Regional Development of Kerala

The reasons why states are poor – cannot be attributed to just income but also low
human development.

Kerala, actually stands out because it has low per capita income and yet has a high
human development and it figures higher on the social indicators list.

Trickle down hypothesis says that only when you have high levels of income can the
State invest in social development. So a State cannot do the latter without the former.

Kerala is an exception because it shows that a region need not wait for income to rise
and for a state to intervene and invest

major features of Kerala's developmental achievements

1. Health Achievements

Demographic indicators

In Kerala, health and demographic transitions have been achieved within a single
generation, i.e. after the formation of Kerala state. Four indicators which represent the
outcomes of the health and demographic transitions in Kerala are life expectancy at
birth, the infant mortality rate and the birth and death rates.
Life expectancy at birth in Kerala is similar to the corresponding figures for
developing countries classified as having achieved high human development in
Human Development Report,1993.

The birth rate in Kerala is also much lower than the birth rate for all of India. The
decline in birth rate in Kerala was particularly substantial in the 1980s. Kerala’s low
birth rate is associated with comparatively high rates of birth control.

The death rate in Kerala has declined steadily since the beginning of this century, and
more rapidly than the Indian average.

The infant mortality rate of kerala in 1993 is better than the average for developing
countries with ‘high human development’.

Food consumption and nutrition

According to the NNMB ( National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau) data, Kerala was
the only state in which consumption improved over the 2 periods ( 1975-59, 1988-90)
in terms of both anthropometric and intake indicators

Literacy in kerala
Literacy – and in particular female literacy – is an essential facilitator of kerala’s
achievements in the spheres of health and of demographic change

Sex ratio

A key indicator of the historical status of women in Kerala and of the influence of the
culture of old kerala on socio-economic development is the sex ratio, measured here
as females per thousand males in the population. The sex ratio was 1040 in 1991 and
has been more than 1000 at every census since the formation of the State.

The economy
 
Kerala’s achievemens are an outstanding example of the power of public action even
in conditions of low production growth. However, Kerala faces an acute crisis in
the spheres of employment and material production. People at large and political
parties perceive the problems of unemployment and production as the major
economic problems of the immediate future. The question also been raised is
whether the development achievements of Kerala’s people can be sustained if the
employment and production situations are not transformed.
 
Net state domestic product per capita in kerala is below Indian average.
 
Kerala’s agriculture is characterised by the existence of a series of agricultural
micro environments suited to different kinds of mixed farming and by a
substantial proportion of perennial crops in total agricultural output.
 
The manufacturing sector grew at 2.8 % per annum between 1970-71. and 1986-87;
the corresponding growth rates in Tamil nadu and Karnataka wee 5.3% and 6.0%
 
Productive capita per capita in the factory sector has been consistently lower in kerala
than in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
 
The state govt spread its invst thin ; most units were small with low absolute levels of
invst. Their small sizw has made many of these enterprises financially and
technologically unviable
 
Capital industrial entrepreneurship in Kerala is ill developed. One reason for the
slow development of large and medium scale industries is  perhaps the lack of
entrepreneurs interested in their development. There is only one big capitalist
industrial house from Kerala.
 
Kerala kas the highest rate of unemployment in the country. Unemployment is
high particularly among educated persons.
 
Kerala has a history of labour migration and remittances from outside the state
influence disposable incomes significantly. From the 1970s the migration of
workers to countries of West Asia particularly Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE
has been a major feature of social and economic life in Kerala.
 
Despite the stagnation in per capita domestic income, per capita consumption
expenditure registered a steady increase.
 
Market forces will not ensure that productive invst appears spontaneously;
transformation in the spheres of production and employment requires public
intervention. State supported infrastructural invst is crucial for industrial and
agricultural growth in Kerala. The potential for the expansion of skilled employment
in Kerala is extraordinary. Any plan for rural economic growth in kerala must
consider the very promising opportunities for growth based on the mixed cultivation
of diverse crops that require skilled crop management and that involve new forms of
production organisation.  

2. Historical aspects

a) Aspects of caste and gender relations in kerala

Among the worst forms of untouchability in the country were practiced in kerala, and
the oppression of people of the oppressed caste took savage forms

At the top of the traditional caste hierarchy were the Namboodiris, Malayalam
speaking Brahmans who were patrilineal. At the bottom of the caste- Hindu scale
were the Nayars, who were matrilineal. Below the Nayars in terms of ritual status
were the Izhava caste.

The diversity in the traditional caste calling of the people of the Izhava caste was to
have important consequences for the Izhava social reform movt.

In traditional Kerala, matrilineal systems of inheritance were followed by an

important section of people. The Nayars were matrilineal and so were some sections
of Ambalavasi and Izhava caste and sections of Muslim population.

The matrilineal system influenced social and cultural development in kerala in

general. It contributed to changing social attitudes and it contributed to creating social
conditions in which women made real progress in health and education. Progressive
social attitudes towards female survival and female education are a precondition for
the health and demographic transition. In the case of Kerala, a set of historical and
sociological conditions – inclusing systems of marriage and matrilineal inheritance
that were specific to the region – contributed to the establishment of such attitudes.

b) Literacy expansion in the nineteenth century

Mass literacy requires mass schooling, and the history of literacy in Kerala is closely
linked with the history of modern schooling, introduced in the region in the first part
of the nineteenth century.

Modern schools were first established by Christian missionaries and later by the state.
Protestant missionaries were pioneers of modern school education. The importance of
Protestant missions for education lay in their leading role in giving a new direction to
schooling in the early 19th century.
 First, the mass base of the Protestant missionaries, such as it was, came from
the oppressed castes , the Shanars, the Pulayas and Izhavas.
 Secondly, there was a clear perception among the early Protestant missionaries
that educational work was a necessary pre-requisite for their religious work.
 Thirdly, it followed that missionaries asserted the right of people of oppressed
castes to modern education, and mission schools were the only new style
schools to which the people of oppressed castes had access.
 Fourthly, conversion and primary education were linked with missionary led
movements against other features of Hindu Society : against untouchabilty and
distance pollution; against agrarian slavery, against upper caste prohibition on
women of ritually impure castes wearing clothes above the waist, and against
other caste-taboos.
 Fifthly, missionary education brought girls from oppressed castes to schools.
 Sixthly, the school courses though biased towards Christian theology, also had
a secular component to school studies (arithmetic, geography).
 Seventhly, instruction in these schools was in the vernacular i.e Tamil and
Malayalam.
 Eighthly, missionary schools were the first institutions of elementary technical
training or craft schools.

The rulers of Travancore, under the influence of missionaries and British, took
significant initiative in spreading mass education and mass literacy.

Education was linked to employment, and schooling a pre-requisite for a government

job

c) Caste based reform movements

The well known caste reform movements were among the people of the Izhava and
Pulaya castes and among the Nayars and Namboodiris. Caste movts were active in the
movt for social reform and for changes in social practices, particularly the practice of
untouchability; they also made efforts to reform internal caste rules and to alter, by
means of state intervention through legislation, inheritance laws and rules of family
organisation.

The Izhava social reform movt: For all the advances in the economic status, the
Izhava people continued to be victims of different forms of caste discrimination. The
emerging Izhava elite demanded the right to be full participants in the modernisation
that began in the 19th century. Their main movts were against untouchability
for literacy and education, for employment in govt jobs, and for greater representation
in the restricted franchise legislature.

The Pulaya social reform movt : Demands for education and against caste
discrimination and civil disabilities were important to the agenda of the movt.

Nayars :.Nayar caste movts aimed at increased access to higher education and at
large scale Nayar entry into the professions and the bureaucracy. Two important
features of reform among Nayars were the reform of marriage law and the reform of
property law.

Namboodiris : There were reform movts against reactionary marriage practices within
the caste, and for the right to modern education
3. Agrarian change

Agrarian relations
A foundational feature of Kerala’s development experience and of social and
economic progress in Kerala, is the transformation of agrarian relations in the state.
The history of this change is a history of public action – which took the form of mass
struggle and of legislative action – against some of the most complex, exploitative and
oppressive rural social formations in the country.

Agrarian movements

Agrarian rebellion was fiercest in Malabar, and the organised peasant and agricultural
worker movt in Kerala began there.

Three main currents in the movement to transform agrarian relations in Malabar have
been identified.
The first was the movt of Mapilla tenants and agricultural labourers against ‘lord and
state’

The second major current was the organised effort of kanakkaran intermediaries to
acquire occupancy rights on land over which they had kanam rights

The third current was the most radical current, the movement of peasants and working
tenants that culminated in the land reform of contemporary Kerala

The independent class demands of agricultural workers involved the right to organise,
demands against social oppression, for higher wages, for payment in standard
measures and against arbitrary exactions from landlords.

Land reform

Land reform was crucial to the transformation of agrarian relations in Kerala. The
land reforms had 3 major components.
The first involved that burdensome, complex, and rampant affliction of Kerala
agriculture tenancy

Second main component of land reform involved homestead land occupied by the
rural poor. Occupants of such land were to be given ownership rights

3rd component – concerned the imposition of limits on land ownership and the
distribution of land identified as surplus to the landless.

The agrarian movement has played a crucial role in creating an awareness of people’s
rights, in democratising rural life, and in creating conditions favourable to the spread
of mass education and facilities for improved conditions of public health.
4. The role of the Left

The Communist party and the organisations of workers, peasants, agricultural

labourers, students, teachers, youth and women under its leadership, have been the
major organisers and leaders of mass political movts in Kerala since the end of the
1930s, and have been the major agents of the politicisation of the mass of Kerala’s
people. The different movts included the freedom movt, movt of workers, peasants
and radical intellectuals

The first govt. in Kerala was a Communist govt and the major features of its agenda
and of later communist ministries in the State were, among other things, land reform,
health, education and strengthening the system of public distribution of food and other
essential commodities.

5. Women’s agency

2 issues regarding the place and the role of women in Kerala’s development
achievements are worth emphasizing. First Kerala’s women have made outstanding
gains in the fields of education and health and are more equal participants with men in
education and health achievements than in any other part of India.

Secondly, Kerala’s experience is a dramatic example of the role of women’s agency

in advancing the social and economic development of a society. Female literacy and
education are crucial determinants of child survival, general health and hygiene.
These, in turn determine progress in other demographic and health indicators

6. State Governments

The areas of State govt intervention in Kerala that have been most significant for the
people have been land reform, health and education, and the public distribution
system. It also introduced measures to provide protective social security to persons
outside the organised sector, who are not usually covered by such schemes.
Throughout the post independence period, health expenditure as proportion of total
expenditure has been higher in kerala than in any other state

Education was also an early concern. The proportion of total govt expenditure spent
on education in Kerala is much higher than the corresponding proportion spent by all
the states.

The 2 tier public distribution system was established and strengthened in the 1970s
and the 1980s

Kerala has social security measures that cover most sections of rural workers

CONCLUSION

There has been a progressive transformation in Kerala of the health and demographic
conditions characteristic of less developed societies, and the state is far ahead of the
rest of India with respect to these conditions