Back in 2015, Moozhikkulam Sala shot to news headlines with its revolutionary Vidyarambham (initiation of children into the world of letters) when, instead of the customary ‘Hari Sree…,’ young children were made to scrawl Ka (for Kalburgi), Da (for Dabholkar), and Pa (for Pansare) — rationalists who fell to the guns — in an innovative act of resistance.
The Sala, which has woven a narrative of contemporary life laced with core environmental concerns, is now organising a ‘shadow cabinet’ to explore how a people’s government should be. “The shadow cabinet”, said its founder T.R. Premkumar, “is an attempt to see if there can be a balanced cabinet, with equal participation for men and women and with representation from transgender people, differently-abled, and the like.”
The cabinet will be constituted at an event at Changampuzha Park on January 27. Two other programmes in the run-up to the shadow cabinet are a discussion on the happiness index of Bhutan for the previous year in which a Bhutanese personality is likely to take part and another on the expectations from the forthcoming Kerala Budget.
'It is an alternative budget'
“In a way, it is an alternative budget. Our agenda is primarily environmental, and we are trying to seek an alternative way of living in sync with nature. Naturally, we would like to see a green budget,” Mr. Premkumar said.
“There is hardly any time for us to present our proposals for the upcoming Budget, but we intend to put together a detailed people’s budget for the year 2019-2020, which will be drafted after extensive discussions and presented to the government well in advance for the 2019 Budget,” he added.
While the shadow cabinet will be organised at Changampuzha Park, the discussion on the happiness index of Bhutan will be held at Moozhikkulam Sala on January 14.
A screening of Manoj Kana’s noted film Chaliyam will also be held in the evening.
