Skip to main content

Why Should Pinarayi Vijayan Smile?


Why should Pinarayi Vijayan Smile?

The media has gone berserk because the new Chief Minister of Kerala is smiling. There is widespread feel of comfort that Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan has begun to smile. The 9 Pm TV debate appreciated the efforts taken by the new CM to keep smiling. Even the friendly visits around too are credited to the same smile account, with a broader lip spread. Somehow everyone seems to be coming around to the fact that he can smile and he is doing a good smiling job. Pinarayi Vijayan has been trending for a while on the media space ever since it was clear that  is he who will be at the helm of Kerala's affairs. Now the focus seems to have shifted to his face.

Now, what has smile got to do with administration and governance? Didn't smiling ministers of the earlier dispensation tell us that they are clean? Didn't we see smiling rulers assert that their globally advertised 24 hour surveillance cameras conked out when certain people walked into their office? Didn't smiling sirs acknowledge their ignorance of what conspired in the state when they were in power? Didn't the most smiling Chief Minister of the stage claim innocence over a missing engineering student ? Didn't a smiling leader shout from a southern roof top that his life has been a book more open than the one lying thus on a  dreamy student's table? Are we getting increasingly corporatised with wearable smiles and consumable attitudes?

Sure a mile can mean a lot. But we don't have to overdo it. A smile is a smile but it is just that. A smile. Pleasantness can fetch rewards in many ways. But a chief minister we all need to look forward to is not simply a smiling gent, but one who can deliver the goods. One who can be sensible and normal. One who is aware of the powers and, also, the limits of an elected leader. One who will not dilly dally for the sake of a group or a one who will not have the stupid nerve to effect the sale of acres of lake on the eve of an election. One who can value the taxpayers concerns and ire too. One who will be aware that the bus fares need not be retained as static even when the fuel prices have plummeted. One who be will be mature, sensible and other-centred. Smile or no smile.

Pinraryi Vijayan needn't smile if smile doesn't come naturally to him. For a leader like him, with the brand of reputation he carries, an image make over is patently unnecessary. I feel the effort taken to repackage Pinarayi Vijayan is doing him harm as it is understandably beyond his ken. Let him be his normal self. Let Pinarayi Vijayan be his normal serious self. Because the person we need to lead us is definitely a serious man. A person who is serious about the roles assigned to him. Serious enough to know that ruling a state is unlike running a corporation. Serious enough to weed out rotten eggs rather than enjoying the benefits of assumed public myopia. Serious enough to know that the people who are being governed won't keep their fingers and minds crossed for long.

The Kerala Chief Minster Pinarayi Vijayan needn't smile. Those who are working on it be deputed for other more pressing concerns. Kerala can do with a serious leader. A serious leader who knows his stuff and is not serious enough to know that life never is always serious. And, finally a wearable smile is the most fake attitude a genuine social sever can be held guilty of. Move on, media. Stiffen up, Pinarayi. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Foregrounding the Backdrops

    On Foregrounding the Backdrops Much of my liking for large pictures has lot to do with the backdrops and the 'others' in the frames. By others I mean the also-rans, in a way! But this is more about the past when pictures were not so common, when not everything could be shot and framed, as we do now. Magazines with photos were a premium then and colour pics even harder to come by. Rather than the ones who were the focus, meant to be the focus, my eyes would involuntarily wander off to the rest of the things and people who have been caught by the camera. It is their looks, expressions, postures, feels, appearance, that my senses will work on. The man in the middle, or men, those on whom the story is supposed to zero in, will fade out and the backdrop will zoom in. Imagination tracking those to their illogical conclusions constituted my act of reading the pictures. It was such a delight as it helped one keep the trivial off and enjoy the core of the margins. When o...
13 comments
Read more

Can Politics Empathise?

  E. M. Forster wrote about the need for ‘tolerance’ and argued that the real force which can help rebuild the world after the World Wars will be not love or forgiveness, but 'tolerance'. Though I read that essay long back during student days, as it was ‘taught’ as part of curricular requirement, it was 'studied' and then abandoned, in a way. But still the argument of the essay kept coming back, as it does now. I didn't grasp quickly the inherent link between empathy and tolerance, but there sure is a reason why Forster showed up. There are many ways the two, tolerance and empathy, complement each other and the presence of the former can surely help build the other. Empathy is the capacity to know and experience how others feel, putting yourself in another's position. But is there something like political empathy? Why is it not there, generally speaking? I would like to explain political empathy as the capacity of one politica...
12 comments
Read more

The Profes'sorry'ate!

If what was reported in the social media sometime ago was true, an MLA once asked a Minister whether Professorship category existed in Colleges. The reply from the Education Minister was that it doesn't, even though, they say, the response was from the minister who designated himself as Professor! The tendency to brand oneself as professor among College faculty members is on the rise for while. Many of those who have even recently joined the educational service as faculty prefix a Prof. before their names. Or, that is what I feel when I go through some of the reports in the media regarding College activities. As a result almost all of the college faculty are entitled to be designated Professors that way! Some relate this with seniority. If you have been in service for a while, have been teaching long, then you can stick the label on you. Or you can allow others to stick it on you. It grows on you and you take a new feel about who you are! A Professor Babu enables you to be...
8 comments
Read more