PART 1

Kerala:A Development Model?

BY PRAMILA JAYAPAL

BANGALORE, India 26 June 1995

Kerala, the "Green Gateway to India," is one of the smallest states inIndia. It is a narrow finger of land, occupying 38,863 square kilometerson India’s southwest coast. The legend of Kerala is that the land was agift of Varuna, the god of the sea, to Parasurama, one of the ten avatarsor incarnations of Lord Vishnu. Varuna is said to have told Parasu-rama that he could have all the land he could cover by throwing downhis parasu or ax. Parasurama’s ax was thrown into the sea, causing thewater to recede from Kanyakumari to Gokarnam. This formed Kerala.

According to history books, Kerala State was formed in 1956 as a re-sult of India’s linguistic reorganization, and combined the princelystates of Travancore and Cochin (ruled by Maharajas) with the Mala-yalam speaking part of the Madras Presidency called Malabar. In the1991 census, Kerala’s population was approximately 29 million, mak-ing it one of the most densely populated states in India. Bordered onthe east by the Western Ghats (hills), 1600 kilometers in length, and onthe west and south by the Lakshadweep Sea, Kerala has always re-mained isolated from the events taking place throughout the rest ofIndia. However, because of its coastal location and abundant indige-nous spices, Kerala was a prime destination for Arab, Portuguese andDutch traders. As a result, Keralites treat foreigners with some meas-ure of nonchalance, and some of the major cities are unusual blends oftypical Kerala andDutch or Portuguese architecture.

The state’s topography varies from the beautiful coconut palm-lined beaches of Kovalam to the hilly ranges of the Western Ghats,with its thick fertile natural forests. Small and large streams, lagoons,rivers, and in the highlands, waterfalls, are intermingled with the lushgreen glow of paddies. Rubber and tea plantations are common, andin the fertile reaches of the hills, ginger, cardamom and pepper growwell. Kerala’s coast is filled with long sweeps of white sand beaches, araging surf in the summer months, and a bounty of fishing boats bob-bing in the often treacherous sea. Because of Kerala’s diversity in nat-ural beauty, it was recently ranked the third most preferred destina-tion in the world by a London-based travel survey.

Kerala is often touted as a "development model" both nationallyand internationally. If one looks at all the statistical indicators, it cer-tainly is. According to the 1991 census, literacy is 91 percent versus thenational average of 52 percent, and primary school education for chil-dren is free. Literacy of females is 87 percent. Kerala’s death rate is 6/1000, half of the national average. Infant mortality is 24/1000 againstSub-Saharan Africa’s 175/1000, or the 97/1000 rate of other Asiancountries. Life expectancy is a relatively long 66 years. Family plan-ning campaigns have been extremely successful, resulting in an al-most-zero population growth rate. The public health system has been

Pramila ]ayapal is an Institute Fellow spending two years living amid and writingabout societal issues in widely diverse regions of India.

widely developed, with primary care clinics availableto the majority of Kerala’s population. For other devel-oping areas of India and indeed the world, Kerala hasbeen held up as a possibility, a goal toward which tostrive.

Many different theories have been put forth to ex-plain Kerala’s success, but the three most commonlycited are the Nayar castes’ matrilineal system, the pro-gressiveness of Kerala’s rulers, and the election of aCommunist government in the state’s first elections in1957. I spent one month in Kerala, talking to men andwomen in villages and cities, meeting with researchersand activists to explore whether Kerala is really themodel it appears to be. Does the roster of statistical indi-cators accurately reflect the social and economic reali-ties of men, women and families? Does it give an indica-tion of happiness, of opportunity, of progress? Arepeople today really better off in Kerala than elsewherein India from their own perspective? This newsletter

will address the areas of literacy and education, and la-bor and employment. Part II will discuss women,health, and environment. As will be apparent, many ofthe areas are inextricably linked.

Literacy and Education

"Literate Kerala Beautiful Kerala" is one of the slo-gans that Kerala is using to promote itself these days.Kerala’s high literacy rates are often attributed to boththe Communists and the missionaries, but the earliestefforts to support literacy were promulgated by Ke-rala’s rulers as early as the 9th and 10th centuries. Vedicschools and colleges, called salais, were attached to tem-ples and supported by the rulers and private individu-als. Temples themselves became centers of learning,and social education was encouraged particularlythrough the recitation of stories, the acting out of dra-mas, and the singing of devotional songs. In the late1800s and early 1900s, the enlightened Travancore ad-

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Kumar, Rajanand Satish of theBalaramapuranWeavers Association

ministration of Sri Mulam Tirunal Rama Varma activelyencouraged the formation of private agencies in thefield of education. Free primary education and an edu-cation code were established. For the hitherto ignoredbackward classes, government schools began acceptinguntouchables and educated lower-class people weretaken into public service. According to historian A.Sreedhara Menon, "A Sanskrit College, an AyurvedaCollege, a Second Grade College for Women and a LawCollege were opened in Trivandrum." The missionariesalso helped education tremendously, particularly in theformation of English-language schools and education ofwomen and the lower castes.

That literacy is high is noticeable in many ways.Walking down the streets of Trivandrum in the earlymorning cool I would see rows of young men sitting onthe steps of the closed, shuttered shops, reading news-papers. Both boys and girls are encouraged- in fact,expected to go to school. In talking to people, itseemed quite clear to me that basic education has defi-nitely played an important part in people’s ability to un-derstand, for example, why small family size is impor-tant or why hygiene is necessary.

Similarly, literacy has played some part in people’sability and desire to debate, argue, and demonstrate.Kerala’s politics are fiery and often splintered. Like apendulum, public opinion swings from left to right, bid-ing its time and keeping politicians on their toes. Cur-rently, Kerala is governed by a coalition governmentthat includes the Communists. Because of its socialistorientation, Kerala is no stranger to populist move-ments. Everywhere, people band together in small orlarge groups to protest alcoholism and environmentaldestruction, to improve consumer awareness, or to fightinequalities. I once went to an agricultural exhibition,and found on one wall a series of posters explaining theill-effects of dam construction. A second wall explainedthe need for consumers to be aware of the TFM (or TotalFatty Matter) content of soap. An energetic man in his40s or 50s took me through an impassioned account in

Malayalam of the games that local and internationalsoap manufacturers play on naive consumers, hikingprices for the fancy packaging of a soap that containsless than the recommended 70 percent TFM, causing se-vere skin problems (I now check my soap packets care-fully, and find that many of the soaps do contain lessthan 70 percent TFM).

Literacy (though not literacy alone) has also enabled ageneration of lyricists, idealists and believers. It maysound romantic, but it is true. One evening, I was sittingin the darkness of Kerala’s common electricity failureswith my host family. In typical Kerala style, the familyfrom the small house next door had also come over. Ithad just rained, sheets of rain that came in sideways.The coconut trees with their long skinny trunks werebattered, exhausted from fighting the strong wind. Inthe lovely silent aftermath of the rain, someone said,"Basil, sing us a song," to the next-door neighbor’s 17-year old son. Basil has a beautiful voice, and sings kavi-tas, or poems, as well as songs. His clear voice cut acrossthe damp air as he sang in Malayalam, first about thedestruction of the environment, and then, even thougha Christian, a story from the Ramayana.

Basil’s social consciousness, reflected through his artand music, is only one example of many. The 25-yearold leaders of the Balaramapuram Weavers Associationhave M.A.s in politics, economics, and engineering, butspeak poetically about why they have decided to comeback to their villages and help the weavers. Rajan, for-merly a sanyasi, tells me enthusiastically about the greatpoets who came from weaving traditions, about the vir-tues of Gandhian practice, and about life in the 15th cen-tury. "I wish we could go back to that time," he says tome seriously. "Those are our roots." John Peruvantha-nam, a well-known environmentalist who is a socialworker at the Nirmalgram project, has won awards forhis Malayalam writings. He describes his environmen-tal battles where he was lashed between his fingers witha lathi by the police, dragged along a hot tar road, andthrown in jail several times. He speaks in a highly

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Sanskritized Malayalam, converting his words intopoetry with his emotion. Peruvanthanam was responsi-ble for organizing people to successfully protest theconstruction of four major hydro-electric projects in Ke-rala. Whether these people have received full formal ed-ucation or not, it seems that the emphasis on going toschool, on debate, on thinking, even at the elementarylevel, has created a context within which people can ex-press themselves more fully than I have seen in otherplaces. It has also encouraged a certain idealism whichmay or may not be practical but provides some com-pensation for the harsh day-to-day conditions peoplehave to face.

Many that I talked to contested that literacy was ashigh as government figures claimed. "It is all govern-ment propaganda," said one man. "If a person can reador write a few letters, the government says he is liter-ate." It is probably true that the government exagger-ates the figures, some researchers told me. It is also truethat the farther away from the cities one goes, the lessable people are to read and write in the vernacular. Eng-lish-speaking ability also declines substantially. Thiswas particularly evident in the adivasi (tribal) communi-ties where children attend often sub-standard schoolsfor only a few years. Currently, the literacy rate for the261,000 adivasis in Kerala is 31 percent. Even though thegovernment does provide some block grants to tribalsfor purchase of books and uniforms, the tribal peopleare so poor that often they use these funds for basic foodand living expenses rather than for sending the childrento school.

However, even if people feel the government exag-gerates its figures, in the end, most agree that literacy ishigh in Kerala. Serious criticism leveled at the govern-ment focuses more on the fact that people feel the gov-ernment is resting on the laurels of high literacy rates,using them as a statistic to bring praise to a state whosetime for praise is over. International reports that com-mend Kerala for its high literacy and health figures arealso not as quick to point out that unemployment is ex-tremely high and the economic future of the people isuncertain, regardless of (or some might say, because of)high literacy rates. Kerala’s model shows very clearlythat literacy alone is not enough to guarantee economicand social prosperity. Ironically, even though literacyhas had many positive benefits, it has also caused a situ-ation in which people are frustrated and underutilized.This is nowhere more apparent than in Kerala’s labormarket.

Labor and Employment

State-level labor policies are particularly progressivein Kerala. Kerala was the first state to establish unem-ployment and disability compensation, welfare funds(that function similarly to Social Security in the U.S.),and retirement funds. Kerala’s trade unions are infa-mous for the power they wield. The Trade Union Act,established in 1926, provided that a union could beformed with a minimum of seven people. Trade unions

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exist for almost anything, and perusing a recent list ofthe hundreds of trade unions that have been formed, Icame across everything from The Head Load Workers(people who carry goods on their heads) and The Auto-rickshaw Workers to The Cashew Workers (formerly aprimary industry in Kerala).

The Communist government, elected in 1957 in thefirst free elections after the formation of Kerala, made itsgreatest impact on labor laws and activities, although asocialist mentality existed in Kerala long before theCommunists formally came to power. The majority oflabor reforms have been introduced over the past 20-30years, and the stamp of equality for all workers seems tobe strongly imprinted. Not surprisingly, many of thesemeasures have made Kerala an unattractive place for in-dustries to locate themselves. "It is much more expen-sive for companies in Kerala," said retired Joint Com-missioner of Labor, Mr. M.P.N. Menon. "Here, thewages for workers are high, and the employer has to payso many benefits. For example, we are now seeing a lotof cashew factories moving across the border to TamilNadu. There they can pay their workers half what theypay here, and they don’t have to worry about unions orother benefits." The flight of the cashew and coir facto-ries in Kerala to neighboring Tamil Nadu has createdparticularly severe employment problems for women,since they were the main workers in these factories.

In addition, for small unskilled factory work Keral-ites are often overqualified and expensive. As one mon-eylender in a small village in Kavalangad said to me,"Who needs an educated labor force to roll beedi [localthin cigarettes]?" The government recognizes this aswell, stating in its 1992-1997 plan that "The educationpolicy has given undue importance to the promotion ofgeneral education to the neglect of the development ofprofessional and technical education." The more techni-cal industries are too afraid to move to Kerala, becausethe unions are so well organized and powerful thatworkers often strike, in one case leaving a companyclosed for three years. Even though several new invest-ments have been proposed in Kerala, as I mentioned inmy last newsletter, most people believe that none ofthose investments will eventually be approved by thepolitical parties and trade unions in a form that the com-panies are willing to accept.

Currently, 27 percent of the state’s total labor force, or3.2 million people, are unemployed. Approximately 60percent of these unemployed are educated. Even morestartling is Kerala’s contribution to India’s unemploy-ment figures. Kerala accounts for only 3.5 percent of thecountry’s total population, but the unemployed in Ke-rala make up 10 percent of India’s unemployed. There islittle new investment of great magnitude in Kerala, andas a result, labor absorption in the private sector has ei-ther been stagnant or falling. A section of the State’s1992-1997 plan entitled "The Negative Aspects of De-velopment" honestly acknowledges that "The state hasbecome a high-cost, non-competitive economy, with in-vestors moving out and no new investors coming in.’6

The diminishing private sector has also led to thepublic sector as the primary employer, causing it to beboth overstaffed and inefficient. Seniority continues tobe the main basis for promotion, and new hires cancome in only at the bottom of the ladder, thereby elimi-nating the possibility of creativity and restructuring atthe top. Corruption in the government sector is rampantand openly practiced at all levels. An adivasi family thatI met in the hills had just recently built a new house ofmud and some cement. They showed me their old"house", a thatched structure about 5 feet by 12 feet thatnow housed their two cows. The new house had cost Rs.14,000 (US$465) to build. "Did the government loan youthe money?" I asked, knowing that in a year when theginger and pepper grows well this family’s incomewould be only Rs. 6,000. "No, it was a grant," the manreplied. I was pleasantly surprised and told him so."Yes, but it was expensive to get the grant," he said. "Ihad to pay the government official Rs. 4,000."

Given that the government has set aside grant fundsspecifically for housing for adivasis, it is sad that one-third of the cost of this poor family’s house had to begiven as a bribe. With the recent election of A.K. Antonyas Kerala’s new Chief Minister, there is some hope thatcorruption will be addressed. Antony is known for hisintolerance of corruption, and has been nicknamed "Mr.Clean." However, it is a pervasive problem, rootedpartly in the low salaries of public officials, and will notbe easily tackled.

Kerala’s unemployment pinch is severely felt in thevillages. Many able-bodied young people try to move to

the Gulf countries or elsewhere. It is estimated thatthere are approximately 301,000 workers from Kerala inWest Asia alone.7 Income from the Gulf countries ac-counts for about 40 percent of Kerala’s income. It is yetanother paradox that Kerala depends on the migrationof its own people abroad for its own continuation. Thedependence on outside income is dangerous for Ke-rala’s long-term sustainability; it has also created manydifficulties in maintaining cohesive families (it is mostlythe men who go abroad, leaving their families inKerala).

Those who stay in Kerala often sit and stagnate. At asmall dairy cooperative in Kavalangad, Kerala’s highlyeducated labor force is a big joke. "Come and see how togenerate unemployment Kerala, the developmentmodel!" says Babu Joseph, a village society convener,wryly. "We produce, and then it goes somewhere elseto be processed, and then comes back to us costing somuch more," he says. "Look at rubber. Kerala probablyproduces 90 percent of the rubber in the country, butnone of it is processed here. It is all exported to the facto-ries in Rajasthan. We sell it for Rs. 50 per kilo, and thenit goes there and comes back in the form of things likesmall rubber balloons, which sell for twenty times theprice of raw rubber. If the factory located here, it wouldhave to pay the workers Rs. 50-100 per day, whereas inRajasthan, the workers will take Rs. 7. And we, the edu-cated labor force of Kerala, can’t understand how theycan live on that kind of money, so we mock them. But atleast they have jobs. We don’t." He, himself, is a well-educated man who has a degree in botany, zoology andchemistry from a university in Uttar Pradesh. He came

An adivasi man stripping cane in Boothathankettu

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back to Kerala’s high unemployment, was unable tofind a job, so eventually became a money-lender, bor-rowing from the bank at 20 percent and re-lending it at36-40 percent.

Retired Labor Commissioner Menon feels that Ke-rala’s emphasis on higher education has also negativelyaffected people’s desire to do agricultural labor. "Peo-ple don’t want to farm after they’ve been educated.They want white-collar jobs as clerks or even peons.They have very high expectations, and many just don’twant to work."

I heard this refrain from many people during mytravels: Keralites don’t want to work, they want themaximum money and benefit for the minimum amountof work. Is it true? Sadly, everyone seems to agree withthis, from Menon to Babu Joseph to a social worker at awomen’s home to several well-known researchers. Oneresearcher modifies this slightly: "Keralites only wantto w.ork abroad. Haven’t you seen them? They are al-ways so industrious, setting up businesses all over,working so hard in the Gulf countries. It is only whenthey are home that they don’t want to work." noticedthis phenomenon even with the rickshaw drivers. Al-ways neatly lined up in a row at the rickshaw stand,they sat and waited for customers. One was supposedto go to the rickshaw at the front of the line first, but of-ten found that was passed down three or four rick-shaws if the place I wanted to go was a little far, eventhough would be charged double-fare for the poten-tially empty return journey. Especially in the afternoonsun, the rickshaw-wallahs8 would often open a bleary,sleep-filled eye to tell me to go to the next one beforeeven hearing where I wanted to go!

Partly because children no longer want to stay homeand farm and agricultural laborers are expensive, andpartly because the Communists did a good job of redis-tributing land so that most people have only relativelysmall plots, it is no longer profitable for many villagersto farm. Even though the government has implementeda law that prevents agricultural land from being filled inwith cement for roads or other developments, it left oneclause that allowed government officials the discretionto grant such permission in "special circumstances."Corruption and, in some cases, the unprofitability ofholding agricultural land, has meant that more andmore paddy fields are being converted into cement, andagricultural production has suffered a sharp decline.

Because of inadequate production and the need to im-port everything from milk to electricity from neighbor-ing states like Tamil Nadu, price levels have increaseddramatically making the cost of living unaffordable formany Keralites. Kerala’s per capita domestic productrelative to the national per capita income has declinedfrom 90 percent in the 1960s to 70 percent in the 1990s.The State’s revenue deficit has quadrupled in 10 years,as it has tried to maintain its progressive pension fundsand social services without an accompanying increasein investment revenue.9

The State is trying hard to attract new investment. Itsmost recent plan is to develop a tourist infrastructurewithin Kerala to respond to the recent travel surveyranking. Agreements are being formed with interna-tional airlines to fly directly to Kerala, hotels are beingplanned, and other tourist attractions are being devel-oped. The hope is that developing the tourist industrywill bring plenty of new jobs to the people. The state isalso trying to implement some measures such as en-couraging companies to negotiate long-term contractsfor salary and benefits with the workers, which wouldhopefully limit the number of strikes. Another pro-posed suggestion has been to limit the number of recog-nized trade unions, so that it will be easier to negotiatewith them. Particularly as the political parties have be-come more and more splintered, and they have begunto back different unions, the number of unions hassoared. This has made it very difficult for the govern-ment to negotiate settlements that are broadly based.

In many senses, Kerala is before its time in both liter-acy and labor. However, it is a mixed blessing, recentlymore negative than positive. Literacy by itself cannotprovide economic security to people. In the labor arena,Kerala neglected to do what was necessary to generateinvestment that could provide an inflow of revenue anda source of jobs for Kerala’s highly skilled labor force,

Sadly, it is also true that unless surrounding states havelaws that hold companies to the same high standards,there is no incentive for a company to locate in Kerala.Finally, trade unions in Kerala will have to begin to pro-vide some concessions or guarantees to companies inorder to make the State more conducive for investment.It is Kerala’s paradox of development that its highly ed-ucated labor force has no infrastructure into which to beabsorbed. The world will be watching to see if Keralacan rectify this situation; Keralites, whose lives dependon it, will be watching even more closely. 3

NOTES:1. World Development Report 1993: Executive Summary, WorldBank, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 21.2. A. Sreedhara Menon, "A Survey of Kerala History," Madras, 1984, p. 282.3. Kerala State Plan 1992-19974. Interview with Retired Joint Commissioner of Labor, Mr. M.P.N. Menon, June 1995.5 & 6. Kerala State Plan, 1992-1997.7. Leela Gulati, "In the Absence of Their Men:" Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 1991.8. Wallah is a term commonly used to mean one who owns, operates, or sells.9. Kerala State Plan, 1992-1997.

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