The problem

MOST accounts of Kerala treat it as an exception, almost a statistical outlier, not because it is materially advanced or rated high in terms of per capita GDP but because, defying conventional understanding, the state has consistently managed to top the social and human development rankings. This seeming paradox – high HDI despite low PCI – first highlighted by researchers at the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum and subsequently ratified by scholars such as Amartya Sen, is routinely parroted as a truism.

There is indeed much truth in the assertion. Whether we trace the history of Kerala’s demographic transition – a decline in total fertility rate below the replacement level, a sex ratio in favour of women, higher life expectancy for women as compared to men; the state’s health indicators – low infant and maternal mortality, low incidence of anaemia, all marked by an absence of bias against the girl child and women; near universal literacy and enrolment rates in school, the highest rates of school completion and participation in post-school education (and here too, women’s participation outstrips that of men) – there is little doubt that, unlike the rest of the country, Kerala appears a world apart.

One can add to the list of distinctive features. The state has the highest per capita readership of newspapers and periodicals, a remarkably rich and developed literary, theatrical and cinematic legacy, all of which have contributed to the making of an unusually aware and conscious citizenry. While scholars continue to debate the significance of the various contributory factors – the ‘progressive’ orientation of the Travancore kingdom; the role of the Church and various social reform movements; the prevalence of matrilineal traditions, particularly among the Nairs; the left and socialist struggles, helping construct a broad consensus, across party divides, on an egalitarian agenda focused on the provision of social and public goods; even the spatial distribution of population blurring the rural-urban divide – one cannot but note the unique specificity of Kerala. What is even more remarkable is that, in recent decades, Kerala has vastly improved its economic growth performance, the rate significantly higher than the national average. Little surprise that given its green and verdant landscape, Kerala, at least in tourism literature, is marketed as ‘God’s own country’.

Unfortunately, this congratulatory account has also served to detract attention from a range of crucial social and economic problems that have long bedevilled the state. These, if left unaddressed, can easily derail the favourable story. To start first with a seamy underside of Kerala society – the pernicious hold of patriarchy and the powerlessness of women. Despite the highly favourable demographic, health and education indicators, labour force participation rates of women in the organized sector continue to be surprisingly low and within the work space, women continue to face discrimination. Similarly, women continue to be marginal in the political space – in parties, NGOs and social movements – rarely reaching leadership positions despite widespread participation in struggles and movements. Surprising as it might appear, even ‘feudal’ Bihar has consistently returned a higher proportion of women to the state legislature.

Far more disturbing is the prevalence of the male gaze and moral policing such that most women find the public space more threatening than even the ‘unreformed’ North. The high incidence of female suicides, violence within the household, incidence of sexual crimes, the growth of a pornographic industry, to name a few, are indicators of a deep-seated social malaise, somewhat unexpected in a society where women (at least a section) traditionally enjoyed property rights. Fortunately of late, feminist scholars and activists, despite inadequate support from male colleagues, are increasingly turning the spotlight on these ‘hidden’ features of Kerala society in their struggle for a gender just transformation.

Equally perplexing is the political scene in Kerala. On the surface, the Kerala electorate is highly conscious, mobilized and organized. Elections are a closely contested affair where margins of victory/ defeat are low. Yet, it is striking that political contestation is less about ideas and policies and continues to be stubbornly marked by caste/community cleavages, with most parties, including those professing a class orientation, receiving disproportionate support from specified caste/community groups, either directly or through alliances. More disturbing, though not unexpected given the intensity of contest, is the proclivity to violence, both intra- and inter-group, reminiscent of warlords fighting over control of territory and resources. Surprisingly, the recent growth of material affluence, which might have been expected to reduce the intensity of conflict over scarce state resources, has instead exacerbated political violence.

Undergirding the social and political paradoxes is the distorted character of the Kerala economy. Even as radical land reforms and high wages, a reflection of progressive struggles, alongside a policy preference for public goods, resulted in better standards of living for the underclass, they ‘scared away’ capital and dampened the spread of industrialization in the state. Low prospects of employment impelled many Keralites to seek employment elsewhere, initially in the country and, post the oil boom of the early 1970s, in the Gulf region. With almost nine to ten billion dollars in remittance income, the state has experienced a boom in construction and personal consumption. Little of this has so far gone into industry, barring IT, retail trade and tourism.

While remittance revenues have undoubtedly helped the state to better balance its budgets as also fund social sector programmes, a male preponderant outmigration and resultant income inflow has given rise to a range of distortions – an unhealthy growth of female-headed households, growth of luxury consumption, high alcoholism and so on. Above all, it has deeply undermined Kerala’s one-time egalitarian public culture.

These and other trends have given rise to new social and economic problems that a rapidly changing Kerala needs urgently to recognize and respond to. Rapid urbanization in a densely populated state has intensified conflicts over land use as new housing, commercial complexes and tourist resorts encroach upon, with the help of a land mafia, erstwhile agricultural spaces, wetlands and even forests. Waste disposal has become a new flashpoint as have conflicts over water, threatened by pollution and demands for industrial use. Demographic changes have thrown up new concerns of an ageing population even as inflow into primary schools is declining. The steady decline in the production and quality of public goods and services, the gap in demand met through private, for profit enterprises, has dramatically increased the price of health and education without, unfortunately, improving its quality. Surprising as it might seem, the quality of school graduates in Kerala is no better than Madhya Pradesh. And so stultified is the higher education sector that more Keralites study outside the state than within. One result is that Kerala has the country’s highest rate of ‘educated’ unemployment.

Nothing, however, disturbs more than the shift in public culture, the earlier austerity and egalitarianism increasingly replaced by a consumerist, corporatist mindset, thereby shifting public policy towards privatization – a mentality now shared across the party spectrum. In this, Kerala has now joined the national mainstream.

There is often temptation to read the recent history of Kerala’s transformation as a Biblical tale of ‘fall from grace’ – the displacement of an enlightened, egalitarian impulse by the ‘pernicious ideology of neo-liberal privatization and globalization’ privileging wealth creation above all else – for individuals, households, communities and society. Like all cautionary tales, such a formulation too needs to be substantially tempered. Not only because pre-globalization Kerala was no ‘Garden of Eden’ – an inefficient and corrupt public sector, a continuous marginalization of women, depressed castes and tribes, neglect of technology and skill upgradation resulting in low wealth creation – but also because recent changes have energized multiple, critical tendencies, organizations and movements struggling for progressive change.

Many of the challenges before Kerala society have been in the making for some decades now. How its socially conscious intelligentsia and activists, familiar with ‘other ways of seeing and doing’, will respond to these changes will determine the state’s future. There is no dearth of positives to draw upon, most of all the presence of an aware citizenry. This issue of Seminar debates some aspects of Kerala’s conflicted transformation in the hope that discussion in the public domain might help develop a new consensus on basic developmental issues.