We will see a lot more of Oommen Chandy

So far, Chandy has maintained a distance from the Congress High Command. But as party general secretary, he will be pushed into the hurly-burly of Delhi politics

Oommen Chandy was appointed Congress general secretary last week and put in charge of reviving the party in Andhra Pradesh (AP). What do we know about the man? And what does the appointment tell us about Rahul Gandhi’s political strategies?

Today the Congress has almost nothing in AP. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the party got zero seats. Ditto in the assembly elections. The party’s vote share in AP in the Lok Sabha elections fell from 38.95 per cent in 2009 to 11.5 per cent in 2014. In the Assembly elections,  of the 175 seats that the Congress contested, about 150 candidates lost their security deposit. We could go on, but it is too embarrassing.

It was Rahul Gandhi who posed the problem: The Congress would like to see its fortunes revived. But in the state where there is a third anti-BJP force (the Telugu Desam Party or TDP, for instance) how should the Congress go about increasing its base without alienating like-minded parties like the TDP? Enter Oommen Chandy, Kerala’s Chief Minister twice (2004-06 and 2011-16) and a veteran of coalition politics.

After the poll debacle in 2016, Chandy announced that he would be holding no positions in the state. He stayed quiet on several internal political issues in the state Congress. But though his image was compromised because of the infamous solar scam (Saritha Nair and her accomplice Biju Radhakrishnan duped, with the backing of senior political leaders including allegedly Chandy, several people of millions of rupees by offering solar panel solutions. The matter is in court.), he remains one of Kerala’s most popular leaders, as a discreet survey conducted by the Congress ahead of the Chengannur by-election reconfirmed.

What sort of man is he?

The trivial stuff first. His wife Mariamma, formerly an officer with the Canara Bank, is his personal barber. Chandy allows his hair to be trimmed only when he is sleeping or reading the morning newspaper. He is very particular that the hair-cut should stop as soon as he gets up. So he ends up with quite a few hair-cutting sessions a month. 

He is enormously popular. In fact, when he was chief minister, his colleague and rival Ramesh Chennithala led the campaign that he must stop meeting people and attend to work in the secretariat: He just cannot say no to anyone. In this, he is different from his erstwhile mentor AK Antony, who, while being in the public eye, is a much more private person. Chandy was Antony’s chosen successor and long-time lieutenant but later became a silent critic of Antony’s unpopular and unpredictably idealistic political positions. At the recent Talkatora convention of the Congress, Gandhi referred to all the leaders on the dias but dropped Antony’s name from the list. Antony was deeply upset about this omission. Is Chandy going to displace Antony altogether?

Kerala has been a financially troubled state. The Vallarpadam Transshipment Terminal, Vizhinjam Port, Smart City, Metro Rail, Capital City Development, Kerala State Transport Project, Sabarimala Master Plan, Kannur International Airport and the Trivandrum International Airport — all these were projects Chandy took up when he was either finance minister (1991-94) or chief minister (2004-06). Some materialised, some didn’t. But Chandy went about all of them methodically. Bureaucrats describe him as ‘decent’ and ‘honest’.

But he couldn’t find the will to take tough measures. As chief minister, he led Kerala on the path to savage power sector reforms. These included strengthening the energy audit, enhancing the anti-power theft squads, bringing down transmission and distribution losses from around 31 per cent  in 2001-02 to 23 per cent in April 2006, reducing the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) workforce from 32,000 to 25,000 in five years and swap of high-cost debt. Consequently, KSEB reduced the revenue gap from Rs 13.16 billion in 2001-02 to Rs 1.44 billion crore in 2005-06. Upgradation of equipment should have followed. Instead, the government announced tariff reduction for domestic and commercial consumers. 

Chandy has so far, elected to stay away from Delhi and has maintained a distance from the High Command. But as General Secretary, he will be pushed into the hurly-burly of Delhi politics. It is possible that the Congress will forward his name for a Rajya Sabha vacancy in Kerala that is coming up — that the BJP cannot win. Either way, we will see a lot more of Oommen Chandy.