After four and a half months, Kerala’s fisherfolk on Wednesday “temporarily halted” their protest against the expansion of the Vizhinjam port in Thiruvananthapuram. The fisherfolk fear the Rs 7,525-crore project, controversially awarded to a Gautam Adani company by the previous Congress-led state government in 2015, will ruin their ecology, livelihoods and community life. Adani and his supporters counter that the construction of the “mega transshipment container terminal” will boost the economy and, thus, improve lives and livelihoods. Adani’s backers include not only the BJP, with which he is close, but also Kerala’s governing communists, who were against the project when they were in opposition, and upper caste Hindu groups. The protesters are mostly lower caste Christians. Adani, India’s richest person, has also found support among sections of the news media in Kerala and Delhi.
The media generally only paid intermittent attention to the mega project and its impact. Until, that is, the latest protests broke out and turned violent last month.
