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Rubber price politics came to the fore again on Wednesday with Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran stating that Kerala Congress (M) led by Jose. K. Mani, MP, has sealed its political fate by aligning with the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government that has turned its back on lakhs of small-scale rubber farmers in the State.
The United Democratic Front (UDF), which has sizeable support among predominantly Christian settler farmers in the State’s hilly districts, seemed gripped by a sense of urgency to centre its political narrative around the ailing rubber sector to stabilise its support base, chiefly in Central Kerala.
Mr. Sudhakaran said the government’s election promise to hike the base price of rubber to ₹250 a kg remained on paper. The ₹500-crore outlay for the sector was largely unspent. He also seemed intent on driving a wedge between the CPI(M) and the KC(M).
The UDF and the LDF appear worried by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) proactive attempts to make inroads into the electorally influential Christian community by attempting to find a common cause with the Church on ‘love jihad and narcotic jihad’ could alter the political status quo in the State.
The BJP has now sensed a new opportunity in Archbishop of Thalassery Mar Thomas Pamplany’s controversial statement that rubber farmers would accord the party a Lok Sabha seat if the Central government hiked the minimum support price of latex to ₹300 a kg.
BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders have made no secret of courting minority community leaders with an eye on the Lok Sabha elections in 2024. BJP leaders have empathised with the Archbishop’s sentiment but stopped short of committing.
It has also not helped the LDF and the UDF that the Church has blamed the opposing alliances for not doing enough to alleviate the plight of rubber farmers. The Church has cast the falling price of rubber and the spiralling cost of cultivation as an existential crisis for settler farmers, an emotive issue that political parties could ill-afford to ignore.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had attempted to swing public opinion in the LDF’s favour by inaugurating an apolitical conclave of rubber farmers in Kottayam to mitigate the sector’s crisis.
Mr. Sudhakaran felt the CPI(M) and the KC(M) drove rubber farmers to the BJP tent. He said it signalled a pre-election understanding between the CPI(M) and the BJP to disadvantage the UDF in rubber-growing regions of the State.
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