INSIDE THE CPM’s THEME PARK

While the CPI-M’s Bengal brand of reforms may have run into a roadblock with Singur, in Kerala, the party is riding high on Vismaya, its Rs 30-crore water park in Kannur district. Our correspondent joins the joyride
A bit of a splash. That’s what the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has created in Kerala with Vismaya, the party-sponsored water theme park at Parassinikkadavu village in the northern district of Kannur. This is the CPI-M’s latest stride in its march towards capitalism, its journey from revolution to roller-coaster rides.

The party seems to have left its proletarian policies outside the main gate—the entry fee is a not-so-reasonable Rs 300 and the Rs 30-crore park spread over 30 acres is among the most advanced theme parks in India.
For a party-sponsored set-up, this is free of CPI-M symbols—no party flag and no pictures of party stalwarts E.M.S. Namboodiripad, A.K. Gopalan and E.K. Nayanar—but that’s only till you go up to the rides and talk to the holidaying crowd and staff. Most of them are either comrades or CPI-M sympathisers. Like the 60-year-old—he didn’t want to be named—who had travelled all the way from Kozhikode, a district to the south of Kannur. A cheerful man in a starched white mundu (dhoti) and shirt, he said, “I am an old comrade. I am not here for the rides—just to look around.”

Vismaya has two dozen rides—sky train, giant wheel, flume ride, crazy cruise, typhoon tunnel and tornado—and the park management hopes to add a few more in the next couple of weeks. The equipment, sourced from Mumbai, looks snazzy. But till noon on Thursday—day five of the park’s launch—less than 100 visitors had turned up. A few splashed around in the waters, others stuck to the children’s parks and eateries.

The CPI-M’s choice of Kannur for the theme park is interesting. This is the hotbed of violence between the CPI-M and the Sangh Parivar outfits, where divisions along party lines are carved in blood. Over the last three decades, more than 200 lives have been lost to the political violence. Kannur is where entire villages are split along party lines and Parassinikkadavu, where the water park has come up, is a “CPI-M village” 16 km from the district centre. Any action that strays from the party line isn’t tolerated—not even a visit to a theme park owned by the rival party. It’s all about party loyalties. So it wasn’t surprising that the 60-year-old in the white mundu had paid Rs 300 simply to take a walk in the “party park”.

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