Ananth Krishna Subhalakshmy

Hello Everyone, I've created a one-stop destination to understand some facts of the 2024 General Elections in Kerala. It includes a detailed political profile, brief on major issues, demographics and electoral statistics (and maps!) thechhit.com/2024-kerala-el…

@PragyaNarayanan Doesn't technically "remove" the CM 😄

What happens if Mamata Banerjee actually refuses to demit her office nominally as Chief Minister of the state before the new CM is sworn in? Not much. It is courtesy for the sitting Chief Minister to "resign" once the election results are out, and when they are not expected to continue either due to a different Chief Minister being selected from the same party or the another party winning. The Chief Minister holds office during the "pleasure of the Governor" under Article 164 and in this case is quite clear that the governor can unilaterally dismiss the sitting West Bengal CM without much legal fuss.

@rohitshinde121 Hindus aren't concentrated in south kl but almost uniformly distributed. But agree with your broader points. Though TN has much more harder of an ideological challenge in many ways than KL

Kerala will be much, much harder for the BJP than West Bengal. The BJP's strategy in West Bengal was counter-consolidation of the Hindu vote in front of the consolidated Muslim vote. That's possible in a state with 70% Hindus sharing a border with East Pakistan/Bangladesh. In Kerala though, Hindus are 55% of the population. Muslims are 27% and Christians are about 18%. Of the 18% Christians, Catholics make up approximately 50-60% of the population. Catholics are less textual than Protestants which makes them more accepting of different faiths and by extension the BJP's red lines of conversion. Protestants are the remaining and they are the ones with conversion like evangelicals. The BJP gets maybe 5% of the Muslim vote at most. So the catchment area of the BJP is 55+9+5 = 69%. And keep in mind, that this 69% comprises Catholics and Muslims whose votes are very hard to get. The other thing is that communities are concentrated in various parts of Kerala. The Muslims are concentrated in North Kerala, Christians in Central Kerala and Hindus in South Kerala. Variations exist here. But the nature of the demographics, along with distributions makes it hard for the BJP to win Kerala. I think Kerala will be the last state that the BJP will win. It will win Tamil Nadu before coming to power in Kerala.

@AravindKartha Had full on macro reasons na

@Ananth_Krishna_ Wrt 1977-79 mess in Kerala

The last time Kerala saw such a one-sided sweep was in 1977, just after the emergency. The CPI-Congress Alliance won a record 110-odd seats, with the CPIM winning and its alliance winning a mere 29. Yet, within a mere weeks of taking office, the first-time Chief Minister, K. Karunakaran, had to leave office due to adverse remarks against him by the Kerala High Court in the infamous Rajan missing case. A.K. Antony became the Chief Minister after him; yet his time as Chief Minister was also not for long. Congress split nationally over the Chikamangalore by-election which Indira Gandhi contested and Antony stayed with Congress (Urs) (later Congress (Anthony). As a patron of "moral politics" resigned his post as Chief Minister. The state then saw the third Chief Minister in little less than three years under the form of P.K. Vasudevan Nair from the CPI. His ministry too did not last long as he resigned to make way for the formation of Left Democratic Front. The win of the Congress-CPI alliance in 1977 was a rude shock, considering the larger national trend that had turned against the Congress. Much in line with other southern states, Kerala voted in again a Congress-CPI government that had undertaken multiple violent actions and crushed democracy in an unprecedented way before and since. It seemed the public appreciated that the state government was able to combat the militant trade unionism that had disturbed public peace. That seven-year-long ministry under C Achutha Menon of the CPI was the one that eventually ended up passing substantive land reform legislation. It was also the government that ended up repealing Marumakkathayam, the system of matrilineal succession that was followed among many communities in Kerala. The record for the second-largest win after 1977 was by AK Anthony, who led the UDF to a record 100 seats in 2001. His government too did not last for the entire five-year period. Controversy over the Marad Massacre as well as the bad performance of the UDF in the 2004 general election in Kerala led to his resignation, and he was replaced by Oommen Chandy. It is to be seen whether this UDF government will have one Chief Minister for its entire five-year period or two (or three?). My money is on at least two.

@AravindKartha Which mess?

@Ananth_Krishna_ Internal splits in Congress and Kerala Congress contributed to this mess.

@godsowncundry @addheeraj You're not accounting for all the money that will be made in between and among also :-P Seriously though, I don't think the state has that leeway at all. see - linkedin.com/posts/nfprcfou…

@Ananth_Krishna_ @addheeraj I think current YoY revenue increase will cover this. Capex will have to be lowered of course. The real radical way to fix the budget is to address salary and pension burden but I doubt they'll touch that.

One of the “Indira Guarantees” was feee travel for women in KSRTC buses (in the Karnataka model). Going to be absolutely terrible for Kerala RTC which faces incredible pension and salary pressure and no room for capital investment that will be required to replace an aging fleet. V likely that the iconic Aanavandi will go fully bankrupt considering the state itself has minimal fiscal leeway.

True, state has a unique problem in the Karunya Programme because they are not using the insurance-based model. The state will have to probably completely revamp the scheme for it to make sense. Even then, the premium costs will balloon vis-a-vis the Ayushman Bharat programme, and I have no idea how they will meet that also.

@godsowncundry @Ananth_Krishna_ @addheeraj How will they fund the health insurance promise? Whopping 25lakhs coverage. How's it even possible

@godsowncundry @addheeraj Saar they are struggling to find 100 crore for revenue expenditure

@Ananth_Krishna_ @addheeraj Actually free bus is not that much of a problem. They need to find headroom of around 1000 Cr in the budget. The other promises like universal health insurance are what will cost a lot more.

@nano_arun UDF tsunami was not what I expected (as I mentioned) Lok Sabha like minority consolidation and significant H movement across the board. So wasn’t enough for BJP to convert x.com/ananth_krishna…

I guess a lot of BJP supporters in Kerala were hoping that if UDF gets around 90, BJP will get 4-5. But a UDF Tsunami (104/140 as of now) made BJP's limited to 2

@KeshavDamani4 Upper MC /mC H + Christians in central TRV AND Cochin zones

@Ananth_Krishna_ Can you provide info on t20 and its base

I already see a good amount of discourse on T20 being a damp squib but I think their performance was a value add and pretty good considering their base (same as INC in essence) rallied behind UDF like anything. Also some of the places where they contested were not places where they had organisational depth. In alliance it is possible for them to built up, especially considering the anti incumbency that will build for INC from yesterday. At the same time BDJS has underperformed again.

Delulu is the solulu. k thx bye

@milindmghosh Congratulations!

We did it guys. We did it. I broke down thinking of all the karyakartas that were killed. 2 whose dead bodies I had to see. Only we know what we have been through. Jai Shree Ram.

Navya Haridas securing 40k votes in Kozhikode North is as I had expected. What I did not expect is Jayanth winning - Thottathil was a well liked MLA. Goes on to show how much anti incumbency has seeped in. Also opens up North for BJP in next cycle in a three way race.

Creditable performance by BJP in Kerala. The UDF Tsunami though was so overwhelming that a few seats where BJP had a good shot got subsumed. Winning Chathanoor is especially massive, since unlike Rajeev Chandrashekhar or V Muraleedharan, BB Gopakumar is not someone with a national level profile. Great tidings for BJP’s growth in the state.

I wrote this 8 years ago about a 20-year old BJP worker who was murdered. To be a political worker in Bengal was so costly, and for an opposition party to succeed in West Bengal in such an environment is truly extraordinary.

Unique opportunity to attend the first substantive report on data centres in India. @caig_nfprc @NFPRC_Ind

I thought upper cap for UDF in Kerala was 85 considering the incremental vote share required for a stupendous performance (95+) would not be present for them. Clearly the voter can always surprise you.