In a stark turn of events following Kerala’s recent polls, the state is grappling with renewed power cuts and impending milk price increases, casting doubts on the LDF government’s much-vaunted stability claims.
Load shedding of 30 minutes began on Tuesday across Kerala – the first such regular outages in years. This comes mere days after the April 9 elections, where the ruling coalition promised seamless electricity as a key achievement.
Adding fuel to the fire, Milma, Kerala’s premier dairy cooperative, proposed hiking milk prices by Rs 4 to Rs 56 per liter. The decision, to be submitted to the state government, highlights mounting pressures on essential commodities.
The timing couldn’t be worse politically. The LDF, under Pinarayi Vijayan, had positioned power reliability and price steadiness as pillars of their ‘Kerala model’ during the campaign, eyeing a hat-trick victory.
Milma’s vast network supports over a million farmers via thousands of societies and regional bodies, making it a cornerstone of the state’s cooperative success story. Yet, its pricing decisions carry significant socio-economic weight.
As the election code persists until early May, regulatory hurdles loom for the price adjustment. Critics argue these back-to-back blows expose cracks in the LDF’s narrative, potentially swaying voter sentiment ahead of results.
