The Hindu (Thiruvananthapuram)
State has suffered from weak political vision: Chandrasekhar
Kerala has suffered immensely from the weak political vision of both the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and United Democratic Front (LDF), Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said.
The National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) candidate in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency blamed the Congress and the CPI(M)led coalitions for pushing the State towards economic stagnation.
Agent of change
In an interview to The Hindu, the BJP leader said the upcoming polls will provide the State an opportunity to replace “the political culture of not doing anything and making hollow promises with politics of performance”. Exuding confidence in his prospects in Thiruvananthapuram, he said the people viewed him as “an agent of change and one who can perform and deliver”.
Highlighting the untapped potential of the State capital as a technology, tourism and research behemoth, Mr. Chandrasekhar flayed the LDF and the UDF for allegedly preventing the State from achieving such goals and resorting to petty politics for their respective gains.
“The concept of Technopark [during its inception] was then unheard of anywhere else in the country. There was not a murmur of it in Karnataka or Tamil Nadu. Nobody had even thought about it in Hyderabad, Gurugram, Mumbai or anywhere else. Sadly, the city currently stood in the 18th position [among startup ecosystems] in the country,” he said.
He added that tourism, which used to be another fastgrowing sector in the State, has been witnessing a downslide. “Thiruvananthapuram had pioneered the health and wellness tourism segments back in the 1990s. However, we do not have foreign visitors as we used to have in the past. Our research and knowledge sectors have also been ailing with 37% of all undergraduate seats remaining vacant in the higher education institutions in Kerala,”said.
Mismanagement
“Compounding the hardships caused by economic mismanagement, the LDF and the UDF have created an atmosphere where investments are a bit complicated. The plight suffered by Kitex is an example of how investors are forced to run away. You cannot create a buoyant economy without investments coming, and without a buoyant economy, you cannot create jobs and opportunities. Without jobs and opportunities, children will not join colleges here for their studies. So, we have to bell the cat at some point,” Mr. Chandrasekhar opined.
He dismissed controversies surrounding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the conflict in Manipur as part of an “old strategy” adopted by the BJP’s political opponents. “They will discuss every other issue, including the CAA, Hamas and even a holiday announced in Manipur, but never the performances of the State government and the Congress in governance. That is their politics.” Preferring to take the ‘outsider’ tag given to him by the rival camps in his stride, Mr. Chandrasekhar said: “I do not subscribe to the political culture that the Congress and CPI (M) represent. I am not going to do negative politics by appeasing any one community or resort to other such tactics. I am certainly an outsider in that aspect and I am not shy in saying that I am very different from the two of them.”
Full interview: https://bit.ly/3TXhhMC