ഇന്ത്യന്‍ സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തിനുശേഷം സ്വന്തം പേരുകളെഴുതി എത്രകോടി രൂപയുടെ കല്ലുകള്‍ പ്രസിഡണ്ടും മന്ത്രിമാരും ഗവര്‍ണര്‍മാരും എം.എല്‍.എ.മാരും പൊതു ഖജനാവില്‍നിന്നും ചോര്‍ത്തിക്കളഞ്ഞ്‌ ``ചരിത്രം'' സൃഷ്‌ടിച്ചു എന്ന്‌ അന്വേഷിക്കേണ്ടതുണ്ട്‌. മുന്‍കാലങ്ങളില്‍ പാലങ്ങളോ റോഡുകളോ നിര്‍മ്മിച്ചാല്‍ പത്രങ്ങളില്‍ അതു വാര്‍ത്തയായി വരാറുണ്ടായിരുന്നു. ഇന്ന്‌ പേജുകള്‍തന്നെ പരസ്യങ്ങള്‍കൊടുത്ത്‌ തങ്ങളുടെ അസാമാന്യമായ കഴിവിനെ ചരിത്രത്തിന്റെ ഭാഗമാക്കാനാണ്‌ മന്ത്രിമാരും എം.എല്‍.എ.മാരും പരിശ്രമിക്കുന്നത്‌. |
Sunday, February 6, 2011
```ചരിത്രം'' സൃഷ്‌ടിക്കുന്നവര്‍-ജോസഫ്‌ പുലിക്കുന്നേല്‍
Monday, January 24, 2011
Shashi Tharoor - Kerala: The way forward...
A couple of years ago, I was invited to address the Trivandrum Management Association on the subject “energizing Kerala”. I found that odd, because the only place in the world where Keralites seem to need energizing is Kerala. Look around the planet, and you see Keralites everywhere, working extremely hard, from menial jobs in the Gulf to professorships in the States, displaying their entrepreneurial energies and achieving remarkable successes. So what is it that holds them back here, in their home state? Is it resources, policies, attitudes, politics? All of the above?
It’s always been a curious paradox that Keralites put in long hours in places like the Gulf, where they have earned a reputation for being hard-working and utterly reliable, while at home they are seen as indolent and strike-prone. Surely the same people couldn’t be so different in two different places? And yet they are – for one simple reason: the politicized environment at home. It’s a reputation that has come to haunt Kerala. Several people told me the story of how BMW had been persuaded to install a car-manufacturing plant in the state, thanks to generous concessions by the UDF government. But the very day the BMW executives arrived in Kerala to sign the deal, they were greeted by a “bandh”: the State had shut down over some marginal political issue, cars were being blocked on the streets, shops were closed by a hartal. It had nothing to do with BMW or with foreign investment, but the executives beat a hasty retreat. The plant was set up in Tamil Nadu.
The irony is that Kerala has got some essential things right. One famous study has established some astonishing parallels between the United States and the state of Kerala. The life expectancy of a male American is 72, that of a male Keralite 70. The literacy rate in the United States is 95%; in Kerala it is 99%. The birth rate in the US is 16 per thousand; in Kerala it is 18 per thousand, but it is falling faster. The gender ratio in the United States is 1050 females to 1000 males; in Kerala it is 1040 to 1000, and that in a country where neglect of female children has dropped the Indian national ratio to 930 women for 1000 men. Death rates are also comparable, as are the number of hospital beds per 100,000 population and the number of newspapers per 10,000 population (where Kerala is ahead of the US).
The major difference is that the annual per capita income in Kerala is around $300 to $350, whereas in the US it is $22,500, about seventy times as much.
Kerala has, in short, all the demographic indicators commonly associated with "developed" countries, at a small fraction of the cost. Its success is a reflection of what, in my book India: From Midnight to the Millennium, I have called the "Malayali miracle": a state that has practiced openness and tolerance from time immemorial; which has made religious and ethnic diversity a part of its daily life rather than a source of division; which has overcome caste discrimination and class oppression through education, land reforms, and political democracy; which has given its working men and women greater rights and a higher minimum wage than anywhere else in India; and which has honoured its women and enabled them to lead productive, fulfilling and empowered lives. And yet, despite all these strengths, it’s difficult to deny that Kerala has failed to move from its agrarian past into meaningful industrialization, principally because it has acquired a less than positive reputation as a place to invest. “Keralites are far too conscious of their rights and not enough of their duties,” one expatriate Malayali businessman told me. “It’s impossible to get any work done by a Keralite labour force – and then there are those unions!” He sighed. “Every time we persuade an industrialist to invest in Kerala, it ends badly.” Citing the examples of the Gwalior Rayons plant in Mavoor, the Premier Tyre factory in Kalamassery and the Apollo Tyres plant in Chalakudi, my friend shook his head. “I am a Malayali,” he declared, “but I would not advise anyone to invest in Kerala.”
The fact is that we cannot afford to remain dependent on remittances from abroad for 20% of our state’s income because we have such an inhospitable environment at home. We cannot languish in last place in the World Bank’s 2009 “Doing Business in India” report, because it takes 210 days to obtain approvals and permits in Kochi against 80 days in Hyderabad. We cannot live with unusably narrow roads because we lack the courage to explain to residents why they must be widened in the interests of all. We cannot have one of the lowest rankings (lower than Orissa) in per capita information technology exports. We cannot be a state that our best minds and most skilled workers seek to flee because opportunities for remunerative work are stifled by opportunistic politics.
Most of this newspaper’s readers would be familiar with the story of the sinking of the ocean-liner Titanic in the early years of the last century, or at least have seen the film. For almost a hundred years till now, it was believed that the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage from Southampton in England to New York in America was caused by the ship moving too fast and the crew failing to see the iceberg before it was too late. But now a new book, authored by a descendant of one of the officers of the ship, says that it was not an accident caused by speed, but by a steering blunder. It seems that the ship had plenty of time to miss the iceberg but the helmsman actually panicked and turned the ship the wrong way, and by the time the error was corrected, it was too late and the ship's side was fatally holed by the iceberg. The error occurred because at the time, seafaring was undergoing an enormous upheaval as a result of the conversion from sail to steam ships. The change meant there were two different steering systems and different commands attached to them. When the First Officer spotted the iceberg two miles away, his order was misinterpreted by the Quartermaster, who turned the ship left instead of right.
In a sense, Kerala’s development failure has been like the story of the Titanic. As with the confusion caused by the new era where sail ships were being replaced by steamships, today those who rule us appear unsettled by the global changes which have moved the economic system far beyond their old paradigms and theories. By opposing computers and mobile phones, blocking land acquisition for development work, and impeding economic reforms, they have steered the ship of State left instead of right. If we don’t steer it back urgently, we are heading into the iceberg.
The fact is that there is nothing wrong with the ship -- Kerala, its people, its resources or its potential. But we have to move with the times and not be left behind where other states are moving forward by steering in the right direction. Reliance on NRI remittances will not solve the basic problem, since remittance money is essentially personal savings and spent on conspicuous consumption, including purchase of land and the construction of dwellings. Kerala has to attract the normal type of investment funds which are being put to use by the rest of the country. This will only happen if we are hospitable to investors.
This does not mean betraying our workers, but finding them work. It does not mean giving up our values, but adding value to our economy. It does not mean placing profit above people, but rather, using profits to benefit the people.
Similarly, to be a knowledge economy we have to open our mental horizons to the world, rather than remaining embedded in the sterile dogmas of shopworn and discredited ideologies. This is why I persuaded the organizers of the world-famous Hay Festival of Literature to bring their Festival not just to India but specifically to the capital of Kerala. The extraordinary enthusiasm with which Hay was received by 3000 attendees in Thiruvananthapuram reflects the hunger of our educated young Keralites to be part of today’s world rather than handmaidens of yesterday’s. Kerala can be India’s intellectual centre, a distinction now abdicated by Bengal after three decades of Marxist rule.
I believe that the Kerala that will succeed is one open to the contention of ideas and interests within it, unafraid of the prowess or the products of the outside world, wedded to the democratic pluralism that is our civilization’s greatest strength, and determined to liberate and fulfill the creative energies of its people. Such a Kerala is possible if we change our attitudes and work with determination to fulfil it.
God’s Own Country no longer deserves the business reputation of being the devil’s playground.