Hundreds of disgruntled fishermen and their family members blocked the national highway for over five hours on Dec 9 demand-ing the government agencies take additional steps to find the fishermen who are still missing in the sea.

The protest under the banner of Kerala Regional Latin Catholic Council started at 10am and lasted until 3.30 pm. The agitation was called off after the state government assured them that more fishermen would be taken aboard the vessels going for search and rescue operations from December 9 onwards.

Fishermen in Paruthiyoor and Pozhiyoor coastal villages had been alleging apathy on the part of authorities in carrying out search and rescue operations to trace fishermen from the area.

Fr Eugine Pereira, vicar general of Trivandrum Latin archdiocese, said a few local fishermen who were not satisfied with the search and rescue activities of the government ventured into the sea on Dec 7. They went up to 172 nautical miles off the coast and spotted wreckages of several country boats and a couple of bodies. “After returning to the sea, they had been demanding more search and rescue operations, but there was no response from the part of the government. That is why they were forced to block the highway,” the vicar general said. So far 56 persons are found to be dead.

Catholic dioceses in the southern Indian coastal regions have appealed to help people devastated by cyclone Ockhi that hit the Trivandrum and Kanya-kumari districts on Nov. 29. Several hundred fishermen are feared missing, Fr Deepak Anto, executive secretary of the media commission of the Latin Arch-diocese of Trivandrum, wrote in an email to the Vatican’s Secre-tariat for Communication urging for help.

Fr Deepak said the affected Trivandrum Archdiocese and Tamil Nadu’s Kottar Diocese “are very much engaged in the rescue operation and relief work” in collaboration with the state and central governments.

Trivandrum Archdiocese has appealed to draw attention to the emergency that the international and national media have “unfortunately” “not given enough coverage,” Fr Deepak said.

The Latin Catholic Church has decided to intensify its agitation until all fishermen left stranded in the outer sea by cyclone Ockhi are rescued.

A meeting of the pastoral council under the Thiruvanantha-puram archdiocese of the Church, convened by Archbishop Soosa Pakiam M., decided to launch day-and-night agitations at various places including Thiru-vananthapuram, Kochi and Tuti-corin on December 11.

A demonstration will also be taken out to the Raj Bhavan in protest against the delay in rescuing those missing.

Secretariat siege: Vicar-General Eugene H. Pereira told media persons that the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard were hesitant about expanding their search in the outer sea. The Church demanded that the Centre deploy defence aircraft in the rescue effort. The agitation will continue until the last person is rescued.

As a debate rages over growing intolerance in the country, former US President Barack Obama on December 1 disclosed that he had privately told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India must not split on sectarian lines and that it must cherish the fact that Muslims here identify themselves as Indians.

“Particularly in a country like India where you have such an enormous Muslim population that is successful, integrated and thinks of itself as Indian and that is unfortunately always not the case in some other countries where a religious minority never-theless feels a part of. I think that is something that should be cheri-shed, nurtured and cultivated.

“And I think that all farsi-ghted Indian leadership recog-nises that but it is important to continue and reinforce that,” he said speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Obama, who was making his first visit to India after demitting office earlier this year, was remi-nded of his speech at Siri Fort auditorium on January 27, 2015 — the last day of his last visit to India as US President — in which he sounded caution “against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines” and pointedly asked if the message was directed at the Modi led BJP government.

He said the message was meant for “all of us” and “the same thing” was told “in private to Prime Minister Modi.”

“If you see a politician doing things that are questionable one of things as citizens you can ask yourself is am I encouraging or supporting or giving licence to the values? If communities across India are saying we are not going to fall prey to division then that will strengthen the hands of those politicians who feel the same way.”

More than a billion dollars is being spent on giant statues of a nationa-list leader, a former king and a Hindu deity in three Indian states where pov-erty is widespread.

All of the states involved are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which uses jingo-ism and triumphalism to swing votes their way.

Pravin Mishra, a civil rights activist, said the phenomenon neglected practical needs of ordinary people such as improving health and education services. In Gujarat, a 213-meter statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a prominent leader of India’s freedom struggle and a native of the state, is under construction at an estimated cost of US$470 million.

In neighboring Maha-rashtra, a 61-meter statue of Shivaji, a 17th century Maratha king, is being built for US$300 million.

In India’s most popu-lous State, Uttar Pradesh, US$300 million has been allocated for a 91-meter statue of Hindu lord Ram.

Uttar Pradesh, with a population of 200 million, had the highest proportion of homeless people in India (18.56%) followed by Maharashtra (11.9%) and Rajasthan (10.24%).

Mishra notes that the International Food Policy Research Institute recently ranked India at 100th out of 119 countries on its global hunger index, behind North Korea, Bangladesh and Iraq.