Tortoise Signals Budget's "Crawl" For Kerala: Social Media Floods With Turtle Memes After Union Budget 2026
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala: Kerala social media handles are flooding social media with turtle memes after the Union Budget 2026, which made no major allocations for the state, despite the upcoming state elections.
Opposite to the expectations, Kerala appeared invisible in the Union Budget 2026 despite contributing richly to India’s skilled workforce, tourism brand, and foreign exchange reserves. The Budget offered no AIIMS, no high-speed rail, no last-mile connectivity to Vizhinjam port, no special packages, all of which were duly expected.
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The Budget’s major inclusion of Kerala — the shared Rare Earths Corridor and development of turtle trails (ecotourism along sea turtle nesting sites in Odisha, Karnataka, and Kerala), has sparked a meme festival across Kerala’s social media handles, which was allegedly echoed by even the BJP-RSS supporters.
Political leaders across the spectrum, including chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, and KC Venugopal slammed the Budget as “neglect,” pointing out no major infrastructure or substantial allocations to the state.
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The Chief Minister sarcastically remarked that Kerala asked for high-speed trains but got a scheme for turtles instead, which several meme creators echoed with hilarious posts, suggesting that the slow-moving tortoise symbolizes the budget’s “crawl” for the state.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that as an MP from Kerala, he watched the state Budget unfold with hope that Centre would match its aspirations with support. Instead, the Congress leader said, the State Budget was built on a fantasy of central funds that the Union Budget has now explicitly failed to deliver, and as a result, a fiscal mirage evaporating in the heat of political indifference.
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Noting that the tragedy is not just economic, he said it is political too, given that the Centre sees no electoral gain in Kerala, so it offers no economic gain. The BJP -led government has made a cold calculation: why invest in a state that doesn’t vote for us, he pointed out. “We pay the price for a Centre indifferent to our pain and a State in denial of its own profligacy,” he added.
Referring to the inclusion of Turtle Trail” nesting sites in Kerala in the Budget, the Congress leader said the Centre sees our place as a waypoint for turtles and not as a hub of strategic minerals, maritime trade, or medical excellence, his article in NDTV said.
