A high-level United Democratic Front (UDF) meeting, which started in Kochi on Thursday, reportedly aims to focus its impending local body election campaign more on economic insecurities that inform the everyday life experience of working-class voters rather than trading “sedate and predictable” ideological and political talking points with the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
According to UDF insiders, the meeting will likely explore ways to electorally capitalise on livelihood issues, presumably generating voter volatility among fishers, settler-farmers and rubber and paddy cultivators with small holdings, even in traditional LDF strongholds.
For one, the Opposition reportedly reckons that the ASHA workers’ agitation for a minimum income for subsistence has resonated strongly among working-class voters and “caused perceivable fissures” among Left supporters and trade unionists.
Notably, Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Shashi Tharoor, MP, depicted ASHA workers as “the hapless victims of an insensitive financial tussle” between the Centre and State governments.
Sources privy to the UDF meeting’s agenda say the alliance will likely outline strategies to turn the tide of “rising resentment” among fishers against the move to allow private players to mine the marine and mineral-rich seabed off the coast of Kerala to target the Central and State governments politically at the hustings.
On the sidelines of the UDF meeting in Kochi, Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan pointedly told reporters that the LDF was “weeping crocodile tears” for fishers while covertly opening the door to BJP-backed corporates to “destructively mine” the State’s seabed for rich and rare minerals.
He alleged that the Industries department had shepherded mining corporates around Kerala’s coastline to explore mineral extraction prospects.
The UDF meeting will likely outline the proposed Theera Desha Jatha’s contours to shore up the coastal community’s support in the local body elections, given the significant electoral bloc’s tendency to hew to the Congress-led alliance during polls.
The UDF local body campaign will likely spotlight the livelihood issues of settler-farmers vulnerable to wildlife raids in hilly agriculture districts abutting the State’s vast forests.
The meeting would reportedly discuss strategies to leverage the legacy of Palakkad’s water conservation struggles to mount a robust opposition to the government’s move to allow a private player to establish a liquor manufacturing unit in the “perennially water-starved” district.
