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Anti-LDF fever runs high among Kerala farmers

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

Anti-incumbency feelings are running strong against the ruling Left Democratic Front, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, in Kerala's agricultural belts.

The disenchantment is at its peak among roughly one million small and marginal rubber growers who are facing a severe crisis because of the unprecedented fall in rubber prices.

The CPI-M's strategy to shift the blame on to the previous Narasimha Rao government at the Centre has few takers in the rubber belt comprising Lok Sabha constituencies like Kottayam, Muvattupuzha, Idukki, Mavelikkara and Adoor. The planters hold the LDF responsible for it -- after all, they charge, it was involved directly or indirectly in the governance of the country for the last 18 months.

The United Democratic Front (the Opposition), for its part, is attacking the CPI-M for its failure to put pressure on the UF government to stop rubber imports, the perceived major factor behind the price-nosedive. And the strongest weapon in its armoury is the government's persistent refusal to lead an all party delegation to the Centre to argue their case.

"Centre-state relations have always been the LDF's strong point of campaign when the Congress was in power," said state Congress president Vayalar Ravi, "It is now our turn to pay back in the same coin."

The anti-LDF sentiments are acute among the majority of rubber growers as they are solely dependent on the commodity for their living. The fall in prices from a peak Rs 65 per kilogram in the beginning of 1996 to below Rs 30 (throughout 1997) has made a lot of difference for the small and marginal growers who dominate the state's rubber production. The loss the farmers suffered is estimated to be around Rs 15 billion a year.

The coconut growers, who witnessed a similar decline in prices during a better part of the LDF rule, too, are angry with the CPI-M. And the paddy growers, who have already been hit by shrinking margins, have turned against the Communists for stopping them from shifting cultivation to other profitable crops. And the crop-destruction spree which the CPI-M agricultural workers went on have cost them quite a few friends.

"The crisis is wide and deep. We are confronting angry farmers everywhere," said Prabhakaran Nair, who started the LDF's campaign in the rural areas of Thiruvananthapuram, "The common man has been severely affected. We do not know what explanation will satisfy him."

The crash in prices has had a cascading effect on the whole economy, and the trade and business is in a state of paralysis. The deportation of a large number of migrants from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia has further aggravated the crisis.

Thus, consumer items like textiles and jewellery find no takers, and real estate transactions have almost come to a standstill. The acute power shortage and the slump in industrial production have dampened the industrial sector as well.

A feeling of bitterness pervades among almost all sections of the people. The LDF campaigners visiting households are confronted with tough questions.

"No explanation seems to satisfy them," said an activist who returned from a house-to-house campaign. Though there has been a fall in the income of the people there has not been any let up in the prices of essential commodties, he added.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister E K Naynar has sought to bail out his government saying that the outcome of the election would not be a verdict on the LDF.

"The concerns of the people in a Lok Sabha election that decides the government at the Centre are always different," he said.

Opposition leader A K Antony, however, is not ready to concede to this. He said the CPI-M which had been dealing with 'a friendly government' at the Centre could not explain away its lapses like that.

The Left parties which always blamed the Congress for the ills of the state, he continued, should explain what benefit the people had got from a non-Congress government at the Centre.

"The present election will be a referendum on the two-year-old Nayanar government," Antony said.

CPI-M general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet was frank enough to admit that the Left parties had to compromise a lot for the UF government's survival. He said they were not in a position to impose 'our will on other partners in a coalition set-up'.

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