Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on November 1, 2023 (Wednesday) inaugurated the week-long Keraleeyam festival that seeks to shed light on the richness of the State’s ethnic traditions, showcase the complexity of its evolution as a modern State and simultaneously present a marker of the polity’s promising future as a knowledge-based economy.
The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) boycotted the event, accusing the government of profligacy when the “treasury was bone-dry and people reeled under a debilitating cost of living crisis.”
In a politically themed inaugural address, Mr. Vijayan confronted fraught issues such as feudal and casteist hegemony that informed Kerala’s past and how renaissance movements and agrarian revolutions helped the State replace the oppressive and colonialist social structure with a modern, egalitarian, secular and welfare-oriented society.
