KK Shailaja, the ex-Health Minister in Kerala’s cabinet and better known as ‘ Shailaja Teacher’, has had nothing short of a meteoric rise in fame for the past few years. And the credit goes to her own exemplary performance as health minister in the fight against the Nipah virus and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Awarded as the ‘Top Thinker of the Year’ by a UK-based magazine, Prospect, Shailaja has been lauded several times for the ‘Kerala Model’ she adopted against the COVID-19 pandemic last year, as the world was being ravaged by the deadly virus.
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Coming from the school of science-over-superstition, Kerala’s beloved Shailaja Teacher had been consistently precise and unhurried in dealing with crises during her term as the state health minister.
However, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has excluded her from his cabinet.
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Although she could not get a ministerial berth in the Vijayan-led government, Shailaja has instead been entrusted the position of her party’s whip in the Assembly.
Standing true to her acronym “rockstar”, the outgoing health minister won the Mattanur constituency seat in her hometown Kannur, during Kerala elections, by a decisive majority of 60,000 votes — the largest in the history of Kerala.
As she came out victorious in the recent assembly elections, Shailaja had told NDTV in an interview that although if she remained health minister would be a party decision, she was sure the citizens were “happy with the model of governance in Kerala“, which is why they had been voted to power the second time, defying all odds.
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Although her lineage does not stem from big political dynasties, Shailja grew up in a house that was steeped in politics, her maternal grandmother MK Kalyani being her biggest influence.
Joining student politics in school, Shailaja Teacher became a member of the Students’ Federation of India, and later, joined the Kerala Socialist Youth Federation.
The federation, which later came to be known as the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) is where she met her husband Bhaskaran, whom she married in 1981.
Shailaja had been a Physics teacher for most of her life before she decided to retire voluntarily for full-time political action in 2004.
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Working her way up for almost two decades, she joined the CPI(M). She also became the editor of Sthree Shabdam, a monthly publication and the official mouthpiece of the Kerala State Unit of AIDWA (All India Democratic Women’s Association).
As she took charge of Kerala’s health portfolio in 2016, Shailaja was one of the only two women in Vijayan’s council of ministers. In her role as health minister in the outgoing assembly, she was touted as the face of Kerala’s struggle against the Nipah virus and later the COVID-19 pandemic.
It remains to be seen if her ousting from the state cabinet has put her in a topsy-turvy boat but given the repertoire of skills she has displayed, being an on-their-toes politician, with great numbers to back it up and not to mention her squeaky clean image, she should be fine.
