Vizhinjam stir called off, but issues remain

The 140-day-long agitation against Vizhinjam International Seaport ended on Tuesday as the Thiruvananthapuram Latin Archdiocese, spearheading the struggle, called off the stir abruptly, giving a political victory to the LDF government. The Latin church was forced to call a truce even as the state government stuck to its position and did not concede anything more than it had already promised.

While the government exhibited its will power in the way it handled the agitation, the fate of the struggle is a study of how a marginalised community’s genuine concerns get sidelined by vested interests and the leadership’s immature ways of handling the protests. It really is a case of how not to organise an agitation.

The Latin church erred initially with its unrealistic demand for stopping the port construction after a vast amount of money had already been invested. Its next mistake was to link all the woes of the coastal belt in Vizhinjam to the construction of the port, though there is ample scientific proof that climate change is playing havoc on coastal belts in Kerala and across the world.

Every issue the protestors raised was genuine and needed to be addressed. But the way the struggle was hijacked by the Latin diocese gave a religious colour to the agitation, and it failed to garner the support of the general public. The attack on the police station and the hate speeches of certain priests backfired.

Though the agitation has fizzled, the issues and concerns raised by the coastal community cannot be overlooked. That the coastal belt is in distress like never before is a stark reality for all to see.

Coastal erosion is a reality, and so is hundreds of people losing their lives and livelihoods. The coastal community has always been an outlier, and it continues to be so despite successive governments claiming to spend crores of rupees every year. The government should make the rehabilitation programme for them a top priority.

Equally important are issues related to coastal erosion, weather warning systems, and financial assistance for tiding over damages caused by bad weather situations. That the coastal agitation fizzled out only shows the community’s vulnerability in multiple ways. The government may have won the war of ego with the Latin church, but it should not mean it can ignore the protestors’ concerns.