UDF meet focuses on local body poll strategy, prioritises livelihood issues over political attacks

A high-level United Democratic Front meeting, which started in Kochi on Thursday, reportedly aims to focus its impending local body election campaign more on economic insecurities that inform the everyday life experience of working-class voters rather than trading “sedate and predictable” ideological and political talking points with the ruling Left Democratic Front and the Bharatiya Janata Party -led National Democratic Alliance. For one, the Opposition reportedly reckons that the ASHA workers’ agitation for a minimum income for subsistence has resonated strongly among working-class voters and “caused perceivable fissures” among Left supporters and trade unionists. Sources privy to the UDF meeting’s agenda say the alliance will likely outline strategies to turn the tide of “rising resentment” among fishers against the move to allow private players to mine the marine and mineral-rich seabed off the coast of Kerala to target the Central and State governments politically at the hustings. The UDF local body campaign will likely spotlight the livelihood issues of settler-farmers vulnerable to wildlife raids in hilly agriculture districts abutting the State’s vast forests.