The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : `Present an alternative development model'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 15, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

`Present an alternative development model'

Staff Reporter

BJP urged to shun group politics

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Director of the Bharathiya Vichara Kendram P. Parameswaran has issued a wakeup call to the BJP.

In a statement here on Wednesday, he said that, Thiruvananthapuram was agog with hectic discussions and debates on the crucial issue of the State's economic development for the coming decade. All the political and technocratic formations and institutions were coming out with well thought out plans and programmes.

The BJP seemed to be the only party that was blissfully ignorant of this vital issue. Its only preoccupation seemed to be with self-defeating manipulations of personality-centred group politics. Most unfortunately this "policy of self deception" was happening at a time when there was well-defined space for an alternative development plan in Kerala.

He stated that the various approaches to planning were more or less on the same lines. In this plethora of discussions neither Gandhiji nor Marx figured anywhere. What was to be noticed was that all had agreed that development was only a matter of economics and had nothing to do with ideology, culture or people's identity.

It was in this context that the BJP could have set forth a viable alternative by projecting an updated, rural-oriented, Swadeshi-based pro-Gandhian alias pro-Hindu development paradigm.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Kerala