Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurates Keraleeyam festival that seeks to showcase State to the world

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated Keraleeyam festival to showcase State's ethnic traditions, evolution as modern State and its future as knowledge-based economy. He saluted first communist govt for initiating land reforms, free education, decentralisation of power, total literacy and welfare-oriented society.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on November 1, 2023 (Wednesday) inaugurated the week-long Keraleeyam festival that seeks to shed light on the richness of the State’s ethnic traditions, showcase the complexity of its evolution as a modern State and simultaneously present a marker of the polity’s promising future as a knowledge-based economy.

In a politically themed inaugural address, Mr. Vijayan confronted fraught issues such as feudal and casteist hegemony that informed Kerala’s past and how renaissance movements and agrarian revolutions helped the State replace the oppressive and colonialist social structure with a modern, egalitarian, secular and welfare-oriented society.

Mr. Vijayan saluted the first communist government under former Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad for initiating land reforms that conferred ownership rights of farm and homestead land to tenants and agriculture workers, while setting a ceiling on the extent of land an individual could own.

He said the stress on free education till the Class 10, decentralisation of power, total literacy, public health, and an expanded social welfare net catapulted Kerala to the top of the physical quality of life index chart and spurred its development.

He reminisced about how Kerala’s secular unity helped it survive catastrophic floods and also resisted forces that repeatedly sought to divide the State into religious lines to slyly prospect for political gains.

Mr. Vijayan said Kerala’s resilient public health system did not buckle under pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic and later helped defeat other viral outbreaks, including Nipah.

Mr. Vijayan said the social mechanics of Kerala’s storied political transformation from a moribund medieval society to a modern secular State in a short span would inform its future as a robust knowledge economy.