Kerala model of development- An analysis
- Part 1 -

Thangkhokai Haokip *

at Cochin, Kerala :: Picture - Dayanidhi Huidrom

What do we understand of the term 'Development'? Does it mean having more money or wealth? Does it mean owning expensive smart phones with luxurious bikes? Does it mean living in town or cities? The answer to these entire questions is simply 'No'. Life has no meaning if we have bad health, if our life is short, if our babies doesn't cross the age of 1, if we are not educated, more importantly if we are not aware of our rights as human beings and if we don't live with dignity and die with dignity. Development is more of having 'good quality of life' rather than having more and more money.But what is meant by 'good quality of life'?

The indicator of good quality of life include; Life expectancy, IMR, MMR, Literacy, Health amongst others. All these indicators gave Kerala the world recognition.For instance, The UN in 1991 certified Kerala as 100% literate.The UNICEF and WHO chose Kerala as the first state to become a 'baby friendly state'. But how did Kerala achieved this? Well, this is a long story. The economists called this 'Kerala Model'. Kerala Model,per se is not a separate entity but what has been labelled is the experience of Kerala as a result of its development indicator being on par with those of the developed or say the first world countries.

The journey

The Kerala Model is a systematic and a well planned investment in Education and Health even before the birth of the state. This can be traced back to the rulers of the erstwhile Princely state of Travancore. The rulers were in the fore front in the campaign for education and spreading its awareness. The Maharaja established a school for girls in 1859 which was unprecedented act in the Indian Subcontinent.

The great fares of Kerala in education truly demanded the mention of the Christian Missionaries right from the first half of the 19th century. The Churches were instructed to start 'Pallikkoodam' Malayalam word for School, along with every Parish Churches in the early part of the 1860s when the CMS missionary reached Kerala. This historic effort has been delivered and cherished effectively due to the participative and responsive citizens of the state over the generations. This has led to the growth of western education.

The democratically elected Communist government which broke the backbone of the feudal system by introducing land reform has also count a lot. The government spent heavily on public health care and education. The social reformers who fought against the caste barrier and equal share for all sections of the society in public facilities and temple entering also played a vital role in shaping the society. Thus, the state of affairs of education in Kerala can be credited to the social reformers who were far ahead of their times. This gave Kerala a high advantages and a better start post independent compare to the rest of the country. For example, at the time of independent, Kerala literacy was 47% against the 18% for all India.

The idea of development

Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University many a times heralded in his speech about the Kerala model. He mentioned, in verbatim, "India doesn't need to look elsewhere for development pointers. There is much that India can learn from Kerala's development experience. Kerala, despites of its low income has achieved more than even some of the most admired high growth economies. Its achievement is remarkable".

However his promotions of Kerala's experience as a model for development draws flaks from a Columbia University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya for advocating the Kerala Model rather than its counterpart Gujarat Model. What then is Gujarat Model? Here lies apertinent point to note, a startling expression. Kerala Model, as a whole, is not a model of governance rather it is a model of self-help or the so called 'public action mode'. Well, I'm not getting in to the debate but read between the lines.

The Gujarat model is of entrepreneur, investment, commercial, infrastructure and business oriented which I would called it as a protagonist of the concept of Managerial view in the sphere of Public Administration, as a vocation, in being its principle of 'just getting things done'. In contrast, its counterpart Kerala, as mentioned above, is more of Direct action- a reformist's action, civil society action or a result of people's movement, I called thisa protagonist of the concept of Integral view in being 'doing things and not just getting things done'.

Amartya Sen attribute the state-led welfare as the reason for Kerala's high development indicator while Bhagwati and Panagariya credited its success to private enterprises and globalisation. While the Gujarat Model is famous for its business friendliness, its increasing agri-GDP growth rate, its attraction as investment destination and its economic freedom-which is the critical condition for good governance, it doesn't sail well with its abysmal development indicators.

Let's have a closer look. The updated version of the HDI 2011 reports which was released on March 2014 presented the percentage change in HDI between 1999-00 to 2011-12 for all states in India in view of new facts and data on income, education and health. As per the reports, states which have low HDI such as Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar and Assam registered a much better improvement than several of the progressive states that includes Gujarat. In education sector, as many as 17 states out of the 22 states performed better than Gujarat.

The best performer in this regard was Jharkhand which improved its education index by a whopping 139 percent against the Gujarat's 43 percent which was well below the all India average of 62. In health index, the best performer was Chhattisgarh with 43 percent while Gujarat recorded 25 percent which performed worse than 8 different states.

Again with regards to Income index, Uttarakhand with an improvement of 157 percent was the best performer followed by Odisha(148 percent), Jharkhand (119 percent) and Gujarat at 84. Also as per the 2011 report, in Gujarat 44.6 % of children below five years suffered from malnutrition while nearly 70 % of children suffered from anaemia. By further referring to the HDI data of Gujarat, we can see a large difference between the levels of developments of tribal and non-tribal, urban and rural peoples. Crony capitalism?

All these justified the often made point that Gujarat's performance on HDI didn't match its economic growth rate. NarendraModi (as a former CM of Gujarat) concept of development despite being hailed by some big businessmen and section of the economist is restricted to asmall section of people;they called them the big players. Allow me to go further. The much anticipated Modi (light) waves follows the laws of refraction by failing to create the same medium (density) among the Gujaratis (same substances) with regards to basic social infrastructure.

This is further enhanced by the PM recent alleged move to curtail and dilutethe Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by restricting it to just 200 districts. I don't deny its limitations, the lower efficiency (as compare to the inputs made and the output achieved) due to the high profile corruption right from the central to the district agency and the fiscal deficit burden the government has to bear.

But making one a scapegoat is not truly a right solution. It'sdiscrimination! Why don't the government take into consideration for a holistic reform or putting in a comprehensive framework rather than pulling-out if it claimed to unearth a loophole? By scrapping the scheme instead of reforming and tackle the corruption, the Modi government wouldn't only prove that his government are incapable of fighting corruption but also that they lost the very track of how people voted them to power against the anti-incumbency waves propelled by corruption.

Back to the point, the overall performance among the states of India as given by the updated HDI 2011 gave Kerala the top rank with a rating of 0.84 on a scale of 1 while Gujarat was ranked number 9 with a rating of 0.64 on the same scale.

To be continued...