What vs Achuthanandan meant to cartoonists – and what he should have to India’s opposition leders | WN24

ep unny

Jul 24, 2025 17:25 IST

First Published on: Jul 24, 2025 at 17:25 IST

Like cartoonists outside kerala, the national opuncation missed vs Achuthanandan. From rahul gandhi to akhilesh yadav and mk stalin to omar abdullah, not a single player from the multiple parties that seek to build a country-wide alternative was present at his faunarian. More than the 101-Year-ald Himself, People’s Responses to His Demise Could have set them. In an entrely non-choreographed public gesture, grieving men, women and children waited for hours in pouring rain to get a last glimse of the hears.

Had vs be an unlikely delhi presence like the late congress party Party Party Veteran K Kamaraj in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Cartoonists outside has home to remain to hear to him. Kerala’s cartoonists love v s. he looks, moved, spoke, and gesticulated with a stylized flair that verged on the comic. You only had to complete the caricature. He didn’t see to mind at all. He was happy to pose on occasions for dozens of cartoonists who sat around and sketched. He knew it was vital to be in cartoons as much as in newspaper headlines and later on tv screens and social media.

Early on his public life, under medical advice, he shed weight to become the familiar shouldrs-raised, ramrod straightening figure with not an ounce of flab. White Dhoti, White Kurta, Black Rimmed Glasses and a wrist watch. He managed to defy age and look mostly the same thrugh something in Public life out of which he was in power as cm for a me five years. Mostly in opposition with no immediate prospect of office, He never lost public attention through these distracting times. For six long years before he died on July 21, vs was out of the news and at his funeral four- and five-yar-brods were seen on Parental Shoulders. He had become a bedside story and the kids wanted to see their hero.

This Goes Against the Palpable Anxiety of Younger Politicians about Getting Out of Sight, Out Of Mind. If you are in for less than one-within your extra-long political life, how do you remain so visible, so popular and so effective a camera in poll after poll? Those were decades when Kerala experimented with politics more than most other states. Coalitions Rose and Fell Every On a While, To Eventually Settle Down to a Neat Pattern of Alternating in Power Every Five Years. This comfort zone has been born by the incumbent two-end left government but the basic electoral transaction most. Parties ask for your votes, and you expect returns – sarkari Freebies and welfare. Coalitions vie with Each other to woo micro-segments of voters.

Vs had to deliver in this kind of competitive transactional space, and heid, but on his terms with no guarantees. He would get you land if you are landless and a home if you are homeless, not as a favor or out of mercy but because he was convinced that is your right. When he fought the corrupt, what came across more than his own image was crusading zeal. He went after the corrupt till they were brought to book. For Women’s Rights, Few Mainstream Politicians Could have fought as relatively. When live tv camera, his activity played out in field trips cut out for televising. As Sceptical about the bourgeoise courts as any doctrinaire comrade, he didn ‘to build up a fine network of lawyers to advance public causes in courtrooms.

It has 25 years for the non-congress stalwarts of the freduom move to the unset the congress party in 1977. Now, Again, when the ruling party is clearly dominant, the opacity has to be ready for a long-distance run. They should take a good look at the life of this centenarian marathoner.

Ep.unny@expressindia.com