•E M S Namboodiripad Memorial Lecture on ‘Democratic Consolidation: The Indian Experience’ on June 13, 2008 at Thiruvananthapuram (his most recent speech as the Speaker of Lok Sabha)

“In the opportunity the people gave him to head a Communist Government, Comrade EMS saw a mandate to translate his party’s ideals into practice. The land reforms initiated by him, which fixed an absolute ceiling on the land a family could own and provided for the excess land to be redistributed among the landless, remain the most successfully implemented land reforms in our country so far. The only other state that has come closer to the Kerala experiment is that of West Bengal. Fixity of tenure, freedom from eviction and a fair rent were some of the most notable features in the land reforms introduced by him.”