VS's vision for God's own country

In an exclusive interview with DNA, V S Achuthanandan, who is likely to be the next chief minister, spoke to Lalita Panicker about his vision for the future of God’s Own Country.

Did you expect to do so well?
Oh absolutely. The UDF paid for its anti-people programmes. Kerala had a lot of problems under the UDF. Farmers were in a mess, small shops and establishments were suffering.

The government was selling state-owned assets. Minor girls were freely being  supplied to powerful people and no one was checking these scandals. 

There was a controversy about you being the chief ministerial candidate. Don’t you think you deserve it after leading the LDF to this victory?
The Politburo will decide. I do agree that I led the party to victory. There are wise people in the Politburo, they will decide. 

How can you be so sure given the past history of labour problems which your own party is largely responsible for?

We will look at what industries need to be set up and which existing ones need to be streamlined. You should know as a Mumbai paper what happened to the poor workers after the Shiv Sena broke the unions.