Say first,pay later: son carries on where father left off

The public attention on father and son is out of proportion with their partys size.

In 1985,Kerala minister R Balakrishna Pillai had lost his job after letting his tongue run loose in what has come to be known as the Punjab model speech. A quarter of a century later,his minister son K B Ganesh Kumar described Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan as a sex maniac and,though he later apologised,the Opposition has decided to boycott him.

Pillai,one of the founders of the Kerala Congress and now 76,was in charge of railways in Kerala when he made that speech at a function in Kochi on May 25,1985. The subject was the shifting of a proposed railway coach factory out of Kerala to Punjab. Referring to the unrest in Punjab and the gift from the Railways,Pillai asked if that meant Kerala too should behave like Punjab.

The Youth Congress,then headed by present Kerala Speaker G Karthikeyan,launched a campaign. A petition was moved in the Kerala High Court,saying Pillais call to resort to terrorism and war amounted to a breach of his oath as a minister. Pillai exited a month later,after the court issued a notice.

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His sons comment came last week. The Forest Minister was taking up cudgels for his father,who was serving a jail term in a corruption case and whose name had been linked to an alleged attack on a teacher at a school run by the family. Referring to the teachers injuries,Kumar said,While analysing the way the teacher was handled,I wonder if somebody had handled Achuthanandan in the same manner in his youth… Achuthanandans disease is a sex mania. After a certain age in life,some people think only about actions they could not perform. Then,all their talk is only about such subjects.

The public attention on father and son is out of proportion with their partys size. The Kerala Congress (B) is a splinter group of the party that Pillai co-founded in 1964 after breaking away from the Congress. Today,his faction has shrunk into a family affair in his and his sons constituencies in Kollam.

Initially,the Kerala Congress had been a party of Hindu Nairs and Christians. Later,a major chunk of the Nairs returned to the Congress,leaving Pillai as the only Nair leader in the party,now dominated by Churches and Christian leaders. Pillai,however,has a lifeline in the Nair Service Society,representative of the community in Kerala.

A Nair landlord who in speech and manner still shows signs of leftovers from feudalism,Pillai had joined politics as a communist sympathiser in the early 1950s. He became an AICC member in 1958 and a legislator in 1960 at age 25. His term as power minister from 1982 to 1985 was mired in four corruption cases. He was also Lok Sabha MP from 1971 to 1977. While a legislator,Pillai was also president of the Edamulakkal and Kottarakkara panchayats in different periods between 1964 and 1995. Before the Panchayati Raj Act was amended,it was possible for a legislator to continue as a member of a local body.

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As his party conveniently juggled its politics between the Congress and the CPM,Pillai was a minister during E K Nayanars CPM government from 1980,too.

Since the 80s,either Pillai or his son has been a member of successive Congress governments. In 2001,with Congress chief minister A K Antony against accommodating the tainted Pillai as a minister,Kumar was given transport,which his father had held previously. In 2003,Pillai got the berth back after being exonerated in a court case.

The 2006 election halted Pillais decades-long run from Kottarakkara. He lost to a CPM novice. After he was jailed this February,Pillai pondered contesting again,but the Congress prevented him. His nominee,too,failed to click.