Mangaluru, Jun 20: Senior CPM leader from Dakshina Kannada district, B Madhava, is no more. He was 81. Hailing from Balluriin Kasaragod district, Madhava, a law graduate worked in the Life Insurance Corporation of India at Mumbai, Udupi and Mangaluru, and took active part in the All India Insurance Employees Association. He was instrumental in organising LIC workers, and thus involved himself actively in their welfare across India.
Later, attracted by the ideology of the CPM, he played an active role not just in the party, but also CITU, its affiliated trade union. Apart from working for the rights of insurance employees, he also took an active part in organising the tile factory, beedi and construction and motor transport and engineering workers through their respective organisations, and was in the forefront of many a democratic agitations that the respective organisations staged.
Madhava undertook extensive study of scientific socialism, Marxism and modern Kannada literature, and was elected founder vice-president of Karnataka Cultural Organisation when it was founded towards the latter half of the 1970s. He translated works of CPM stalwarts such as E M S Namboodiripad, A K Gopalan and Vladimir Lenin, among others, from Malayalam and English into Kannada. He also penned articles on contemporary Indian politics.
His writings and oratory skills endeared him not just to party cadre, but also intellectuals and the media. He was also the mentor for SFI, Janavadi Mahila Sanghatane and DYFI. He was member of the CITU team that undertook a study tour of the then USSR in 1988, and member of Indian construction workers delegation that visited Japan in 2011. After obtaining voluntary retirement from LIC, he was a full-time party worker for the last two decades.
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