Kerala, we are far ahead but have a long way to go!

Kerala has topped NITI Aayog’s Sustainable Development charts once again, and that too for the third time in a row. Me, I am not surprised at all.

Growing up in California in the late 90’s, the famed Kerala Model had already caught my attention, so much so that I left the much-fancied West Coast and Green Card of USA, in favor of the West Coast and Green Land of India.

National Geographic’s Traveler Magazine had just recently, in their October 1999 edition, selected Kerala as one of the ‘50 places of a Lifetime’, calling it one of their twenty ‘Paradises Found’ in the world. They even recruited famed American environmentalist Bill McKibben to make the case for this paradise, and he just went all out, praising Kerala through the roof, thus:

"Kerala, is a bizarre anomaly among developing nations, a place that offers real hope for the future of the Third World. Though not much larger than Maryland, Kerala has a population as big as California's and a per capita annual income of less than $300. But its infant mortality rate is very low, its literacy rate among the highest on Earth, and its birthrate below America's and falling faster. Kerala's residents live nearly as long as Americans or Europeans. Though mostly a land of paddy-covered plains, statistically Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development; there's truly no place like it"

Now the real kicker is that, I didn’t need anyone to talk highly about Kerala to me.

I was already sold on the model, ever since I landed up there, as clueless as Vasco D Gama had done in 1498, to live through the first 21 years of my life, enjoying the three basic building blocks of human life, all at virtually throw away prices:

·       Food: All you needed to do was to keep track of when what becomes available at the neighborhood Ration shop so that you can show up and stand in line to get Rice, Wheat, Palm Oil, Sugar and so on and so forth for you to manage the 2000 odd calories needed to sustain human life. My Mom lovingly put me on the task, and I ended up taking care of my family’s nutritional needs, all the while learning valuable Procurement Management skills. Efficient Public Distribution System. Check.

·       Education: When I graduated with a B. Tech in Computer Science and Engineering, at the age of 21, I had made more money than I had paid in fees, all because of the scholarship schemes that were in place. Obviously, a lot of mugging up was involved in giving right answers even to wrong questions, as part of all the scholarship processes, but that was just a small price to pay for the education that became the passport of my life from there on. Now that doesn’t by any means, mean that I let my father get off easy from his offspring educational responsibilities. Rather, I was very religious in fleecing him as well, all in the name of ‘miscellaneous expenses’, which were gingerly used as my own stimulus package to prop up the movie and restaurant industries of Kerala, through the late 80s, early 90s. Excellent Public Education Infrastructure. Check.

·       Healthcare: While I was still in my middle school, I was afflicted with a life-threatening disease of the kidney called Nephritis, with symptoms that brought giggles to my class mates. Not peeing at all, my body was starting to bloat up, because of all the water getting retained, slowly getting to a point where it appeared as if I was about to burst like a water balloon, at the prick of a needle. I’m alive to write this note today, only because Kerala doesn’t give up on the life of its infants (not even teenagers) that easily. I was admitted at the General Hospital, right next to my School and was visited everyday by Government doctors (some of the most intelligent people of Kerala as it continues to be a prized job), checking the liquid levels on the bottle that I was peeing into each day, appreciating me on the kind of improvement that I was making on my pee output on a day-to-day basis and encouraging me to do even better the next day. Pee Encouragement System… Err.. Accessible Public Health System. Check.

But poor me, I was growing up under the assumption that this was the model all across the world, where needy people received state support to blossom into those wonderful human beings that we all are capable of. Little did I know.

Now all this that doesn’t mean that everything was hunky dory about Kerala, and I got to learn the flip side, as soon as I finished my studies and was in need of a job to support myself. Slowly, I woke up to the painful realization that the overall prospects on that front were pretty bleak, especially for educated folks like me.

And that set me on a course of exploration, all around the world, kind of like Vasco Da Gama all over again, all in my attempt to make a decent living.

Now the situation in Kerala is not much different today, even though almost 30 years have passed. So where did we go wrong?

Before we delve deeper into that, let me first try and tell you, where did we go right!

Scene 1: One of my evergreen memories from my nursery school days was watching the erstwhile Maharajah of Travancore walking barefoot, through the same road that I used walk on, on his way to the Shangumugham beach, to immerse the holy deity, as part of the bi-annual festival of the Sree Padmanababha Swamy temple, one of the richest temples in the world with more than $20 billion in assets, all carefully managed and preserved for centuries, by this very same Royal Family as chief custodians.

So, if I had the opportunity to boast that I used to live like a King in my childhood in Kerala, it is only because our Kings had chosen to live like a commoner like me, for the previous 300 years or so, before I arrived on the scene.

They had very wisely realized that the lifestyle of the citizens of their country was the real show off of their vanity that mattered to them, rather than their own life styles; quite a far cry from the Nizams or the Sultans of the pre-independence India that the whole world knows of.

They wisely channeled most of their monies into public infrastructure which became the Water that quenched my thirst, the Healthcare that nursed my health and the Education that empowered my spirits.

Scene 2: I was born the first child of an unemployed father, only because my father had recently been fired from his Central Government job, by the President of India, for engaging in militant labor activism related to Communist Trade Union issues in his office.

Growing up with all the insecurities related to this, I brought up these fears of mine with my father on a conversation, and he confidently assured me that the word ‘Marxism’, the expansion for the word M, in the party that he worked for - CPI(M) – meant that ‘people in need’ will always be taken care of, no matter what.

My father was all but a foot soldier in a tremendous lineage of Marxist leaders starting from AKG, EMS, etc, and social reformers like Sri Narayana Guru; people who really made a difference in the social milieu of Kerala through their untiring work for the upliftment of the downtrodden, and I was all but a lucky beneficiary. The fact that my father continued to be a party worker, even after losing his job told me volumes about the tremendous belief that he had on the importance of his party in the history of Kerala as well as its future. Even though he had to go back to college to make a living, he used that opportunity to become a lawyer, eager to fight cases for his party, for the benefit of people like him who were wronged by the system.

Scene 3: One of my Fathers just recently joined Facebook and I commented on his profile picture thus:

“Dear father,

I joined St. Joseph's High School in 1982, and was blessed with the good fortune of interacting with you closely, as you were in charge of organizing our Fresher's day. You were kind enough to give me the opportunity to do the Welcome Speech for our function. But unfortunately, I bombed big time, as I forgot most of the lines I had memorized.

But what I have still not forgotten is the sweet taste of the biscuits that you shared with us, during our rehearsals and the inspiration and the motivation that you gave us freshers, to come out and do our best.

Your unconditional love and support made a lasting impression in my young mind, at that time itself and it has made a huge difference over the years as I look back on my school days. I thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for all that you have been to us.

May God Bless You with all Health, Happiness and Peace, Forever and More!!! “

Turns out Father Emprehm Thomas SJ is not the only father figure who has made a difference in the history of Kerala, as Christian missionaries have always had an outsized impact in making Kerala what it is today, right from the days of St. Thomas, the apostle of Jesus.

Anticlimax: Now, unlike Scene 1 and 3, which were unqualifiedly good, Scene 2 brought a lot of ideological imbalances into our system, which eventually became the crux of what went wrong for our state.

The individual empowerment brought in by the Communist movement, and the relative security offered by the Social Safety Net ended up creating an attitude of entitlement among people in general; more often than not, seen proudly strutting around with scant regard to understanding or appreciating important lessons about how wealth gets created in a society and how people grow up in life to fulfill their potential.

Capital became a Dirty word, Capitalism was frowned upon, Entrepreneurs were treated like pariahs and Business Owners were vilified for God only knows what.

People only wanted to work for the government and the government was all about redistributing wealth.

So where will all the wealth come from? There was only one answer!

People like me would have to toil outside Kerala, missing their family and their beautiful country dearly, all in their attempts to send in the much-needed remittances that can keep our gravy train chugging along.

Is this sustainable? Definitely not.

A lot of the social evils that we see in Kerala today, can be directly or indirectly attributed to what currently powers its engine – Dependence on remittances. 

Rampant unemployment, excessive alcoholism, aging parents not having anyone to look after them when they are old and infirm, not much agriculture other than cash crops, dependence on migrant labor when ironically, unemployment is one of our major problems, conspicuous consumption around wedding jewelry, palatial houses etc. etc., the list goes on and on.

Is there a case for change? Obviously yes.

From the time I used to learn Chess from Soviet magazines and get orgasmic enlightenment by reading stories about communist leaders like Che Guevera and Fidel Castro, the world has travelled a lot far.

China the only standing communist country of any import, embraced capitalism in a big way and dropped its poverty rate from 85% in 1981 to 7% by 2012, thereby lifting the living standards of hundreds of millions of its people. 

For us also, the writing is on the wall! Capitalistic development is the plank and Entrepreneurial initiative is the way!

Now, will Kerala ever respond to the call?

I for one, am cautiously optimistic! Because even when I left my country for a while, my country wouldn’t leave me at all and now I’m sincerely committed to return the favor!

#WeAreGodsOwnCountry