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The Hindu
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
V.K. Santhosh Kumar elected CPI Kottayam district secretary
Communist Party of India (CPI) Kottayam district conference that concluded at Vaikom on Sunday unanimously elected V.K. Santhosh Kumar as the party's new district secretary. Hailing from a communist family in Poonjar, Mr. Kumar began his organisational work in 1978 as the All India Students Federation (AISF) unit secretary. He also served as assistant secretary of the Meenachil taluk committee of the party. He had been secretary of the CPI Poonjar constituency committee for 14 years, followed by a decade as the party's district assistant secretary. Currently, he is a member of the party's State council. Mr. Kumar is a member of the All India Youth Federation (AIYF) national council and holds leadership roles in several trade unions, including as president of the Meenachil Taluk Toddy Tapping Workers' Union, as president of the Meenachil Liquor Industry Workers' Union and as district president of the Supplyco Employees' Union. He also serves as a State office-bearer of the Liquor Industry Workers Federation and is a member of the State Minimum Wage Board advisory committee. Criticism Earlier, the delegates attending the district conference had raised criticisms directed at Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Ministers of the State government. Critics pointed out that the government had lost its Leftist character, with all four CPI-led departments underperforming. Further condemnation was directed at the Finance department for withholding funds, thereby stifling the CPI-led departments. The CPI State leadership, meanwhile, was described as weak and unable to take a firm stand on key issues. Representatives of the AIYF attending the conference also voiced strong criticism of the leadership, condemning the absence of youth representation even in the conference presidium and criticising the leadership's disregard for young members. They accused the party district secretary of not attending AIYF meetings and alleged attempts to suppress the youth outfit under the party's control.
Indian Express
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
VS as in versus: His tryst with causes, from paddy fields to nuclear plants
IF CPI(M) veteran V S Achuthanandan came to be known as a relentless fighter, he began early. Having dropped out of school to join his elder brother's tailoring shop at their native village Punnapra, Achuthan – as he was known then – was exposed to tales of oppression, including denial of wages, of toddy and coir workers. After he joined a coir factory at Aspinwall, he also got swept into trade unionism. In 1941, Communist leader P Krishna Pillai asked an 18-year-old Achuthanandan to organise the farm workers of Kuttanad in Alappuzha, who were unhappy about their abysmal working conditions and squalid living circumstances. The young leader soon made his mark, walking miles, day after day, to achieve the task. Recalling that tough time later, VS talked about staying in houses located in the middle of paddy fields, reached via wooden planks placed across streams. His speeches to farmers then, spread out across the vast paddy fields, without the aid of a public address system, would go on to define his distinctive speaking style – later a fodder for Kerala's mimicry artists. It was thus that VS established the Travancore Karshaka Thozhilali Union, which later grew into the Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilai Union, a CPI(M)-affiliated trade union of farm workers. During the 1946 Punnapra-Vayalar uprising, a historical struggle against Diwan C P Ramaswami Iyer of Travancore, a camp led by VS took charge of making sharpened lances out of arecanut tree planks to use against police. As the heat on him grew, the party asked VS to go into hiding, but police found and arrested him from Poonjar in Kottayam. At the police lock-up in Pala, he was subjected to brutal torture, so much so that police thought VS had died. It was while he was being taken for burial that he was discovered to be breathing, and the veteran got a new lease of life. But Alappuzha police again jailed him for 15 months, on charges of organising people against the government. In 1948, when the Communist party was banned, he was again arrested and jailed. After the first Communist government took over in Kerala in 1958, VS was the CPI district secretary. In his maiden speech in the Assembly in 1967 as an MLA, Achuthanandan took up his pet issue of rights of coir workers and fishermen. He was also active in debates that led to the Kerala Toddy Workers' Welfare Act of 1969, and was critical in the formulation of the then CPI-led government's legislation for agricultural workers. When the Emergency was declared, Achuthanandan, then the Ambalapuzha MLA, was arrested and jailed for 21 months. In 1997, when the LDF was in power and VS its convenor, he organised an agitation against the reclamation of paddy fields, mainly in Alappuzha, with the protesters even mowing down standing crops grown on the reclaimed land. While this did not go down well with civil society, the protest was eventually instrumental in the enactment of the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008. Achuthandanan's political journey took another turn during his stint as Opposition leader in 2001-2006, when he emerged as a darling of the masses as well as CPI(M) cadres. Already an octogenarian, he forayed into every battle ground, embraced every social issue, even taking a trek through the hills as part of his fight against 'encroachment' of the Mathikettan Shola forest. The forest was eventually declared a national park in 2003. The palmolein import scam, which emerged during the Congress regime of 1990-96, was another legal battle taken up by him. VS's campaign led to the conviction of senior UDF politician R Balakrishna Pillai over a corrupt deal when he was in the government. VS next became a litigant in the sensational ice cream parlour sex scandal case, which was exposed under the LDF regime of 1996-2001, not deterred even when the Supreme Court rejected his petition. In 2015, by when the UDF was in power in the state, VS joined the protest of women estate workers in Munnar. Sometimes, his fight went beyond the state borders. In 2012, VS ventured out to Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu to pledge solidarity with an anti-nuclear protest, but was stopped at the state border.
