The sense of indignation has been caused by the BJP’s apathy bordering on cruelty towards the people’s suffering inflicted by the so-called surgical strike against black money announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8.
Rubbing salt into the wounds has been the Kerala BJP’s concerted campaign against the cooperative sector in the State on the specious plea that the cooperative banks in Kerala are vehicles for parking black money.
That there is a method to the madness unleashed by the BJP in the state goes without saying. The sinister objective behind the campaign is not all that hidden: It is the destruction of the cooperative sector, a stronghold of the left parties and where the BJP has little stake. What compounds their offence is the fact that cooperative banks constitute the backbone of the State’s rural economy. And any collapse of the sector will have calamitous consequences for the State’s economic health.
It is nobody’s case that the cooperative banks and the network of primary cooperative credit societies are paragons of virtue. If there are irregularities in their functioning, there are enough legal provisions to correct the same or end the malpractices. But to resort to a sweeping generalization – repeated ad nauseum in Goebbelsian fashion – that the entire cooperative banks need to be dismantled is an insult to lakhs of farmers, ordinary workers and housewives whose only hope of financial succor is these banks.
And no less a person than the Prime Minister has added insult to injury by refusing to meet an all-party delegation headed by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, which wanted to impress upon the need to remove the restrictions imposed on the cooperative institutions in participating in the exchange of demonetized high-value notes.
The Prime Minister’s appalling decision has drawn flak cutting across political barriers. Parties have roundly condemned it as an insult to Kerala and the Keralites. This is the first time that a Prime Minister has refused to meet an all-party delegation headed by a Chief Minister. The decision also amounts to a blatant violation of the spirit of cooperative federalism about which Modi and his cabinet colleagues wax eloquent day in and day out.
The PM should have realized that together, the LDF and the UDF represent 86 per cent of the State’s population. His party boasts of only a meager 14 per cent of the votes.
To say that the BJP will have to pay a very high price for this monumental political blunder is only to state the obvious. The Prime Ministerial lapse would also nullify whatever gains the BJP in Kerala had made in the local bodies and Assembly elections. That way, the party has set itself back by many years.
A close look at the vital role the cooperative credit asocieties and banks play in the lives of the poor and downtrodden is in order. There are as many as 20 state co-op banks, 784 district cooperative banks and 1,611 primary cooperative banks in the state. The cash reserves in these societies and banks are estimated at Rs 1.27 lakh crore. More than 75 per cent of the poor in the rural areas, farmers, agricultural workers, artisans and housewives depend on these cooperative societies and banks for their pressing financial needs. The curbs imposed by the RBI on these institutions have denied lakhs of people in the rural areas access to their own hard-earned money, causing them untold hardships and difficulties.
The battle will now shift to the Supreme Court with the district cooperative banks deciding to move the apex court for legal relief. The whole of Kerala is waiting with bated breath for the outcome of this legal battle. (IPA Service)
INDIA
POLITICAL ISOLATION OF BJP IN KERALA IS COMPLETE
FALLOUT OF ITS APATHY TO PEOPLE’S MISERY
P. Sreekumaran - 2016-11-26 10:11
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The most striking feature of the post-demonetisation phase in Kerala has been the complete political isolation of and rising anger against the BJP.