together of Christian community in Kerala and the BJP. According to the 2011 Census of India, Christians make up approximately 18.4% of the population of Kerala. However, the population of Christians in Kerala has been stagnating in recent years, with only a slight increase in their proportion of the total population since the last census in 2001. One of the main factors contributing to the stagnation of the Christian population in Kerala is a low birth rate. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 2015-16, the total fertility rate (TFR) among Christian women in Kerala was 1.6, which is below the replacement level of 2.1.
This means that the number of children born to Christian women in Kerala is not enough to replace the existing population, which is leading to a decline in their overall numbers. In comparison, the TFR among Muslim women in Kerala was 2.3, which is higher than the TFR among Christian women. This has led to a higher growth rate of the Muslim population in Kerala compared to the Christian population. According to the NFHS-4 data, the Muslim population in Kerala grew by 12.8% between 2001 and 2015-16, while the Christian population grew by only 1.5% during the same period. This trend is expected to continue, with projections indicating that the Muslim population in Kerala will surpass the Christian population soon. With almost 30% of the total population the Muslim population is growing faster than both Hindu and Christian community. The population arithmetic in Kerala is generally creating rumblings with in the Christian community.
Hindu electorate in Kerala is politically ambiguous as their vote is split between hardcore communism and traditional loyalty to Congress but that might also change soon as Christian community will help the BJP build an identity base in Kerala as an agent of change. Kerala Congress, representing interesting of various Christian communities is currently supporting the LDF government, but there is general dissatisfaction with the government, the LDF’s overtures to Muslim League to join LDF is also causing disturbances within then Christian community. The remarks by Pala Bishop not so long ago on ‘Love Jihad’ and ‘Narcotic Jihad’ and concerns of Christians regarding growing Islamic extremism in Kerala is also fuelling Christian community’s tilt towards the BJP.
Stagnant ‘Kerala Model’ Wrapped In Lavish Expenditure, Corruption, And Terrorism
The Left government is on its 2nd leg, throughout their 7 years continuous rule of Kerala the LDF government has demonstrated how to not rule a state. The reign of the 2nd Left Democratic Front (LDF) government started with controversy. The swearing in ceremony of the government was conducted physically during the peak of the second Covid wave which devastated the country and the newly sworn in government excluded famed health minister of Kerala K.K. Shailaja who had won with a record margin (more than the Chief Minister). The new cabinet excluded everyone except the reigning Chief minister. This was a symbolic example of what was to come as it consolidated the all-mighty hold of Pinarayi Vijayan’s left government over the state government. Kerala is a top achiever in the field of education and human development blessed with bounty of natural resources. But continuous ignorance of necessities and misplaced priorities of ruling dispensation is hurting the prospects of the state in the future.
Around 6 million Keralites are working abroad making the economy largely dependent on remittances from foreign nations. This is due to lack of development in the state. If a sector wise comparison is analysed agriculture only contributes towards 12% of State GDP, while industry contributes 23% and services contributes 66%. The booming service industry is mainly fuelled by consumption rather than wealth generation. This is true if we consider the fact that a staggering 4.2% of the revenue of Kerala’s budget comes from liquor sales. The employment scenario in the state is also weak which has fuelled migration to abroad at a staggering rate, with 12.5 percentage of labour force being unemployed Kerala stands as one of the worst performers in employment indices in India.
But the ruling dispensation remains blind towards the reality and continues to fill their coffers in an unabated manner. For example, in 2019-20, the government had spent ₹34.79 crore as salary and travel expenses for the personal staff of ministers. A total of ₹7.13 crore was spent on pension to retired staffers and ₹1.79 lakh as gratuity. A comparison with 2013-14 shows that the spending on the salary and travel expenses of the personal staff of ministers rose by 25.30% in six years. Of this, the salary and other benefits of the CM’s personal staffers recorded a whopping 190.61% increase. The pension expenses doubled — from ₹3.53 crore in 2013-14 to ₹7.13 crore in 2019-20.
Factoring in the long-life expectancy and periodic revision in salary and pension, this burden is set to increase steeply in the coming years. The staggering rise in these expenditures comes in the backdrop of precarious financial situations and mounting debt of the state. “As per the Fiscal Responsibility Act of Kerala, 2011, sustainable debt level is estimated to be 23% of GSDP. During 2019-20, Kerala spent 75.6% of borrowed money for revenue expenditure while 20.13 per cent was spent for repaying past borrowings. Only 3.85 per cent of the borrowed money was used for capital expenditure. Kerala, along with Punjab and Rajasthan, was classified as a ‘very high debt ratio state’ in the states of growth report by Crisil in 2019. These were the only states where the debt-to-GSDP ratio had exceeded 30 per cent. An opinion can mislead and lie but data remains truthful and all the data sets of importance point towards collapse of famed ‘Kerala-Left Model.’
A state in grip of communal forces like SDPI, PFI etc, a state in which employment opportunities are scarce and a state in which ruling dispensation shows utter disregard towards governance stares at an uncertain future. To summarise the state of governance in Kerala it is worth noting an important parallel between the real state of Kerala and a village called Kerala in Gujarat. When asked about the difference between the State of Kerala and the village a villager candidly remarked, “They have education, but we have employment and development.” And this rings true considering the sorry situation in Kerala. The BJP’s is hoping to address these grievances.
Indications Of Changing Political Landscape
During his recent visit PM Modi inaugurated slew of developmental projects worth more than ₹3,200 crore and the development push coupled with outreach to Christian community is expected to help the BJP in making a dent in Kerala politics. The growth of BJP is still in the nascent stage in Kerala. For example, in the last assembly election BJP lost its sole seat in Kerala due to chronic mismanagement by local leadership. The Kerala BJP leadership is tying down the ambitions of the party. If the BJP really wants to make a dent in Kerala politics, along with the outreach to minorities and development projects, the Kerala BJP unit shall change from within taking cue from Annamalai’s transformational work in Tamil Nadu. In any manner the BJP is making slow and steady gains in the state and PM’s push will indeed add to its momentum.
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