THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: V S Achuthanandan is often described as a doctrinaire communist leader who could not comprehend the need for Kerala to develop fast by harnessing nature and setting up industries, no matter what. Those who held that view, including many in his own party, dubbed him hostile to development.
But he knew better. The organic communist leader that he was, Achuthanandan strongly believed that if Kerala society were to plumb for mindless exploitation of Kerala’s limited land resources and its coastal stretches, it would mean disaster.
True, he was not born that way. That was a new world view that he picked up on the way, listening patiently to all those conscientious young and old men and women who saw an ally in him and approached him with their new perspectives on development and its impact on ecology and livelihoods.
They found in him a patient listener, an avid student, and an unrelenting campaigner for land, water and livelihoods. To understand this new politics, one has to learn new terminology, science, and new political philosophy. VS would sit before the experts for hours and study the subject. Only then would he take up an issue.
Kerala has witnessed several successful environmental protests and struggles — the Silent Valley protest in 1973 and the anti-nuclear plant protest campaign in Peringome in the mid-80s. That was before VS set foot in environmental politics, a new sphere many politicians did not want to enter. However, they later realised green politics would redraw one’s political geography.
In 1991, after he had vacated the party state secretary post, VS stepped into environment politics by taking up the issue of paddy field filling. Under his leadership, the Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilali Union (KSKTU) — on June 9, 1997, at a convention in Mankombu, Kuttanad — decided to stop land-filling activities. KSKTU workers trespassed on private land at several places and destroyed the crops planted after the field had been filled. The media termed this protest as ‘vettinirathal samaram’.
Later, criticism rose that VS failed to grasp many issues small farmers faced. In later years, VS successfully used the politics of land as a political tool against opponents in and out of the CPM. In 2002, he took up the issue of forest land grabbing at Mathikettanmala. He walked all the way to the challenging high-range areas. After a few weeks, he again climbed up the hills, this time to Pooyam Kutty against forest land encroachment.
No wonder when he became the chief minister, Kerala’s first environment policy, biodiversity policy, and organic farming policy were formulated. The most important was ‘The Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008’, which restricted the reclamation and conversion of paddy fields.