What Was That Again About Backing Prosperity?

The Indian state of Kerala has been run by Communist governments for the past five decades. It has India’s highest literacy, best overall health, and lowest corruption rates — much better off than free-market basket cases like Uttar Pradesh, where a tiny cabal of hyper-rich, backed by a somewhat larger technocrat class, rule over scores of millions of desperately poor and mostly-illiterate people.

And our glorious 1950s-era CIA apparently tried to strangle it at birth:

If the biography of former US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker is to be believed, the CIA had performed a clandestine operation to topple the first elected Communist government in the world.

The book also says that the CIA funded political demonstrations by the Congress and other Opposition groups.

Bunker’s biography quotes: “…the election results rang alarm bells in Washington. This apparently involved agency funding for political demonstrations organised by the Congress party and other opposition groups that were designed to create a law and order situation.”

“It was essentially funding the anti-government agitation and create a cover so that the Central Government is forced to intervene. He (Bunker) also makes a very important revelation that S K Patil was the conduit for devolving the money,” said Minister of Finance, government of Kerala, Dr Thomas Issac.

[…]

It is not just Bunker’s biography that exposes the CIA-Congress nexus.

A few declassified documents of the CIA clearly show that toppling the 1957 EMS government was top priority for America.

The CIA head at the time, Allen Dulles, wrote, “It is very unlikely that local agitation alone will prove sufficient to oust the communist government. These developments have posed a grave issue for the entire congress party in India. Nehru obviously does not wish to do this but may ultimately be forced to take the step.”

Lovely, eh?