It looks like the CPM's new state secretary has mistimed his one-month all-Kerala roadshow.

M V Govindan's 'People's Resistance March', to be flagged off today, is projected as a counteroffensive against the BJP-ruled Centre's communal and anti-people policies but could end up as a frantic attempt to douse the growing public disapproval of both the CPM and the LDF government in Kerala.

Even party insiders know Govindan cannot make the 'yatra' a success if he keeps harping just about the Centre's vindictive ways. Many questions regarding his party's umpteen deviations will be swirling around the 'yatra' and the party secretary will have to account for them.

Price inelasticity
The sweeping increase in the prices of public goods, from water to petrol, is one of the major issues Govindan will have to effectively tackle. The party has categorically ruled out a roll back; Chief Minister Pinarayi had laughed away the suggestion as if nothing could have been more foolish. The Opposition UDF will use this obstinacy to call the LDF government insensitive and anti-poor.

Nonetheless, the price issue does offer the state secretary an advantage. It will allow Govindan to unleash a tirade against the Centre. He can reel out statistics, just the way finance minister K N Balagopal and the Chief Minister did, to demonstrate that the BJP was fiscally throttling Kerala.

However, Govindan will find it hard to rationalise other issues. The growing disconnect of the party from the common man, for instance. A telling manifestation of this is the scaling up of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's personal security to paranoid levels.

Rise of local Stalins
Preventive detentions are made to spare the Chief Minister the ignominy of having to see charged-up Youth Congress members waving black flags at cavalcade that is far longer than what Z-plus would mean. The police seem so rattled by black that they had even prohibited anything black - masks and clothes - at public functions attended by the Chief Minister.

It is not just the Chief Minister, even a local or a branch secretary is behaving with an autocratic streak. "There was a time when ordinary workers could walk with their hands around the shoulders of a branch or local committee secretary. Now, even a branch secretary is a law unto himself," said K Venu, former naxalite, author and social commentator.

Mafia connections
Some of these leaders have been found involved in drug cases. Recently, a vehicle belonging to a top CPM leader in Alappuzha was found with drugs ready for sale in front of a school.

The scandal also allowed the public to get a peep into the nasty infighting within the Alappuzha CPM, born not out of any ideological concerns but out of sheer hunger for power.

There is also a growing suspicion that the drug mafia across Kerala has the protection of powerful local CPM leaders.

The reluctance of the police to act in a case where a 13-year-old school girl in Kozhikode was systematically lured into a drug racket and made a carrier was attributed to the protection given by local CPM leaders to drug traffickers.

Govindan's nostalgia
Party documents that were drawn up long before Govindan had taken over as the CPM state secretary have acknowledged that aberrations like the lure of quick money and power-drunkenness had crept into the party. To his credit, Govindan has shown a determination to purge the party of such sins.

At the same time, indicating that he is for the moment unwilling to undermine power centres within the party, Govindan has refused to admit that complaints of corruption were ever raised against LDF convener E P Jayarajan, someone considered highly close to Pinarayi.

The 'People's Resistance March', many insiders believe, is Govindan's attempt to recast the CPM in an old revolutionary mode where the party is supreme and Marxist ideals of discipline and simplicity are enforced.

"For a new secretary to achieve a commanding status within the party, he should strike a chord with the lower rung leaders at the district, local and branch units," said N M Pearson, an author, teacher and a close CPM observer.

"When Kodiyeri was the secretary, he allowed himself to be in the shadow of Pinarayi Vijayan. Kodiyeri, though he was loved by the cadres, was seen only as Pinarayi's right hand man. No other secretary had allowed such disgrace to befall the party secretary's post. When V S Achuthanandan was state secretary, he made sure that E K Nayanar was subservient to him. When Pinarayi was secretary, he stifled a maverick Achuthanandan's functional freedom. I think Govindan wants the original hierarchy restored," Pearson said.

Gold in spotlight
The gold smuggling scandal will distract Govindan from this project.

The issue had been dormant for a while but now, right on the eve of Govindan's 'yatra', it has once again become the talking point. The Chief Minister's former principal secretary, M Sivasankar, has been taken into custody by the Enforcement Directorate in the Wadakkanchery Life Mission bribe case.

The CPM strategy is to turn its back on Sivasankar, to treat him as a once efficient bureaucrat who had gone rogue. Former minister G Sudhakaran had said that Sivasankar had betrayed the Chief Minister. Govindan told Manorama News that the party had no obligation to respond to whatever Sivasankar told the ED.

However, if the ED casts its net closer to the Chief Minister, like summoning his additional private secretary C M Raveendran, it could turn tricky for Govindan as the 'yatra' progresses.

Return of death squads
The past will continue to haunt the party in other ways as well.

It was only recently, long after Govindan announced his roadshow, that Akash Thillenkeri made his Facebook revelation. He said it was CPM leaders who ordered the killing of Shuhaib in 2018.

"Edayannur party leaders made us carry out the murder. If we open our mouths, many of them would not be able to walk in the open. Those who made the call have been given jobs in cooperative bodies. We, who carried out the order, have been pushed into poverty and thrown out of the party," Thillenkeri said in his Facebook post.

Perhaps to avoid Govindan further embarrassment, the CPM has asked its state committee member P Jayarajan, the man who has allegedly groomed killers like Akash Thillenkeri, Jijo Thillenkeri and Jayaprakash Thillenkeri, to publicly disown them.

Just an hour after Govindan's march will be flagged off by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan from Kumbala in Kasaragod's Manjeshwaram on February 20, P Jayarajan will address a public meeting some 100-odd kilometres down south at Thillenkeri in Kannur. Jayarajan has been asked to disassociate the party from death squads.

House of troubles
Govindan will also witness all these issues - fuel cess, gold smuggling, involvement of CPM leaders in crimes, the Chief Minister's alleged paranoia - getting amplified during the 'yatra'. The Assembly will reconvene from February 27, a week after the Govindan roadshow begins, and will be in session till the 'yatra' ends on March 18 in Thiruvananthapuram.

The Opposition UDF will do all it can in the House to embarrass Govindan during this period.