DYFI forms human chain to muster opinion against Centre’s ‘financial embargo’ on Kerala

Thousands of LDF supporters form a human chain in Kerala to protest against the BJP-led Central government's financial embargo.

On Saturday evening, thousands of Left Democratic Front (LDF) supporters formed a human chain that snaked across the length of the State to muster public opinion against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government’s crippling ‘financial embargo’ on Kerala.

People from different walks of life held hands briefly to form an arguably unending line from Kasaragod in the north to Thiruvananthapuram in the south in an attempt to put the Centre on trial in the court of public opinion for allegedly hobbling Kerala’s infrastructure development and perforating its expansive social security net by denying the State its due share from the national revenue and slashing down its borrowing limit.

The Democratic Front Youth Federation of India (DYFI)-sponsored demonstration seemed a political counter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s back-to-back roadshows and high-profile public events in the State in a fortnight.

The human chain was also a precursor to a protest by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his Cabinet colleagues, and LDF legislators at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on February 8 against the Centre’s “trespasses” on federalism.

The participants, including poets and artists, raised slogans and fanned across densely populated urban localities and suburban villages to express solidarity with Kerala’s case against the Centre. DYFI activists directed people to empty spots to form an almost continuous 651-km human line.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) State secretary M. . Govindan, who participated in the human chain in Thiruvananthapuram, said people of Kerala had spoken against the Centre. The public had rallied behind the government’s attempt to wring the State’s due from a spiteful and politically hostile Central government.

He said the Centre was hell-bent on undoing the social progress Kerala had achieved over the decades in a bid to push the bastion of democracy and secularism into the dark ages.