Aruvikkara Bye-elections
Congress candidate has won with a majority of 10,128 votes over his nearest LDF rival, who had scored 46,320 votes, few hundred more than his predecessor in 2011. UDF candidate scored a few hundred votes less than his predecessor: there was little change in the total votes polled by the two candidates taken together, and their percentage shares of votes registered sharp declines. There was an increase of some 25,000 in the total votes polled and most of it had gone to increase the BJP tally to 34,145: O Rajagopalan was their star candidate aimed to make the maximum impact at state as well as national level. UDF was a divided house but, the late speaker Karthikeyan’s wife proved to be an effective campaigner for her son. LDF too was a divided house: VS led the campaign from the stage and Pinarayi from behind. Their campaigns were spicy, on identical wave length and focused entirely on local issues. The well trained rank and file of CPI(M) voted as usual, irrespective of these colorless campaigns and results are not surprising. Of course the real winner was the media who had set the tone and content of the campaign: It was indeed a great victory for the media community!
Steffi Graf to take over Kerala Ayurveda
Kerala is Gods’ own country and God has taken over it without the consent from any of us and without any title papers form the revenue department! Now tennis legend Steffi Graf is appointed the Ayurveda brand ambassador of God’s Own Country. As I know there is a company by name ,Kerala Ayurveda Ltd (KAL): I was associated with its original avatar, Kerala Ayurveda Pharmacy Ltd, from concept to commissioning including its IPO in 1994 which was over-subscribed 24 times. A small company, but KAPL was the first Ayurveda company to get listed in share market. Who owns Ayurveda and who owns Kerala Ayurveda? Anyway, Kerala tourism department was given sanction to sign an agreement with Graf to become Ayurveda brand ambassador as part of the department’s ‘Visit Kerala Scheme’, as stated by the Chief Minister of Kerala.
Farewell to KPP Nambiar:
KPP Nambiar was the Secretary for the Electronics department of Government of India when he retired from Government service. He was dynamic professional and administrator: By establishing KELTRON (Kerala Electronics Development Corporation) he has established the feasibility of promoting electronics industry by state government. And his state-level initiative in Kerala was copied by several other states and KPP is rightly remembered as the founder of electronics industry in India. And it was this reputation that had elevated him to the position of Secretary Electronics to the Government of India. However, like in most other sectors technology development policies were reversed or totally abandoned creating confusion all around. Because of such mindless policy changes, services of visionaries like KPP could not be made use of , and the country does not have an electronics industry worth its name, today.
Mad dogs and wild trees kill:
Monsoon was raining mad on the Kerala coast, last week, uprooting trees and spraying death everywhere: five school children were crushed to death and seven others injured, few days ago, as an uprooted tree fell over a school bus in the nearby Kothangalam town. Down South at Kollam, on the same evening, an elderly man met with instant death under a falling tree and the fire force was seen struggling to extricate his dead body, on the same day evening. Kerala is infested with tree loving scientists, poets, newsmen and other environmental fundamentalists who organize instant resistance against cutting down of even age old trees by local governments. During the pre-monsoon summer days Kerala media were busy with stories on mad dogs attacking men, women and children: These are Indian Pariah dogs according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_dog#) and they were existing in Indian subcontinent for the past 14,000 years: They are mostly sustained by our 150 million slum dwellers and causes an estimated 35,000 human rabies death every year. This is about two-thirds of the global total and Kerala possibly gets more than its due share.