After two days of violence and protests in certain settler regions, entire Kerala will on Monday come under an lDF-sponsored 12-hour shutdown, being observed to protest against the Centre’s interim notification for implementing some of the proposals of the K Kasturirangan committee for protection of the Western Ghats.
The shutdown would be most effective and intense in mountainous Idukki, the district with the highest number of settlers in Kerala, as the High Range Protection Committee’s 48-hour ‘siege’ till midnight Tuesday is expected to bring all commercial, administrative and transportation activities to a total halt.
Union Minister Jayanthi Natarajan’s Sunday attempt to reassure the people that the Kasturirangan panel reports would not be implemented till the Centre received the concerned states’ opinions failed to have any effect on the farmers, their organisations, the Catholic Church and the lDF, who reiterated that the agitation against the Central move would continue.
Several parts of Kozhikode, Kannur and Wayanad districts had seen widespread violence since Friday as people protested against the Central notification on the Kasturirangan committee proposals which, according to settler farmers, would lead to large-scale displacement of people from 123 villages among the high ranges which the report has identified as eco-sensitive.
“This is not a problem of any particular political party or community. This is a struggle for the right to live,” said a pastoral letter issued by the Thamarassery Diocese of the Catholic Church on Sunday. “Taking lightly the people’s protests would have serious consequences,” said the pastoral letter that was read out in all parish churches under the diocese after Sunday Mass.
The letter asked political parties to shun their usual apathy and join the farmers in the struggle as “the stock assurances from the Government could not be trusted” anymore. “The Kasturirangan committee report has created anxiety among the settler farmers. The administrative systems and judiciary should end the anti-people measures,” it said.
The High Range Protection Committee has made it clear that its 48-hour “siege” would affect all spheres of normal life in Idukki district. The activists will block all traffic movements, force schools and offices to close down, lay siege to the hydel power station at Moolamattam and prevent the tourist inflow in the mountainous district.
According to committee general convener Fr Sebastian Kochupurakkal of the Catholic Church, this siege would be the most intense and effective struggle the district has ever seen. The committee has also decided that the settler farmers in Idukki would not pay land and building taxes and power bills till the Government withdraws from the move to implement the proposals.
At the same time, the Central notification on the Kasturirangan committee proposals and the antagonistic responses in Kerala against it have put the State’s Congress-led ruling UDF in a difficult spot especially in the context of the Catholic Church’s repeated attacks against it for letting the situation develop into the current status.
A war of words between the Church and the Congress has broken out in Idukki with Bishop Mar Mathew Anikkuzhikkattil openly stating that the people may not like to vote for PT Thomas, local Congress MP who has taken a pro-Kasturirangan panel stand, if he is fielded as candidate from the high-range constituency in the coming lok Sabha election.