Opinion - There Is A Reason The Rest of India Cannot Be Kerala PDF

4/20/2020 Opinion | There is a reason the rest of India cannot be Kerala
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Opinion | There is a reason the rest of India cannot be

Kerala
5 min read . Updated: 19 Apr 2020, 09:38 PM IST
Manu Joseph
A political system doesn’t create a society, it’s the character of people that enables political
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Every time I see Malayalee women, including my mother, hold their stomachs and laugh,
I imagine that someone has told them that Kerala is a “matriarchal" society. That Kerala
is “a matriarchal society" is nonsense to such a degree that I have stopped believing
even elephants are “matriarchal".
But many other exceptional qualities that Indians attribute to Kerala are true. Especially
the way the state has fought the covid-19 pandemic, illuminating for the world outside
its advanced and vast healthcare system for the masses.
If Kerala were a nation, it would be considered a proper middle-income one that is way
more advanced than India. It has among the highest per capita incomes in South Asia,
and its people probably have the best quality of life. An average farmer in Kerala is so
prosperous that if he commits suicide, our charlatan activists will not claim, blindly as is
their wont, that it was because of “debt".
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So there is this question that people are asking, and not for the first time: Why can’t the
rest of India be more like Kerala?
Kerala does not offer urban fun and its men make drinking seem like a depressing
disease,
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think like villagers. But it is a very clean place, the air here seems prehistoric, and every
Malayalee appears to have abundant fresh water, a portion of which women often pour
on their head every morning, and with their hair still wet, they go somewhere in a
tearing rush, as though to meet a hairdryer. Even the cheapest restaurants have high
hygiene standards, all of which must, by law and tradition, feed you an unlimited
amount of rice.
Assured of food, Malayalees have such dignity and an overblown sense of their rights
that they famously make it hell for industries to flourish in the state. In a year, Kerala
loses 200 days to various types of “hartals" (strikes). Despite this, there is no art-film-
grade poverty in Kerala; everyone has land and a home, and the swag of liberation. It
seems impossible to find a Malayalee maid in Kerala. However, it is a different matter
outside the state.
Malayalees thrive in any capitalistic society outside Kerala performing even menial tasks
if the price is good. Some 35% of Kerala’s income is from remittances sent by 10% of its
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population that lives outside India. They are able to exploit capitalism the way, say,
Biharis cannot because of Kerala’s focus on healthcare and primary education. WORLD
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In their book An Uncertain Glory, the economists Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen argue
that India only claimed it was a “socialist" country after independence; it never did two
crucial things that most socialist nations did—invest in primary education and the
health of its people. Kerala did. It was a true socialist republic within a confused
republic.
Modern India has been trying to be more like Mumbai. It is raising congested cities out
of villages, shrinking homes, building amoeba-shaped golf courses for a few and calling
it progress. Instead, maybe India should try to be a Kerala?
It is a pointless ambition because our greatest myth is that a political system creates a
society. The fact is that the character of people makes some political systems possible.
Many times, the political system is an accident of history, or merely terminology. Like
the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which has ruled Kerala intermittently for
decades. It is hard to say in what way this party is communist.
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There certainly was nothing “communist" about the people of Kerala. In the 80s, Eugene
Koshy, who worked for a modest software training school, hit upon an unremarkable
marketing idea that transformed the fortunes of his company—he promoted the
institute
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hamburgers. This is not how “a communist"
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society is expected to behave.
This is my theory of why Kerala is the way it is. For centuries, its ports were important
nodes in global trade; as a result, some people prospered very much, the inequality of
neighbours was excellent evangelism for the idea of wealth itself, and a whole society
was intoxicated by entrepreneurship.
Also, as it happens to prosperous entrepôts, there was an assimilation of many cultures.

It was a capitalistic society before such names were invented. As a result of the
mercantile gold age, Christianity and Islam came to influence the state’s elites. So
ownership of capital became confused, which is always a good sign.
After European trade came European conscience, which, like conscience today, was a
mixture of two selfish forces—a way of assuaging the guilt of the rich, and a way to bleed
your rival through idealism. For instance, freeing slaves is not only about freeing
humans, it is also a way to hurt those who have a tactical advantage in owning slaves. A
strong reformation movement took hold of Kerala even before independence, and the
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idea that the strong should take care of the weak grew, and from this emerged a
generation of aristocratic, idealistic communist leaders who equated colonialism with
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capitalism.
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Modern Kerala, which is misunderstood as a communist region, is in reality a post-

capitalist state. A lot of things have gone into the making of its character. Mere policy
cannot transform the rest of India into Kerala.
In any case, idealistic Kerala survives because the world outside Kerala is not Kerala.
Manu Joseph is a journalist, and a novelist, most recently of ‘Miss Laila, Armed And
Dangerous’
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A covid-19 testing kiosk in Ernakulam, Kerala (Photo: Reuters)