Edathva (Alappuzha): Prime Minister Narendra Modi was right: the ground on which the election campaign meeting at Edathva was held looked too small to accommodate the crowds. A good number of NDA supporters including women and children in the traditional communist hotbed of Kuttanad were being stopped en route by the police for lack space even as Mr Modi in his speech was picking holes in the development claims of the state. “People outside the state don’t know that there is such a place (called Kuttananad) which is surrounded by water but has no drinking water,” the Prime Minister said, referring to the perennial problem of the region. Mr Modi who attacked the CPM for what he called political violence in his Kasargod speech trained his guns on corruption in Kuttanad.
“You know sometime artists perform jugalbandi—when one artist plays the tabla, the other plays the flute,” the prime minister said. With a characteristic tapping of his right palm with the left, Mr Modi told the people that there is a corruption jugalbandi going on in the state, performed by the LDF and the UDF. Successive governments ensured that the corrupt are never made answerable, Mr Modi said, adding Kerala should get a government which ensures that the money the centre sanctions for the state reached the people, instead of one which eats it in between.
The prime minister referred to the failure of the saffron front to send a representative either to the Lok Sabha or the state assembly but made it a point assure the people that Kerala was close to his heart. He said he made two Keralites –Prof. Richard Hay and Mr Suresh Gopi—MPs when he got a chance to nominate members to the Rajya Sabha. But his reference that the fronts take turns to enjoy power sounded like questioning of the wisdom f the people who elected its governments in the past.
