[Reader-list] CPIM's assaults on peoples movements

[Anivar Aravind]

[There is a pattern in the assaults by CPIM on peoples movements in
kerala as you can see in Adivasi Land struggle in Aralam and
Chinnakkanal, Farmers struggles to save paddy fields in Muriyad and
Erayamkudy Chengara struggle for land by the landless, and forced
evictions in moolampally and moorkhan parambu for bigprojects.
In all places CPIM tried to defame leaders and people calling them
apolitical, naxalites, anarchists, anti people and development and
lately immoral and sex racketeers. There is a need to faceup this threat
to democratic space in kerala - Anivar]


Rebellion In Red Fort

Across Kerala, a dozen people’s struggles have erupted against the Left
regime’s cosying up to industry and its repression of dissent. KA SHAJI
reports
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main38.asp?filename=Ne150308rebellion_in.asp

Tehelka
March 15th

KA SHAJI
Thiruvananthapuram

HISTORY REPEATS itself as farce, so went Marx’s dictum. In Kerala, where
his footsoldiers pulled off the first democratic win in the world, the
Red party has turned against the people in a vicious somersault.

Karivellur village in north Kerala has seen an arc of history come full
circle. On December 22, 1946, the British regime’s police had gunned
down Communist activists who were preventing the local ruler from
seizing the farmers’ produce. In February this year, a farmer in the
village sent a bagful of rice seeds to agitating farmers in Erayamkudy
in the south as a mark of solidarity. The Erayamkudy farmers were trying
to rescue their farms from real estate mafia and a number of big
industrial units manufacturing clay bricks for construction work. The
LDF government had persistently dismissed the farmers’ pleas against
leasing out rice fields and the backwater region to brick manufacturing
sand mining units.

Rice seeds were one of the Erayamkudy farmers’s demands from the
government, and farmer Veluthambu sent his share in the face of threats
from local CPM men. His dispatch got rousing receptions at almost all
the railway stations en route. In Erayamkudy, noted Malayalam writers
Sugathakumari, Sarah Joseph, P. Surendran and KG Sankara Pillai helped
farmers in sowing Veluthambu’s seeds.

In November last year, around 3,500 families in Erayamkudi had begun
protesting against the brick manufacturing units in the area. The units
were not only ruining the rice fields but also polluting the air and
water. To the utter shock of the locals, the CPM and its government took
the units’ side.

When the agitation began receiving support even from Communist citadels
like Karivellur, the CPM turned furious. It accused the protestors of
having Maoist links. On Republic Day this January, the police raided the
house of C. Jayasree, a leader of the agitation, to search for the
laptop of Mallaraja Reddy, a Maoist leader in Andhra Pradesh who was
arrested in Kerala in December. But the search proved vain, and the
incident infuriated civil society across the state.

“What wrong has that lady done? She is doing what the organised Left
should do. Such struggles are inevitable in today’s India,’’ says
eminent jurist VR Krishna Iyer, who was a minister in the first EMS
Namboodiripad Communist government in Kerala.

Erayamkudy is not an isolated flashpoint. At least a dozen people’s
struggles are being waged in different parts of Kerala where the CPM is
cast as the proverbial “class enemy”. What is also distinct about the
struggles is that the involvement of NGOs is marginal. Leaders like
Jayasree come from families of traditional Left supporters and are not
anti-Marx in their beliefs. A reason why the CPM has branded them as
Maoists.

IN THE heart of Kochi, a few yards from the High Court, a land struggle
is being fought by 40 families evicted from Moolampally village to make
way for the proposed multicrore Vallarpadom Container Terminal. The
families were forced out of their homes in the dead of night when they
refused the compensation offered to them. “We are not against the
terminal, but we demanded proper rehabilitation and tax exemption for
the compensation package. But the government action was vengeful,” says
Francis Kulathingal, the leader of the agitation. Chief Minister VS
Achuthanandan called the agitation a handiwork of Naxalites but
retracted the statement the very next day after civil society groups
rose in outrage.

“You can ensure road and rail connectivity to Vallarpadam terminal
without evicting any of Moolampally’s residents. Revival of the old rail
link to the defunct Ernakulam Rail Good Yard was suggested as one
alternative. It needed no acquisition and the expenses were also
lesser,” says CR Neelakantan, a social worker who is participating in
the struggle. “But the government evicted the poorer farmers who owned
about three cents of land. The old rail link was not considered because
it passes through an area owned by Hindustan Lever where the company is
planning to build posh apartments and villas.’’

Valanthakkadu is another hub of public anger against the LDF’s
development agenda. Located two kilometres from Moolampally, the entire
Valanthakad island is being sold off to a Bangalore-based real estate
developer for a multi-crore “knowledge city”. Around 40 families of
Dalits have been evicted and several hectares of mangrove forests razed.

Farmers at Mooriyad in Thrissur began an agitation last year to protect
about 11,100 acres of rice fields from brick makers, sand mining mafia
and tile factories by holding portraits of Ayyankali, a Dalit social
reformer of the early 20th century. The CPM cadre retaliated by damaging
Ayyankali’s portraits. “With the CPM’s support, the mafia has already
ruined 4,000 acres of rice fields,” says Varghese Thoduparambil, leader
of the farmers’ front there.

The strong resistance in Chakkamkandam village against the setting up of
the Guruvayur temple town’s sewage treatment plant in their locality,
the tribal uprising in Aralam in Kannur demanding distribution of land
of a loss-making public sector unit among landless tribals, the struggle
by Dalits in Chengara near Pathanamthitta demanding the ousting of a
powerful plantation group from government land after the lease period
was over, movements against illegal clay mining in Mangalapuram in
Thiruvananthapuram and in Kollam, the struggle against a proposed hydel
electric project at Athirapally – such resistances are fast eroding the
CPM’s mass base.

“Farmers were committing suicide in Wayanad because of debt. The CPM
only shed crocodile tears,’’ says AC varkey, leader of the Farmers’
Relief Forum in Wayanad, a district that has competed with Vidharbha and
Anantapur for headline space in news media for “farmers’ suicides”.

According to social activist R. Ajayan, the Plachimada struggle against
Coca Cola and the Kasargod struggle against pesticide giant Endosulphan
were inspirational. Coca Cola was left trying to convert its bottling
plant into a mango juice production centre, and Endosulphan has been
banned in the state. Similarly, even though cases are still pending
against about 300 activists, a polluting pig breeding centre at Kainoor
in Thrissur has been shut down. The agitation against illegal bauxite
mining in Kasargod is also gaining in strength.

But the CPM continues to be one-eyed. In December last year, its cadre
in Chinnakanal in Idukki grabbed government land occupied by landless
tribals at the behest of the tourism lobby.

WRITER’S E-MAIL
shaji at tehelka.com