Not quite heaven: the ground realities of the Kerala Model

By Peerless pundit A few days ago, FirstPost republished one of my comments as a separate article . Almost immediately readers began criticising the piece as being too clichéd and missing out on the “ground realities” of Kerala. In this article, I would like to take a more objective and dispassionate look at these ground realities and look at what they mean, for not only Keralites, but Indians in general.

Conventional discourse on Kerala has always vacillated between two extremes. On the one hand, the “Kerala Model” has been a favourite with left-leaning individuals for its steadfast commitment to a welfare state and the inclusiveness of its polity. On the other hand, it has often raised the hackles of nationalist Indians due to the increasing assertiveness of minority-based political institutions such as the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the Kerala Congress and the Church. The state’s on-off romance with Marxism and its reflexive anti-capitalism has also not found favor among vast swathes of middle-class India.

The Kerala Model So what exactly is the Kerala Model? 

The term originated from a path-breaking case study conducted by the Centre for Development Studies (Trivandrum) along with the United Nations in the 1970s. The study came up with some startling conclusions. Despite being an extremely poor state, it was discovered that Kerala had high literacy rates, healthy citizens and a politically active population.

To put things into perspective:
These outcomes are largely the result of progressive policy choices- Kerala’s government has historically spent at least 30% more on education and 40% on healthcare than the average Indian state. The sincerity with which the state has pursued land reforms and wealth-redistribution schemes also needs special mention. The anthropologist Bill McKibben says, “Statistically, Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development”.

Kerala was also mentioned in a positive light in the Sachar report as being among the first states to pursue affirmative action policies. In fact such reforms were introduced before India achieved independence. 

It should then come as no surprise that India’s first woman judge Ms. Anna Chandy, as well as the first woman judge of the Supreme Court Ms. Fathima Beevi, were both from Kerala. So were India’s first Dalit President Mr. K.R. Narayanan, and it’s first Dalit Supreme Court Chief Justice (the now scam-tainted) Mr. K.G. Balakrishnan.

The Gulf has been a boon as far as Kerala is concerned. The more than 2 million Keralites working in the Gulf remitted more than $6 billion to the state. Entire families have been lifted out of poverty and have achieved upward social mobility as a result of this boom. 

Simply put, blue-collar workers in the Middle East have earned enough to fund their children’s education and put them into white-collar professions in the space of just one generation!

The flip side

But not everything is so positive. 
Kerala’s government is broke. It has been running one of the largest deficits in the country and is largely dependent on foreign remittances from the Gulf. In fact it might be said that the success of Kerala’s “uber-socialism” lies in NRKs willful participation in the “casino-capitalism” of the Middle East. It remains to be seen how sustainable this will be in the long run, especially in the light of emerging economical and political crises in the Middle East.

The Gulf boom has also created its own social imbalances. The beneficiaries of the boom have largely begun to out-muscle the non-beneficiaries in terms of social and political clout. This has destroyed the delicate social order in several parts of the state and led to a political backlash. The increase in the appeal of the BJP is directly proportional to the disturbance of this status quo. Several lower-middle class Muslims families after having spent decades in the Middle East have gradually adopted the culture and customs of that region. This is most evident in their sartorial preferences. This “Wahhabification” of Kerala’s Muslims bodes ill for the state’s secular fabric.

Also, beneath the façade of its inclusive polity lies a story of how Kerala has been virtually parceled off into individual fiefdoms. Thus one can see the pre-eminence of a Kerala Congress in Christian-dominated Kottayam, the IUML in Muslim-dominated Malappuram and Kozhikode etc. Hindu caste-based organizations such as the SNDP and NSS also hold considerable sway over their respective constituencies. Such identity-based organizations have created their own cultural, educational and medical institutions, not to mention their own media outlets! This will gradually lead to an out-and-out cultural ghettoization.

The failure of “conventional wisdom” in the state to acknowledge and combat the truly sectarian nature of parties such as the IUML and the Kerala Congress has led to a series of tit-for-tat communalism. The Hindu mobilization behind the Left Front during the recent elections has to be seen in this light.

The future

Why do we remain so reflexively anti-capitalist?

  The dismal readings of the previous section would lead one to believe that the state’s misfortunes largely stem from the UDF brand of “communal politics”. Well, the LDF has also not been far behind in their continuing efforts to be the shining knights of obstructionism. Our very own Achumama has been at the forefront of some truly quixotic campaigns against the “running dogs of imperialism and capitalism”.

 The state’s investment climate has been held to ransom by militant trade unionism and bandhs and hartals at the drop of a hat. Kerala languishes in the bottom when it comes to business-friendliness rankings.

I mean, there is a huge kick one gets by railing against corrupt corporates and “imperialist” MNCs but everything has to be seen in the light of a bigger picture. Kerala’s educational institutions are churning out thousands of promising graduates. Where will they go? Will the Middle East be able to absorb so many of our graduates? Isn’t it better to leverage our unique human capital and turn into a knowledge economy a la Karnataka?

 The failure of our leadership to address this paradox of a highly educated workforce and antipathy towards industrialization would be the actual death-knell to the “Kerala Model”.