The saying that a Nair cannot accept another Nair is true according to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Speaking at the inauguration of the 146th Mannam Jayanthi celebration at the Nair Service Society (NSS) headquarters at Perunna in Changanassery in Kerala, Tharoor said that Mannathu Padmanabhan, who founded the NSS, had once observed that one Nair cannot accept another. He said though the observation was made more than a century ago, he has witnessed it during his political career — an apparent dig at a few fellow Congressmen from the Nair community.
Mannam Jayanthi is held to celebrate the birth anniversary of NSS founder and social reformer Mannath Padmanabhan. Hindus constitute more than 50% of the 3.25 crore population and in numbers even though the Hindu Ezhava community is slightly ahead of the Hindu Nair community (NSS), it's the latter which is deemed very powerful. For long, the NSS’s soft corner towards the Congress was well known, but in the past several years, they followed the policy of maintaining 'equidistant' stand to the traditional political fronts in Kerala. One reason why Tharoor's visit on the day of the Mannam Jayanthi celebrations gathers significance is that this is the first time in a decade that the NSS has invited a Congress leader on the Jayanthi celebrations of its stalwart leader – Mannathu Padmanabhan Pillai who was its general secretary for 31 long years before passing away in 1970. The last Congress leader who was invited for it was AK Antony, a decade ago.
Sukumaran Nair, the general secretary of NSS, said during the event that when Tharoor came to contest polls from Thiruvananthapuram, he had called the latter 'Delhi Nair'. "To rectify that mistake we have invited him here for this event. According to me, there is no one more competent to inaugurate the celebrations," Nair said.
The praise of Tharoor by Nair was welcomed by senior Congressman and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly VD Satheesan. "I welcome any praise of a Congress leader by anyone here in Kerala," he told reporters. Satheesan had recently expressed reservations over the Thiruvananthapuram MP's political outreach programmes in the southern state. When the alleged rift between Satheesan and Tharoor was widely reported by the media, he refuted the same.
Meanwhile, Tharoor also pointed out that unemployment among the youth in Kerala was 40% in June 2022. Unemployment rate among the youth in Kerala is huge and there is a need to make the state more attractive for its younger generation to prevent them from going outside for jobs, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor said on Monday.
He said only Jammu and Kashmir was in such a situation, but that was due to militancy problems there. "No other state is showing such concerning figures of unemployment among the youth. In other states those uneducated or unskilled are the ones lacking jobs. However, in Kerala everyone is literate, educated and has passed Class 10, yet a lot of them do not have jobs," the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.
Tharoor said 3.5 lakh professional and technical job-seekers, including 9,000 medical graduates, were registered as job-seekers in the southern state's employment exchange. Of the 3.5 lakh job-seekers, around 71% have ITI certificates, he added.
"This is the state of affairs in Kerala. Therefore, there is no doubt that the state needs to open its doors to bring in more investment. We need to create more employment opportunities," he said. The MP said that a lot of youngsters are going outside the state for job opportunities and that should be seen as a loss for Kerala. "We must make Kerala more attractive for our young people," was a solution he offered.
(Agencies- IANS, PTI)