The Enigma of Kerala

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

reasonable exam schedules,' and a call from a leftist leader for the government to take over a coat factory where striking workers had been locked out. By the next day's paper the bus strike had ended, but a bank strike had begun. Worse, the men who perform the traditional and much beloved kathakali dance--a stylized ballet that can last all night--were threatening to strike; they were planning a march in full costume and makeup through the streets of the capital.

Sometimes all the disputation can be overwhelming. In a long account of his home village, Thulavady, K.E. Verghese says that 'politics are much in the air and it is difficult to escape from them. Even elderly women who are not interested are dragged into politics.' After several fights, he reports, a barbershop posted a sign on the wall: 'No political discussions, please.' But for the most part the various campaigns and protests seem a sign of self-confidence and political vitality, a vast improvement over the apathy, powerlessness, ignorance, or tribalism that governs many Third World communities.

How can the Kerala model spread to other places with different cultures, less benign histories? Unfortunately, there's another question about the future that needs to be answered first: Can the Kerala model survive even in Kerala, or will it be remembered chiefly as an isolated and short-term outbreak from a prison of poverty?

In the paddy fields near Mitraniketan, bare-chested men swung hoes hard into the newly harvested fields, preparing the ground for the next crop. They worked steadily but without hurry--in part because there was no next job to get to. Unemployment and underemployment have been signal problems in Kerala for decades. As much as a quarter of the state's population may be without jobs; in rural villages, by many estimates, laborers are happy for 70 or 80 days a year of hoe and sickle work. And though the liberal pension and unemployment compensation laws, and the land reform that has left most people with at least a few coconut trees in their house compound, buffer the worst effects of joblessness, it is nonetheless a real problem: In mid-morning, in the small village at the edge of the rice fields, young men lounge in doorways with nothing to do.

To some extent, successes are surely to blame. A recent report published by the Centre for Development Studies looked at the coir (coconut fiber), cashew processing, and cigarette industries and concluded that as unions succeeded in raising wages and improving working conditions, they were also driving factories off to more degraded parts of India. Kerala's vaunted educational system may also play a role. Because of what they are taught, writes M.A. Oommen, 'university graduates become seekers of jobs rather than creators of jobs.' In Kerala, says K.K. George of the Centre for Development Studies, 'the concept of a job is a job in a ministry. When you get out of school you think: `The state should give me a job as a clerk''--an understandable attitude, since government service is relatively lucrative, completely secure, and over, by law, at age 55. Large numbers of Keralites also go into medicine, law, and teaching. That they perform well is proved by their success in finding jobs abroad--as many as a quarter million Keralites work at times in the Persian Gulf--but at home there is less demand.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print