Snapshots of Kerala Economy and Society

Scheme of a Study on Contemporary Kerala
GREEN IS NOT ALL BLESSING

SNAPSHOTS OF KERALA SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

T.G. Jacob

Background

Kerala as a geo-political, socio-economic entity enjoys a certain degree of enigma, which is created as well as historically sanctioned. The creation of the present administrative unit on the basis of Malayalam language in 1956 itself was immediately followed by an enigmatic episode. This was the coming to political power of the Communist Party of India through a peaceful constitutionally provided democratic election process based on adult franchise. Of course, this party was existing and leading struggles of the subalterns for quite some time and after the withdrawal of the Telangana armed struggle in 1951 had unconditionally embraced constitutionalism, surrendered all arms, and entered what is called mainstream parliamentary politics. It was not only in Kerala that they won the assembly elections; they made an impressive show in Andhra Pradesh too. This transformation of the CP was symbolised by abandonment of the program of a revolutionary overthrow of the status quo and the installation of a reformist economic program in its place. This was not something that was altogether new because this stream was always very strong in the party, especially among the central leadership. Also this formal changeover denoted a shift in the articulation of the class nature of the state in the newly independent country. 


The Communist Party led State government in Kerala did not attempt any major radical measures undermining the given socio-economic structure, but only tried to implement certain reforms advocated and promised by the Indian National Congress, the ruling party of the country as a whole. But even this was a bit too much for the entrenched dominant interests and they staged a ‘liberation’ struggle and ousted the State government. This ousting of the democratically elected government instead of generating rethinking about the nature of the system only further cemented the hopes in the system and the strategy of working within it. On and off the constitutional communists, also called official communists, have been coming to power in Kerala and over a period of several decades they themselves have become an established socio-economic power to be reckoned with in the State. Of course, many characteristics of the social system like the caste dynamics have found their way into the operational mechanism of the various groups/parties labelled communist. This is part of the enigma.


The constitutional communists, who academically fit the name of social democrats, initiated several welfare measures in the State with variable impacts on the society. At one point of time social democratic intellectuals within and outside the State coined and popularised the term ”Kerala model of development” which gained much currency. Politically, this phrase was self praise by the social democrats and it was propagated as a model for emulation by others. The gist of this self adulation was that it is possible to achieve higher levels of development and even progress, if there is a political will bypassing the linear model of development of productive forces. Distributive equity/progressive policies can bring about a higher quality of life even without the usually required growth of productive forces. What exactly is there to be distributed and among whom never deserved serious treatment. This ‘theory’ also is part of the enigma.


The higher quality of life is identified with higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, universal literacy/general education, better communication facilities, near total electrification, near total primary health coverage, and so on. But the “model” was based on relative surmises and for this reason alone does not deserve any serious evaluation. Absolutely unsavoury characteristics like large per capita debt and phenomenon of accumulating new debts to service old debt, which shows bankruptcy, came out in the open soon after propounding this “model”. But the “model” propagation business did not come to an end. This time round it came as a general model of development and not as an exclusively Kerala speciality. It was the “tourism model of development”. Of course, this is not something that is original to Kerala but had been in operation in many regions of the country ever since the advent of “flower children” in places like Goa and large parts of Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir from the early 1960s onwards. In Kerala where it started as a spill- over from Goan and Sri Lankan beaches during the mid-1960s as beach tourism it was soon adopted by the entire political leadership as most suited to the fast development of the State. As the State is fully a Western Ghats region the land is green, hilly and is generously sprinkled with water bodies including a large number of rivers and has a long coastline with extensive lagoons tourism as a development strategy was generalised. Right now the State is in the grip of such a tourism mania. The negative fallout of the corona pandemic is considered only as strictly temporary. It is eulogised as a hundred percent environmentally safe “smokeless industry”. These are unstudied conclusions that are again part of the enigma.


Likewise, there are many more components to the projected image of Kerala. This book is an attempt to decode this enigmatic image. It is conceived both visually and verbally, which are two distinct streams in the book, and it is left to the imagination of the reader/viewer to synthesise as s/he chooses. Though by structure it may look like a collection of essays, the prime task of deciphering what is called modernity of Kerala runs as a consistent thread binding all of them. The following are the main rubrics:

A couple of decades back the often heard refrain was that Kerala remains backward in terms of growth of industrial capitalism because the workers are not a disciplined lot and are prone to disrupt production at the drop of a hat. This behaviour pattern was awarded to the pernicious influence of irresponsible communist ideas which dissuades prospective investors from investing. Within two decades this argument has given place to one of scarcity of labour. Scarcity of labour is currently highly visible all over the State. Before this scarcity set in there was the phenomenon of large-scale migration of skilled, semi-skilled, and manual workers to the Arabian Gulf countries attracted by relatively higher wages. Now this migration has reached its limits. But hundreds of thousands of productive youth migrated giving rise to a large flow of overseas remittances which injected economic buoyancy mainly of the variety of enhanced consumption both durable and transient. Land assumed rising monetary/speculative value due to the construction boom largely accounted for by remittances. This also meant decreasing productive use value of land. Conversion of wet land to dry land gained momentum contributing to a drastic reduction in food production and increasingly chronic dependency for basic food needs on outside regions. Labour outside the modern industrial sector and agriculture means mainly labour in the construction sector which is paid well. This labour mainly comes from outside the State. It is interesting to note that just as the Malayalee worker went to the Gulf for higher wages now workers from Eastern India are coming to Kerala for the same reason. A skilled Malayalee carpenter or mason can now earn more by instructing and managing the migrant youth than by working for wages. And they are doing so. In fact, such workers are no longer workers in the real sense of the term. Skilled workers are transformed into petty bourgeois overseers, who are exploiting the migrant workers and living a middle class life through surplus extraction from the actual workers.


This tendency already existed earlier. The astounding phenomenon of “nokku kooly”, i.e., wages for simply looking on, had already become standard practice among the unionised head load workers. Mind you, they are not supervisors or overseers but only lookers-on assured of money for work they are not doing. Sometimes their union membership is rented to other workers, at other times the employer may want to hire others for reasons of quality of work. The employer is ‘free’ to hire others provided he pays the local union members for allowing this. This is perhaps unheard of in the history of working class anywhere in the world. And, they are a powerful lumpen force in the whole State. They are also known as workers, but live as non working parasites by means of organised intimidation of the middle classes. Of course, such a tactic cannot work in organised industry or large-scale construction projects.

 It is also noted that for any small-scale construction work like that of a single house at least 60% of the total cost is accounted for by direct wages. This is inordinately high on all accounts. Along with this distortion add the callous irresponsibility rampant among the Malayalee ‘workers,’ which invariably pushes up the cost further. This irresponsibility is perhaps a by-product of basic scarcity of labour power. But it can equally be the result of an anti-work parasitic culture nurtured by the possibilities of easy living, its attendant psychology and all-pervading consumer culture. It has nothing to do with class consciousness or class struggle, though simple-minded social democrats may say that it is all class assertion and class power. Anti-work culture and parasitism is certainly not a characteristic of a producing working class, it is the characteristic of those who live by the labour of others. In this context it is worthwhile to note that on an all-India level the bulk of wealth production is done by the unorganised labour force and even in modern large-scale industries like metallurgy ad hoc conditions of labour employment is the dominant trend since quite some time and the organised, unionised workers who enjoy security of employment, higher wages and a number of perks are often a small minority in such industries. Also, these worker aristocrats are often the worst enemies of the insecure casual workers when they try to raise any demands for the improvement of living and working conditions. The reason is directly regressive. It is that any broad basing of worker welfare will reduce and spread thin the corpus for the worker aristocracy. This is the argument of the owners of capital which the trade unionists have swallowed in full.


The basic argument is that labour and labour processes existing here are to be redefined as they are incompatible with the prevalent conceptualisations of working class and its social and political role.

Production of essential food is grossly deficient in Kerala. Rice, the staple diet, is mostly imported from other States; so are vegetables and meat. Of late, even fish has started to come from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. This has many serious implications for the people as a whole irrespective of classes. Food security/insecurity is not only an economic variable but also a highly potent political one especially in an overall system where even the watered down federalism that is in place is on the waning side with centralisation of economic and political power in the ascendency. Differences between neighbouring States like sharing of the waters of inter-State rivers, which could be resolved among themselves, often result in economic blockades and the Centre assuming arbitrary powers. In Kerala’s case the public food distribution system has come to play a decisive role in the food security of the people and the open market is dominated by imports from neighbouring States. Food dependency is near total and hitherto largely self-sufficient areas are fast becoming dependent ones.


This gross dependency in items of daily consumption has a serious health dimension too. Whatever food is grown here in the State involves the same problem, but abject dependency compounds the problem immensely. This is the problem of chemical poisons in the food consumed which is directly related to the production process. Available studies, which are not comprehensive at all, show that many of the deadly health problems like different types of cancer are linked to the excessive presence of carcinogenic elements in the production process and consumption basket. Of course, the situation is greatly advantageous to the global big business health industry, but greatly disadvantageous and painful to the people, especially those who are economically vulnerable. 


The most visible change that has happened in Keralan agriculture during the last half century is the drastic reduction of acreage under food crops, especially that under paddy. The most often heard reason for this reduction is the shortage and high cost of labour power; and paddy cultivation is considered a labour intensive affair. Farmers who shift to other crops or let the fields lie fallow often talk about paddy cultivation as an economic loss. This is certainly not in any absolute sense of loss and profit, the term “loss” here is only in a relative sense. Even that is doubtful. The fact is that a good number of agriculturists are only nominal agriculturists. They may own paddy land but professionally they are not agriculturists. They would prefer to lease out the fields or alternately allow it to lie fallow. They may also allow the land to be destroyed entirely by leasing it out for brick kilns. It is a common sight to see uncultivated paddy fields. It is even more common to see paddy fields converted to cash crop land. These cash crops are generally ginger and bananas, both exclusively for the market. This sort of conversion to intensive chemicals based crops has tremendous short- and long-term consequences. This conversion is entirely based on anticipated higher rate of profits, which may or may not work out in reality. In other words, speculation enters the scene in a big way.


Another trend in land utilization pattern is the conversion of wet land to dry land, a direct result of the increased availability of disposable money, a contributory factor of which is the increased flow of remittances from abroad. The migration of labour is the single biggest factor facilitating this flow. As a sizable section of migrants and their families were landless or marginal landowners and as the utilization of cash inflow automatically gave a boost to construction activities mainly of the variety of residential and service sector facilities the land market got inflated beyond all reason. This reached its peak in the 1980s and ‘90s and since them the rate of increase has got somewhat stabilized. The entire State was hit by this boom in the land market, though in some areas generally known as ‘Gulf pockets’ the impact was more than in others. Excepting the landless agricultural workers who are mainly Dalits and Adivasis all other sections of society were affected by this spectacular boom. Their condition remains more or less unchanged. In fact it has even deteriorated in an absolute sense. Relative deterioration is a fact beyond question.


The wet lands became the casualty to this greed for dry land. To make them dry they have to be raised, which needs soil. The conversion process therefore necessarily leads to geographical distortions in some other lands. On the one side, wet lands cease to be water storages, and on the other hillocks became flat. In fact, buying soil became a significant item in the cost of construction of a house. Moreover, construction needs an enormous amount of rock mining which became seriously debilitating to the stability of the whole place. Thus we see that the multiplier effect became all- encompassing with sure-fire consequences for the structural stability of the land itself with the result that disaster management has emerged as the newest industry. Devastating floods can immediately be succeeded by apparently irrational droughts. During the last two floods nobody knows where all the water went. Vast flood water lakes transformed themselves overnight into parched, cracked fields! The construction boom is spectacular, so is the bizarre game nature plays. The utter foolishness of ‘development’ is nowhere more telltale than in this amazingly beautiful land. The distortion of nature is after all not so simple. The destruction of paddy fields will have to be paid for. Laws were instituted to prevent this slaughter but they remained on paper only. Now even on paper they are ceasing to exist.


The built-up space in the State is estimated to be more than what is required and the amount of built-up space lying vacant is also significant. This means that the investment that went into it is dead. The anticipated high monetary return from real estate is not really working out and the re-sale value is at best stagnant. Since quite some time this stagnancy has become obvious, which means that investment based on loans that are often taken on the security of land falsely by classifying them as agricultural loans has turned wholly negative. In areas earmarked as a touristic commodity, like Wayanad district, such a situation can easily lead to suicides. It is happening too. The earlier wave of suicides was mainly due to a collapse of the cash crops market; now possibly a real estate market collapse can lead to a similar wave. As far as food production is concerned, diversion to cash crops and speculative real estate development are the prime reasons behind its steep decline.

Many of the cash crops currently grown in the State were found in the wild even as export was going on. The collection from the wild was being done by the peasants or Adivasis, linked to the ports through a chain of intermediaries using the inland waterways and exported by Arab, Syrian, and Jewish traders concentrated in the then sea ports on the Arabian Sea coast. The local chieftains derived incomes through taxes on this export. The British introduced organised plantations after clearing forests and also established big plantations of tea and coffee, which soon percolated to local small growers too. While tea remained confined to big plantations in Kerala coffee became a predominantly small grower crop. The list of cash crops grown in Kerala is quite large and it keeps on growing, vanilla and cocoa being the latest additions. A few herbs are also grown commercially now, a direct result of large-scale commercialisation of Ayurveda partly triggered by growth of medical tourism. Among the cash crop food items ginger and banana occupy prime place. Black pepper and coconut are universally grown in the State. The most prime characteristic of all cash crops in the State is that they are all eminently suited for a variety of value adding processes and the list of new value added products is always dynamic in the sense that newer value added products are always possible.


The market/money value of cash crop products is constantly fluctuating. These money values are determined by a variety of factors among which export-import policies play a crucial role. At the same time, the cost of production which includes cost of labour power, energy, and chemical inputs are ever on the increasing scale. This situation creates a basic disequilibrium between costs and returns and hence vitally affects the economic well-being of the growers. This basic lack of coordination in the market forces operates also in the case of food crops grown for the market. In other words, this inequality in the market is a common denominator for the entire market-oriented agriculture and has been generating social, economic and political contradictions and conflicts ever since the stabilization of the market structure, i.e., ever since the growers got integrated into the market structure. In any discussion about the crisis in agriculture it must be kept in mind that the market structure is at the root. Any talk of resolution of the crisis has to take the inequalities in the market structure as the starting point as well as continuing target of the process of resolution. Restructuring the market actually means overturning the economic balance of power, which certainly implies serious political changes too. This does not necessarily mean a linear course of one following the other, but a process of interrelated protracted transformations. Any other approach can be only of cosmetic value and hence meaningless to resolve the actual crisis.


Currently, farmers’ movements seem to be suffering from the illusion that indebtedness can be solved through alleviatory measures like debt relief or time-bound moratorium on debt recovery. Such measures can at best achieve purely temporary results like decline in suicides, while leaving the mechanism that generates indebtedness and helplessness intact. The crisis has become too entrenched and institutionalised to be addressed by such palliative measures. Recognising the structural nature of the crisis is the most elementary beginning. Once this simple truth is recognised it follows that only restructuring is the way out. How to restructure is open to debate. However, economically enabling the primary producers on a permanent basis, which means creating an economy of permanence, ought to be the basic goal.

 

As such the slot of Kerala in the general scheme of the geographical division of labour is as primary producer and as producer of labour power. By itself this is not very debilitating. But the tragedy is that labour power is mainly exported on an all-India and global level, and primary production has grown at the expense of basic self-sufficiency on the one hand while functioning as a conduit for super profit making by the corporate businesses, which mean extraction of surplus to outside interests and areas. Both operate effectively as stunting factors for the economy while consumption sans production becomes the economic dynamics of a parasitic nature. The glaring gap between the actual and potential becomes grossly irrational and thus unwise. And consumption which means expenditure on durable and non durable goods and services further widens the scope of surplus extraction to the corporate interests. Construction, needed and superfluous, is one of the principal blocks of consumption. Superfluous consumption in the form of unwanted construction of ugly palatial houses and super bazaars can only be termed as dead investment. Psychologically speaking, it can correctly be read as an illness that is spreading. Consumption and production are startlingly disjointed, which gives the image of society based on bubble economics, the economic structure being highly unstable and crucially dependent on all counts on external factors like remittances from vulnerable places and thoroughly unpredictable, often devastating, vicissitudes of the cash crops market conditions.


There is growing thinking in Kerala about the need for stable economic conditions. Ultimately this means breaking out of the present slot of labour power exporter and primary producer. Developing value-adding processes and all-India and global markets for the value-added products is the challenge; and it entails taking a confrontationist posture towards corporate interests that currently hold the economy in their octopus grip. More than anything this becomes a political question strongly hinging on the content of federal economics and Centre-State economic relations. This certainly needs absolute clarity on the nature of the ruling classes or the character of the state. Macro-economic policies that shape the direction of the flow of surplus unmistakably show that it is the Indian and global corporates that are calling the tunes, which directly connotes that any federal unit striving for an independent pattern of growth and development is bound to confront the entrenched market structure that will not hesitate to employ all its coercive power to defeat any venturing away from the beaten track. The task is an uphill one with numerous pitfalls and confusing labyrinths on the path. Despite the growing awareness on the subject the requisite political will for such progress is conspicuously lacking.


It is this growing awareness that is the positive variable. The conditions are there for creating working examples that can be effective demonstrations of viable alternatives acting as triggers for the whole society. Every cash crop grown in the State is suitable for value-added diverse products and the home market itself is big enough to begin with. Here the trump card is the quality of products which by itself is a highly attractive proposition in capturing a market. Poison free products can be the catch word. The advantages of putting this slogan into practice are great and multi-level. It means organic farming, which weakens the grip of the corporates, protects the environment and ecology, assures a healthy living and decent death, frees people to a large extent from killer diseases like varieties of cancer, and creates non parasitic productive employment for the working population. 

When we take the availability of banking facilities it can be seen that Kerala rates number one in the entire country. It is a pioneer in cooperative banking apart from having the highest density of normal commercial banking establishments. Mainly due to the heavy inflow of remittances the amount of deposits is high but the same cannot be said about the amount of credit advanced by the banks. In fact, for a long time the credit-deposit ratio was abysmally low and even now it has only marginally improved. When we look at the all-India picture there are incredible differences between different regions of the country. For example, the Gujarat-Maharashtra belt credit-deposit ratio is even higher than 300%, while in Kerala it is only around 50-55 %. At the same time, the density of banking and per capita deposits is much higher in Kerala. In a nutshell this means that the banking system is working as a very efficient conduit for suction of investible surplus from Kerala and Keralites.


It is often heard that Kerala is a good foreign exchange earner. The overseas remittances, export of primary products like spices, and earnings from international tourism industry are the main components of these foreign exchange earnings. Of course, these sources hike the money circulation in the place and increase income levels in rupee terms. But how and who expends these hard currency deposits does not come within the State’s economic rights. The utilization of dollar or any other hard currency deposits as scare financial resources is decided at the Centre and the States have no effective voice in such decisions. In a globalised economic order this is certainly a severe handicap to the federating units particularly if they develop their own priorities that may conflict with the all-India corporate vested interests. In Kerala’s specific context, lack of control over the use of foreign exchange can be particularly problematic because it is a leading component of its income. As such, the banking system as a whole is biased against the federating units precisely because it denies autonomy in this key aspect of financial exchange relations.


When thousands of primary producers killed themselves in the cash crops belt of Kerala due to being caught in a debt trap the farmers organised themselves to demand a debt moratorium. Mainly leading public sector banks were targeted. In Wayanad—the hub of the agitation—the concerned lead bank even threatened to wind up its operations in retaliation. Apparently the logic of the banks conforms to sound banking principles; it was that they are not responsible for un-remunerative prices of agricultural commodities, and credit is a commodity with its own costs on which the viability of the banking system itself is based. However, this logic, when it comes to actual practice becomes blatantly one-sided and discriminatory. Erstwhile profit-making public sector banks are now in doldrums not because of agricultural loans but corporate loans and even outright theft by corporates. The outstanding dead loans by corporates amounting to lakhs of crores (the apex bank is always finicky about publicising details on the banks’ losses/’non performing assets’) are currently threatening the operational viability of many banks. Many of the defaulters have siphoned off money to international tax havens and they themselves are absconders enjoying gala times abroad. This is nothing but the old colonial drain under neo-colonialism. The actual dimensions and responsibilities of the massive bad debts of banks remain shrouded in mystery, while farmers commit suicide when banks force them to be homeless and property less. The corporates are treating the banks as their own coat pockets and the political executive is perpetually winking. It is not just individual banks, but the entire banking system that is heavily loaded against the common man.


The credit market is only one of the components of the complex market structure that is squeezing the agricultural sector as a whole. The products’ market is another sordid story that is entirely out of the primary producers’ control. Hence the demand for “remunerative prices” became the rallying cry for the farmers’ movements. And it remains so to date. The complexity of the market in totality has to be laid bare for gaining a realistic understanding of the society and economics of Kerala specifically.


The organic linkage between production and consumption is expected to reflect on the intrinsic health of any specific economy and hence of that society as a whole. Economies are certainly dependent on each other but this ought not to be at the cost of fundamental self-sufficiency and self-reliance. Otherwise the situation can easily become extremely destructive causing unnecessary suffering for the peoples in a world turned highly volatile. Imperialist globalisation is often found to result and thrive in such situations. Kerala is characterised as a modern consumption-based economy without having a corresponding or approximating production base. This is lopsidedness perpetuating and worsening severe structural imbalances. The consumption fixation in the State is manifested in diverse forms ranging from modern housing to toothpicks to automobiles and other industrially produced durable consumption goods. The fact that the total built-up area in the State is more than sufficient to comfortably accommodate all the people while large numbers still lack decent shelter is a highly visible phenomenon in every part of the State.


The dependency of the State for basic goods and services on outside areas and peoples is all prevalent. Paradoxically the State is a big exporter of labour power to other areas resulting in a high level of remittances and high liquidity, while it is simultaneously a big importer of skilled/semi-skilled labour power for the most essential services. This is explained by the differential wages. It is an often heard comment that the migrant worker from East India to Kerala views his destination just as the Kerala worker views the Gulf countries. Or, for the hundreds of thousands of migrants flocking to the State, the place is their Gulf. This is true enough in a general sense but not in the particulars. The consumption basket of the migrant workers in Kerala is composed of the bare minimum necessities and the major chunk of their earnings is regularly remitted home. This is a drain from the liquidity pool of the State, which does not mean that it is a drain from investible surplus. It is more like a drain from the consumption funds which ultimately is no drain from the economy unlike drains through the stock markets and similar institutions which are drains from investible surplus to the coffers of corporate businesses that are predominantly based outside the State. In any case the consumption package of Malayalees consists principally of goods from outside which means that institutions like stock markets or even the banking system as a whole acts absolutely complementary to the consumption pattern entrenched in the State. This means that the drain is a multi-channel and institutionalised feature of this grossly dependent economy contributing mightily to perpetuating the vicious chain. 

One of the most visible after-effects of the consumption spree is the difficulty of disposing both inorganic and organic waste. When we look at popular struggles, often localised, we find they mostly relate to environmental issues and among them the maximum relate to unscientific waste disposal. Dumping waste from urban areas into the rural areas is commonly reported and several such struggles are long-drawn-out attracting the attention of the entire people. Reports of waste being transported in trucks to the neighbouring States of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu under cover of night and dumping it on the roadside in those States inviting hostile reactions is also common. Disposal of waste is quite a messy problem facing the whole State, especially the urban areas. There is simply no space and infrastructure to dispose the waste generated safely without creating environmental hazards. The fact that the quantum of waste generated is much beyond the carrying capacity of the place points the finger squarely at the superfluity of consumption too. 


Another visible aspect of consumption in the State is the medical industry. The health industry thrives in the State with a very large number of privately owned hospitals and allied health services in every nook and corner of the State. Hospitals are invariably multi-crore businesses with all kinds of necessary and unnecessary equipments, often imported, which dazzle the customers. Even before the doctor conducts a preliminary examination of the patient half a dozen tests are routinely ordered. Of course, the hospital gets a hefty commission from the laboratory, if it happens not to be part of the hospital. These ridiculous things happen as a matter of course. The hospital is constrained to make a minimum amount of money every month whether there are a sufficient number of patients or not. Unethical practices abound like insisting on surgery even when not really required, prescribing unnecessary medicines, or insisting on admitting the patient when it is least necessary. Sensitised doctors are candid about why the health industry is such a thriving affair. Most of the diseases on which the industry thrives are those that are produced by overconsumption, particularly protein rich food, the cure of which is simple reduction of quantity and change in food and lifestyle habits into health promoting ones. The same is applicable to alcoholic drinks related health problems. Combined with the as yet unspecified and uncontrolled levels of carcinogenic pesticide and insecticide contents in the commonly consumed food the health problems confronting the Malayalees are actually and potentially frightening. Self-sufficiency or near self-sufficiency in uncontaminated basic food items is a crying need.


When we talk about self-sufficiency and self-reliance it should not be mistaken for isolationist autarchy. It is not at all a Robinson Crusoe syndrome we have in mind. Exchange of goods and services is unavoidable and very often desirable under given conditions. But exchange on what basis is the crucial point. Different regions have different geographical, natural features which are suitable to produce certain things and not others. Or rather, the advantages may be overwhelming in many cases. Equality in trade relations or non exploitative terms of trade between economic sectors as well as different economies only can assure a peaceful world and equitable development. Under colonialism the terms of trade between the colonial overlords and colonies was regressive to the extreme and under neo-colonialism too equal values are not exchanged to mutual advantage but unequal values are exchanged to the advantage of one against the other. In an age when giant multinational corporations control the products market there can be no equality between trading partners. To call it partnership is nothing but sham. Two examples will suffice to illustrate the point with relation to Kerala.


The State grows fairly good quality coffee by international standards. And coffee is a popular beverage over great parts of the world. A variety of finished products can be made from coffee beans many of which, like instant coffee, does not involve inaccessible technology or mega capital outlays. It can be produced by a medium scale unit of production. The principal ingredient is of course the beans which is grown internally. But the production of instant coffee is controlled by a couple of multinational companies out of which Nestle is the foremost. Coffee bean prices can be made to fluctuate madly to the great advantage of the multinational. This sort of contrived volatility has driven many a coffee grower to kill themselves. The price of the principal ingredient can become uneconomic but any downward movement of the price of instant coffee powder is unheard off. This sort of market conditions by themselves explains the grossly unequal nature of the coffee market as a whole. Or, let us take the example of one of the main food crops which is paddy. Before the invasion by the hybrid seed agriculture technology Kerala had a large variety of indigenous varieties many of them being fragrant types like Jeerakashala and Gandhakashala grown in the lower Western Ghats region. Now the cultivation is less than in earlier days but these varieties are still cultivated. It is a local crop and the grains are used on special occasions like marriages. It is considered ideal for preparing the fabled Malabar Biriyani. Now you can see superlative front page advertisements in the prominent local newspapers for this rice. Curiously the product is owned and marketed by an agro corporation operating from beyond Kolkata, more than three thousand kms from where it is grown. Whose is the patent right? Where are the interests of farmers who grow this paddy? In this case it is not even a raw material that is used by the corporate business to produce a finished product but a finished product itself that is produced by disparate farmers, who are often small ones. The level of irrationality is amazing.


The coconut tree is omnipresent in Kerala, though it grows more widely in the coastal areas. It is also a ritually significant tree with many connotations. Its oil is commonly used for cooking purposes and every part of the tree can be put to economic use. The first organised industry in the State, the coir industry, is based on the fibre extracted from its husk. Tender coconut water and toddy are wonderful health drinks. Toddy can be used for making several value-added products including hard drinks and jaggery. The mature tree yields hard wood and the leaves provide excellent roofing material. There is little wonder that it is known as a wish fulfilment tree. Traditionally, the shops selling toddy were well-known eateries offering indigenous dishes and used to function as de facto debating clubs. The situation is now drastically different. 


The main difference concerns the basic nature of toddy itself. Liquor is a State subject which perennially cash starved State governments find convenient to ruthlessly farm. It is a fairly inelastic commodity in relation to price changes; whatever the price, demand is more or less assured, and it is this characteristic that is exploited to the hilt. The contracts/licenses to operate the shops for a certain time are auctioned to the highest bidder. Kerala, a chronically debt ridden State, depends on excise revenue from liquor even for the day-to-day working of the government. This has been the condition of State finances since many years with no alternative to this source of revenue in sight of the political bureaucracy. Under such conditions it is only logical that the liquor lobby enjoys growing economic and political power in the State.  In relation to toddy another factor should also be kept in mind. It is a State where communists turned social democrats enjoy governmental power often and the toddy sector is one area where they had built up their organisational power from the 1940s. Hence the sector was marked by militant trade unions based on economism. As a result of this long history of economic struggles the workers in this sector enjoy comparatively greater security and higher wage levels. Moreover, workers’ cooperatives exist that function as trader businesses. All these factors have played significant contributory role in the tragic poisoning of toddy consumed by the common man. Now toddy is mercilessly adulterated by contractors who are also include workers. 


The adulteration is so much that consumer taste itself has metamorphosed to the extent that if by chance a consumer is offered genuine toddy he may probably denounce it as adulterated. The profits percentage is in terms of thousands and the impact on the consumers is both long and short term mental and physical debilitation. There is no correlation between the toddy sold through the shops and the actual amount tapped, the former being always much larger than the latter. We can safely surmise that marketed toddy has ceased to have any wholesome organic linkage with the coconut tree. Some sort of research has also gone into this science of adulteration so that the poison liquor will have some sort of toddy smell. This perversion of a health drink given by the coconut tree is not the only attack on the tree. It is multi-dimensional. 


Tender coconut water is a time honoured guest offering. It is a drink that has great cooling effect apart from medicinal properties. Up to recent times it was considered impossible to adulterate. But now the story is the opposite. It has emerged as one of the most adulterated soft drinks available in the market. This adulteration is effected through surgical operations on the tree itself. There are contractors who go around looking for leasing in coconut gardens for a fixed time. What they do is akin to some magical rites. They dig a pit close to the trunk, collect some roots in a bunch, tie them together, cut their tips and then fix them in a plastic bottle or small pot containing deadly chemicals, bury the whole lot in a pit and cover it up. Moreover, a deep hole is bored in the trunk into which chemicals are inserted and the hole closed. This surgery is expected to be effective for a period of five to six years during which period the tree produces a tremendous yield of big tender coconuts with lots of water which are let down in bunches and marketed widely. The contract period is generally five to six years, and as if programmed the crown of the tree decays at the end of the period and the tree dies.  The safest soft drink is turned diametrically into its opposite. Here the adulteration is simply surreal; a single contractor can kill of hundreds of acres of prime coconut gardens, while amassing huge returns from this butchery.


Market manipulation to loot the growers is an old story. Coconut oil is an expensive cooking medium, but it is the most popular one in Kerala. Way back in the 1980s there was a fascinating massive market manipulation which was a very comprehensive effort to kill it as a cooking medium. The effort succeeded too at least in the short run in Kerala. Suddenly there was a spurt of literature in the popular print media about the dangerous character of coconut oil authored apparently by health and nutrition experts. The propaganda was concerted and alarmist that the use of coconut as an edible oil drastically increases the cholesterol content in the human body directly leading to serious health hazards involving the heart. People got scared and dropped their favourite cooking oil. Prices reached rock bottom. The stocks were purchased by companies like Tata Oils, who use it mainly for manufacturing goods like soaps, shampoos, hair oil etc. The tree yields for a long time and the slump meant thousands of crores of yearly loss for the growers and corresponding gains for companies like Tata Oils. The situation was a merry one for them until the time when studies came out from coconut-growing countries like the Philippines and Thailand denouncing the propaganda as a conspiracy against the tree and its growers by the corporate sector and crediting the oil to be one of the safest and healthiest ones. 


This conspiracy had used the services of hack doctors, big media like the Malayala Manorama group and so-called nutrition experts. Even after the conspiracy was exposed worldwide the consumers in Kerala made only a slow comeback to this oil because the propaganda war against it had been so intense. It was a very dirty market manipulation done by big businesses, who are never tired of projecting themselves as gentlemen businesses. Of course, manipulation of the market conditions of cash crops is a perennial story and Kerala suffers as a matter of course, but sometimes the greed of corporate businesses crosses all limits. Tata Oils did this performance for the coconut tree in the 1980s. Although the worst of the crisis could be alleviated over a period of time, the market conditions never returned to what can be called fully normal or the pre-crisis stability level. The hundreds of thousands of growers have learned to live with the uneconomic tree. The research and promotional institutions set up at public cost do not have the motivation or the capability to solve the problems besetting the tree. They are there for the sake of employment and income for ‘experts’. In fact, they are ably presiding over the pitiful demise of the tree.


Kerala is often characterised as poor in terms of mineral resources. This is an outright lie. Considerable stretches of the coast in southern Kerala are of black sand, which is the ore for monazite and limonite, two minerals of great strategic and commercial value in the global market. They are collected in large quantities, subjected to primary processing, and shipped to rich countries to be further processed and used in their electronics, armaments and/or nuclear industries. The natural radiation levels in the mining areas are high and this is greatly augmented by the mining and primary processing. Large numbers of inhabitants are plagued with wasting diseases for which there is no cure. Deformed babies are born. In fact, the area has all the features of a place subjected to a nuclear catastrophe. To add to this there is also the constantly increasing coastline erosion due to large-scale mining seriously endangering many coastal fishing villages, which were already losing livelihood means due to the mining. This mining lobby is quite powerful enjoying the support of the trade union bureaucracy as well as state capitalist/social democratic political groups. Some years back an NGO with the financial support of anti-nuke funding agencies from Japan and Germany worked for many years involving doctors and environmentalists, collected tons of data and then disintegrated without producing any report. The organisation seems to have been corrupted from within. What happened to the data collected or who has taken possession of it remains unanswered. What is known is only that the set-up suffered a sort of radiation death.


Of late, granite mining has become a sensitive topic in Kerala. Kerala has extensive granite formations beneath a not very thick but fertile top soil. For the past few decades this granite is being recklessly mined particularly in the hilly regions. It is a high profit business but the area of mining becomes totally useless once the mining is over. Fertile land is taken over from impoverished farmers, mined at great speed and abandoned. All over the State one can see such gaping, ugly craters and in many places entire hills have been clean shaved off changing the topography beyond recognition. This is, of course, a very serious matter concerning the total environmental and ecological balance of the place. This is nothing but incessant rape of the land in the most brutal manner. Prof. Madhav Gadgil prepared a highly educative report on the entire Western Ghats which paid particular attention to this aspect of destruction of the Ghats. The virulence with which the vested interests, particularly the Catholic Church in the settler areas, reacted to this sensible report clearly pointed at the filthy money power of the mining lobby. They demanded nothing less than the stoning of Prof Gadgil and friends. The report was not expected to be implemented but the response was astoundingly mindless and crude. This release of irrationality was followed by two consecutive monsoon related floods in the State devastating the State. Gadgil had warned precisely of such catastrophes if indiscriminate construction, mining and encroachments on the Ghats are not put down. It is now no longer a case of ignorance but wilful greed that is leading to hara kiri. 


Kerala has a variety of rock formations which are most ancient. This includes the blue-black Krishna Shila of which the epic Wheel adorning the Sun Temple of Konarak is sculpted. During an earlier period granite blocks weighing 20-30 tonnes were transported to ports on ten-wheel trucks to be shipped to Japan where they were sliced into thin slices to be used as the most luxurious flooring material. Now they are made within the country itself. The granite sector remains an extremely backward one in Kerala while the demand is great due to the construction boom. This is what makes it yield super profits. But the sector as a whole is marked by low wages and dismal working conditions. Its destructive role is immense, though it is actually a rich resource that needs to be handled very carefully and frugally. But its current way of exploitation defies all sense and is outrightly criminal. 

This section is conceived as two illustrative case studies which can describe the malady of the economy and society as a whole. One is a life giving tree that is the symbol of the land while the other is crucial to the geographical stability of the land itself. Both are continuously being grossly misused and recklessly/mindlessly destroyed.  

The approach to women is universally acknowledged as an index of the progressiveness of a society. When we apply this index to Kerala the result unmistakably points at a starkly reactionary society. The average age of marriage is high and there is higher level of formal education among girls/women – two statistical numbers ever crowed over by the model apologists. This empiricist approach proves to be a mockery of the reality, which is frightening and disgusting at the same time. No amount of statistical fancy dressing can succeed in hiding this reality. Again, whether the condition of women is better or worse than in UP or Delhi is irrelevant, because what is relevant is the situation here, not whether it is better than in some hell-hole in UP. The crime rate and the composition of crimes against women is more than enough to get the picture. The attitude to women clearly visible on the streets and in the media, particularly mainstream Malayalam cinema, is complementary to the crime data. The picture is dismal indeed. 


The attitude to women shows no religious and community bias in Kerala. The upper caste Hindus both traditional and co-opted, the casteist Christians, and Muslims display a similar character when it comes to women. Casteism is also common to all of them. Only the Adivasis, and to a lesser extent the Dalits, are exempt from this reactionary approach. Two case studies handled in this section pertain to the two prominent communities, caste Hindus and Christians, while the description of life in a semi-urban almost hundred per cent Kerala Muslim village on the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu explains the condition of Muslim women. 


Sabarimala is a hill shrine in the Western Ghats which has undergone several transformations in the past. Originally an Adivasi deity it subsequently became Buddhist probably during the Brahminical campaigns against Buddhism in the wake of Shankara’s Brahminical revivalism onslaught against Buddhism and Jainism. In more recent times of history the ancient deity and shrine were co-opted by Brahminical Hinduism. A new version of the deity Ayyappa was invented and currently it is one of the biggest money earners among Hindu temples in the country. The rules and regulations were reinvented and one of the rules is that women in the reproductive age group are barred from going to the temple. It is curious more because one of the subsidiary deities is a female one. Court cases had been going on for a long time concerning this gender injustice. When the Supreme Court finally ruled in favour of female entry all hell broke loose in Kerala. The Hindutva forces went on a sustained rampage all over the State against this judgement fully exposing the anti-women approach rooted in Kerala society. The civil society and the so-called leftists have been left mute in the face of this virulent anti-women onslaught.


The second case is equally interesting. The Syrian Christians, though split into many factions, are a powerful bloc in Kerala society and economy. The dominant faction owing allegiance to the Pope is a political force besides being an economic power. The church itself is an economic power dominating educational and health care businesses. What happened was the explosion of protest among the nuns of this denomination. The nuns openly came out against their sexual exploitation by the priests and bishops by levelling rape charges against a bishop directly implying that it is only the tip of the iceberg. The Catholic Church went on an all out offensive against the defenceless nuns who refused to back down from their agitation path. The civil society was galvanised to some extent which finally resulted in the arrest of the accused bishop on rape charges. A sort of short term victory! But the church, instead of showing any remorse or rethinking has further tightened the screws on the nuns, who are nothing but captive labour power and sex tools for the male leaders of the church. But whatever the immediate impact on society, one thing is clear. There is an indelible mark of filth on the church leadership’s nose which is visible globally.


The Muslim ‘urban’ village in question has less than a thousand households and is only a couple of km distant from a muncipality town in the district of Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu bordering Kerala. All the inhabitants are settlers of the 2nd or 3rd generation from northern Kerala. The settlers in Gudalur taluk are mainly Christians and Muslims from Kerala, the former mainly from central Kerala and the latter from Malabar. Our village inhabitants are from Malabar. Originally these people came as petty traders and small peasants. The soil is fertile and used to grow good quality paddy and vegetables. But now due to a variety of reasons these food crops’ cultivation has disappeared with tea taking their place. It is not strange to see even a small peasant owning less than half an acre of land cultivating tea which incidentally has become a losing proposition since the last few years. Our village is an absolutely patriarchal village. It is impossible to see women outside hijab. Even girls as young as four or five can be seen wearing hijab with birthday gifts for girl babies containing fancy hijabs. There are two mosques in the immediate neighbourhood with the religious bureaucracy enjoying good living and respect. All the people are religious observing the numerous rituals characteristic of what is called orthodox Islam. There are two exorcists practising their art of healing in the ‘Islamic’ style. Both have a large clientele, among whom women and children form the major proportion, and are very modern in their consumer tastes with a great fancy for swanky cars, smart phones and such like. 


The containment of women is simply spectacular. New brides look like school girls who get embedded in reproductive activity and family chores when they should be studying. All children go to schools and almost none go beyond schools. The professional future of boys is confined to becoming shop assistants, petty traders or drivers. Going to the Gulf countries for the same jobs is considered the pinnacle of success in life but unfortunately the opportunities there are dwindling and even those who are already there are facing an uncertain future. The number of four wheelers and two wheelers are way beyond the requirement. It is almost a fad to possess an automobile whether there is an economic use for it or not. There are few skilled workers or even agricultural workers. A lot of the agricultural work is done by Sri Lankan returnees who are Dalits. Religious rituals are faithfully observed and every religious or even non religious occasion involves clan or community feasting. If a youth goes to the Gulf there is a feast. It is another matter that he may return after a couple of months fleeced of a considerable amount of money by the agents. Women have nothing to do with the mosques and their social activities. There is only one Muslim woman working in the tea factory which is right inside the village and where all the tea growers supply their raw green leaves. There are no very rich families within the village. A family with five acres of tea garden is supposed to be very well off. At the same time there is no poverty and the women are eternally kept busy with cooking, house-keeping, and child care. Most of them become overweight and ‘blessed’ with a good size family by the time they are in their early 30s. Modern ideas of family size are yet to percolate among them. My landlord and landlady, considered rich by the prevalent standard, reared 13 children and by the time the man died a couple of years back the couple had a total of 65 children including grand children and great grand children. Since his death four more have got added. The amount of labour that goes into the maintenance of such families is enormous and women bear the brunt of it. And they are told that it is the ideal Islamic life. They may be believing it or not believing it. But it makes the Islamic exorcist more prosperous. Many young women tend to go nuts. The syrupy morality and contentment hides rampant oppression under conditions of multifaceted chronic backwardness. Administratively, the village is not part of Kerala but in every possible manner it is an ‘Islamic’ Kerala village revelling in mindless consumerism.


Dalits were in the forefront of the communist movement. And they paid the maximum price too. The famous Vayalar struggle is enough evidence for this assertion. Their earlier status was one of serf-like agricultural labour with great expertise in agricultural production processes, particularly paddy cultivation. The communists organised the Dalits with the catchy slogan of “land to the tiller”. The much eulogised land reforms in Kerala sidelined the agricultural workers entirely when tenants were recognised as tillers. Land reforms were a historic betrayal of Dalits in Kerala. They were given five to ten cents of land to erect their huts which is utterly meaningless as cultivable land. True, feudalism was ended but the oppressed peasantry were not the beneficiaries. They remained essentially in the same condition as earlier. At the same time, the reform movement led by Ayyankali and other Dalit leaders instilled self respect and militancy in them which made the more obnoxious forms of extra economic oppression difficult to be practised. As far as the key question of land is concerned Dalits remain as impoverished as ever. It was this fact that was brought to the limelight by the Chengara struggle during 2007-8 which was protracted and militant. It also exposed the pro oppressor caste and anti-Dalit character of the social democrats. This struggle will be analysed in some detail as the best means to understand the Dalit question in Kerala.


Adivasis constitute around one per cent of the total population, but there are more than thirty distinct communities mainly concentrated in three districts. They have survived expropriation of livelihood means over a very long period and it can be stated without any doubt that they constitute the most destitute section of society in the State. Their struggle against expropriation also has a long history. Some of their struggles like the Kurichiar rebellion against the British colonialists were uncompromising glorious ones and during more recent times too their struggles are remarkable. Their role in history often goes unmentioned because others consider them as disposable people and Kerala is no exception to this all-India approach of the dominant classes/castes. During modern times their expropriation by the colonial predators has been continued by the post -colonial rulers to date. As first people their position will be defined and enumerated.     


To Conclude

The study is an exercise in the political economy of a defined geographical entity with own cultural, historical specificities, and hence it is multi-disciplinary in general approach and inter-disciplinary in methodological approach. Certainly it is not intended to serve the purposes of any political party/group. At the same time it is open to any people’s movements to use. That is intrinsic to organic intellectual activism. 

The conclusion will tie up the different skeins of arguments in the previous sections without pointing out any direct implications for policies. It may or may not influence policies but that is certainly not the objective behind the production. If it impacts, well and good! The main idea is to create opinion which can percolate when discussion is triggered. It is high time to prick the balloon of ‘model’ manufacturing for Kerala, which as a State is actually bankrupt and highly unstable. The conclusion will underscore this reality that is sought to be glossed over by ideological irrelevancies propagated in the interests of narrow power politics.

The Nilgiris, 1st June   2020