KOCHI, April 15 -- When there are mafias specialized in smuggling of gold and narcotics, sand, sex, private schools and colleges, liquor, hospital and land can literature lag behind? The literary award mafias in Kerala have their tentacles over the selection committees that decide the winners of the State-controlled Kerala Sahitya Akademy and Ezhuthachan Award Committee (the highest award in Malayalam) .
Literary lovers were perplexed when this year's "Vilasini" Award was conferred on P K Pokker, a self-styled postmodernist writer who is a hardcore CPI(M) activist. "Though he has authored more than a dozen books on literary criticism ,nobody in the field of criticism has bothered to touch these books with the barge of a pole. To put it bri...