Word: kerala
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India's Communists won their first major electoral victory in the steaming southwestern Indian state of Kerala last March, but few politicians in New Delhi were inclined at the time to take the matter seriously. The Communists were behaving so correctly, and besides, as required by law they were careful to get the approval of New Delhi for most of the changes they wanted to make. Soon Britain's Manchester Guardian, reflecting the bemused judgments of Indian intellectuals, was talking euphorically of "constitutional Communism" in Kerala...
...Something for Everyone." Working ostentatiously within the legal limits of the Indian constitution, Kerala's Communist bosses have churned out a steady flow of legislation designed, on paper at least, to give something to almost everyone. The Reds' major tactical aim: to create in Kerala an active, working base for the Indian Communist Party, a base modeled to a large degree on Mao Tse-tung's remote redoubt of Yenan, from which Mao won all China...
What has happened? The fact is that though the Congress Party still holds an overwhelming majority (365 out of 499 seats in Parliament), it has been slipping badly in recent state and municipal elections; e.g., in Kerala, where the Communists recently scored their first major Indian victory (TIME, April 1), and in last week's municipal elections in Bombay, where the Congress Party was defeated for the first time in 19 years because apathetic party hacks failed to assess the genuineness of the popular drive for a separate, Marathi-speaking Bombay state. The candidate who piled up the largest...
...state the Communists would run. Chief Minister Namboodiripad proclaimed his intention of nationalizing all foreign-owned plantations ("a deliberate attempt to frighten off foreign investors and foreign aid," wailed New Delhi) and of establishing industrial "managing councils" composed of workers, union leaders and a few lonely bosses. But Kerala's new Minister of Industries blandly began trying to lure private enterprise into the state on the promise of cheap credit facilities and no strikes. Another Red leader warned that if the central government tried to interfere in Kerala-as it surely will if the Communists try to nationalize foreign...
Best guess was that despite such tough talk, Kerala's Reds would soothe fears at first by trying to run a model state. Already the Red ministers had voluntarily cut their own pay from $155 to $72 a month. Soon they were expected to launch a well-publicized attack on the corruption which, under Congress Party rule, spread through the Kerala state government like chickweed. Optimists argued that this kind of competition would be a healthy influence on the Congress Party. "This idea." commented the Hindustan Times, "is no less foolish than keeping a cobra in the backyard...