As the CPM marks its 23rd party congress in Kannur of Kerala, concerned social and environmental activists, in a joint appeal urged its national leadership to ask the Kerala government, led by Pinarayi Vijayan, to immediately scrap the decision to build a humongous semi high speed rail corridor from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram, named as the Silver Line.
It is with utmost shock and concern, they said that the latest developments in Kerala, the only state where the Left forces still hold fort in India. They deplored that the proposal of the Government of Kerala, under the leadership of Pinarayi Vijayan, to build a humongous semi high speed rail corridor from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram, named the Silver Line is seeing massive and widespread protest of common people from all over the state.
Referring to various responses, including protests and jathas, from the villages and towns through which this rail line passes, they said that these cannot be simply passed over as “politically motivated”. “We understand and fully recognize that they are genuine community voices, and many of them are voices from the same people who stood strongly with the Left Democratic Front and many had voted LDF to power”, they added. They cautioned that these voices need to be read as warning signals.
“We are also well aware of the voices of many of the co-travellers of the political left – social scientists, economists, civil society movements, environmentalists, engineers, development leaders, writers, cultural leaders, journalists and even those members of the society that carry the legacy of our erstwhile leaders, both by blood and by sweat”,, they said.
They recalled that Development Economists of repute have challenged the financial viability of this project with the proponents’ own data. Expert Railway engineers have demonstrated that this project is technically not viable with the datasets given in the DPR. Environmental experts have exposed the massive impacts this project could inflict on the highly vulnerable ecosystems and landscape of Kerala.
EIA ( Environmental Impact Assessment), SIA ( Social Impact Assessment), evaluation of technical and financial feasibility of the project are yet to be completed. Before all these activities, they said that it is not at all fair and just to push the project ahead, that too by use of police forces to suppress the resistances from common people.
Ironically, they recalled that the CPM itself, through its party mouthpiece has pointed out the neo-liberal and exploitative nature of a similar project that runs between Mumbai and Ahmadabad. They wondered that it is indeed shocking to see the same CPM using all means, including coercion to silence the strong voices of their own protest leaders
