Politics often makes for strange bedfellows. In Kerala, as garment major Kitex Group’s party Twenty20 seeks to expand its political footprint in next week’s local body elections, the Congress, the CPI(M), and the BJP have buried their differences to take on the corporate group’s outfit on its home turf.

Kitex launched Twenty20 as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative in 2013 to transform the village of Kizhakkambalam, near Kochi, where it is located and employs thousands in its garment processing unit. It was formed following a longstanding battle with the Congress-ruled village panchayat that had refused the year before to renew the unit’s working licence, alleging it was contaminating water bodies with effluents from its dyeing and bleaching units, though an expert committe

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