Dogmatic, churlish CPM never learns

Kerala’s former health minister K K Shailaja’s refusal to accept the Ramon Magsaysay award, which was offered to her for her contribution to the fight against the Nipah and the Covid-19 epidemics in the state, was wrong and unwise.

She declined the award at the behest of the CPM leadership which has given two reasons for its decision to stop her from accepting it. One is that the work she did was not an individual effort but was a collective endeavour that involved many others, like health workers, officials and others. Another reason is that Ramon Magsaysay, a former Philippines President, after whom the award is named, was a staunch anti-communist who unleashed a terror campaign against communists in that country in the 1950s. The party leadership held that accepting an award linked to Magsaysay would be improper. Both these are wrong arguments and do not stand scrutiny.

The fight against the pandemic was certainly a collective effort but it was well led by Shailaja, who won widespread praise and admiration for that. Earlier, she had led the fight against the Nipah virus, too, effectively. Her efforts attracted national and international attention and she was featured in world media as an efficient health administrator. It was churlishness on the part of the CPM leadership not to find value in the public recognition of her contribution. The CPM is a party that puts the organisation above the member, but an organisation that fails to recognise the work of the individual is not a dynamic one. Marxism does not reject individual excellence, but the CPM leadership does. Shailaja had last year accepted the Open Society Prize awarded by the Central European University founded by George Soros, who is an anti-communist. The arguments presented to reject the Magsaysay award did not arise then.

The party’s decision has been compared to its turning down the offer of prime ministership to Jyoti Basu in the 1990s, which was later termed a “historic blunder” by Basu himself. There is even a view that the party prevailed on Shailaja to reject the award not for ideological or political reasons of a high order but because of considerations of a lesser kind, related to egos and peer rivalry. There are also reports that there was a difference of opinion in the party over the matter but that the more doctrinaire section finally prevailed. The award should have been taken as a recognition of the state’s creditable performance in the health sector. Shailaja could have accepted it on behalf of the government, the health team, and the people of the state, and that would even have benefitted the party. Some lessons are never learnt.