CM accuses the media of villainising organised labour while lionising exploitative corporate employers
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has accused the right-wing media of routinely stereotyping unionised labour as a millstone around the neck of industrial development while lionising predatory corporates as symbols of progress and social good.
Inaugurating the 15th State conference of the Kerala State Headload and General Workers (CITU), Mr. Vijayan urged workers to give no chance to the anti-proletarian media to demonise them as villains and lionise exploitative employers as heroes and hapless victims of so-called labour militancy.
Mr. Vijayan said neoliberalism and globalisation ushered in by the Congress and aggressively pursued by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had worsened inequality and weakened social welfare.
'It has pushed millions into poverty while concentrating the country's wealth among a small elite. Unemployment has reached its highest level, and the physical quality of life index has fallen sharply. India ranks 105th in the global poverty index. Labour rights were increasingly at risk under the Central government,' Mr. Vijayan said.
Mr. Vijayan accused the BJP and Sangh Parivar of stoking communalism and sectarian rife in the secular polity to divert public attention from pressing livelihood issues and working-class woes. He said the BJP has single-mindedly targeted Kerala for its successful development and social welfare approach.
Bid to strangulate Kerala
'The Centre has hauled down Kerala's borrowing limit to hamper infrastructure development. It has attempted to strangulate Kerala financially by slashing down its due from the divisible pool of taxes, reducing or delaying Central allocation for joint Union-State government projects, denying natural disaster relief and preventing Kerala from seeking disaster aid from foreign donor nations,' he said.
Mr. Vijayan said Kerala's development model starkly contrasts with the BJP-ruled States. 'The very idea of a secular, liberal, progressive and social-welfare oriented State as epitomised by Kerala was an anathema to the Sangh Parivar and its notion of a Hindu majoritarian State where minorities are ranked as subaltern citizens. Hence, it is in the BJP's interest to retard Kerala's progress', he added.
Attacks on minorities
Mr Vijayan stated that, under the BJP's watch, the Sangh Parivar has increasingly targeted Muslims and Christians, including lynching them for their dietary habits and othering the minorities as fifth columnists.
He said the international spirit of proletarianism and working-class unity were the sole bulwarks against the ascendancy of schismatic Sangh Parivar ideology and identity politics, including minority communalism.
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