Thiruvananthapuram: Finance Minister Dr. T. M. Thomas Isaac has expressed concern that the traditional social base of the Left in the state was crumbling on account of the vanishing traditional sectors. He was speaking at a seminar held in connection with the release of the book, Reinventing Social Democratic Development: Insights from Indian and Scandinavian Comparisons,’ authored by Dr Olle Toruquist, Swedish professor in political science at the University of Oslo.
The programme was held by the department of political science, University of Kerala, in association with the Centre for Socio-Economic & Environmental Studies. Dr Isaac wondered whether the transformative politics would fulfil the expectations of the ‘new middle class’ that had recently emerged. He urged that the youth should be weaned away from the consumer culture as he feared that it was one reason for them to get corrupted. He felt that the alternative was to create cultural institutions by the state and added that he had earmarked money for this in the budget.
“The neo-liberal counter-revolution and the bipartisan politics have resulted in setbacks to socialism and social democracy. The transformative political project was given a go-by by the western governments as it was found to be an obstacle in their path,” he said. Dr Olle Toruquist said social democracy was hard-pressed in terms of democratic politics to combine equity and sustainable growth.
In the south, market-driven global development came with more inequality and conflicts combined with authoritarian rule or elitist democracy, he added. Prof. Michael Tharakan, in his presidential address, said that the primacy of politics in the social democracy discourse was fast losing.
