With the indefinite strike by Leftist service organisations gaining momentum four days after it began and the CPM launching the second phase of its agitation across the state demanding land for the landless, the Oommen Chandy Government is facing a real litmus test as never before when it has crossed one-and-a-half years in office.
As the feeder organisations of the Left fold such as the SFI has also begun to add steam to the stir with support gear in the streets, the way the government is going to deal with the situation, especially when violent incidents are on the rise, is keenly watched.
Though 2013 has opened the floodgates of agitations, they have not deterred Chief Minister Oommen Chandy or his Cabinet colleagues, as there is a general assessment in the ruling fold that the agitations would not hold ground for long for want of public support. While the agitating organisations of employees are crying foul against the government with the regard to the proposed Participatory Pension Scheme, the government has countered it with the plank that only those joining government service from the next fiscal will be brought under it and the salaries or pension of existing employees will be left untouched.
The government has also driven home the point that more than 60 per cent of the state’s annual revenue is being catered as salaries and pension to the government staff, constituting a mere 3 per cent of the state’s population, and is bound to burgeon in the years to come.
The CPM agitation for land to the landless, which was geared up on Friday by putting up huts after encroaching excess land at 150 centres in the state, has also been given a go by with the police being given strict instructions to avoid any showdown with the activists. Though private and KSRTC bus stirs also coincided with the other stirs, the government was relieved after those stirs were called off shortly. The land for the landless agitation has been launched at a time when the Revenue Department was in the threshold of implementing the Zero Landless project.
“In fact, the government is not taking the stirs seriously as they are bound to fizzle out after a few days. The LDF and the CPM, of late, have proved that they cannot take an agitation beyond a limit, as they are keen only on political campaign,’’ Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan told ‘Express.’
“CPM supporters have no objection in Karnataka, Tamilnadu or Maharashtra to be part of the new pension scheme. In the case of the land stir, the CPM has identified excess land in various parts of the state, which are embroild in legal cases and which cannot be apportioned by any government unless the courts take a final decision,’’ he said.