Kerala Model Development
Buy Development, Democracy And The State: Critiquing The Kerala Model Of Development from Flipkart.com"The development experience of Kerala tucked away in the south-western corner of the Indian sub-continent has been rather unique. High level of social development disproportionate to the level of economic growth has been the basic characteristic of this peculiar pattern of development, often referred to as the Kerala model. In terms of all conventional physical quality of life indicators, Kerala is way ahead not only of other Indian states, but also most of the middle income countries. In some respects, it is ahead of even
some of the high income countries. But Kerala's per capita income is only three quarters of the per capita income of the country which itself is comparatively low. While
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Kerala's achievements are widely known, both nationally and internationally, its failures, especially on the economic front, are not that well known. In this paper, we try to take a balanced view of both Kerala's achievements and failures
during the last four decades of its existence. Kerala's development experience is often referred to as a paradox, a paradox of high physical quality of life despite poor economic growth. Of late, this paradox is reformulated as the paradox of economic under development despite high degree of social development (George K.K., 1994). Conventional economic wisdom supported by the experience of many fast growing countries indicate that social development triggers of economic growth. But this has not happened in Kerala. The state presents many more such paradoxes. The state's per capita consumer expenditure is more than the per capita state domestic product. Again, despite its high per capita consumer expenditure, the nutritional intake is low. Kerala's health status, according to all mortality rates is the best in the country. But its morbidity rate is also the highest. Development experience elsewhere suggests that land reforms unleashes productive forces in agriculture. The state had implemented one of the most comprehensive and progressive land reforms in India. It has also a well developed rural infrastructure - physical, financial and social. But the state's agriculture is experiencing stagnation.
Historically, Kerala economy had developed strong linkages with international markets. The large scale emigration of people had strengthened these linkages. With the opening up of Indian economy, it was expected that this export oriented state with its historic links with outside world will be able to profit from the new
opportunities. But the flow of foreign investments, collaborations and technology in the wake of the the liberalisation in the country are almost bypassing the state."
Sourced from a study published on 1997,
KERALA - THE LAND OF
DEVELOPMENT PARADOXES
K.K.George and N.Ajith Kumar
"Level and Pattern of Economic Development Economic growth had been the Achilles heel of the state. Though Kerala has made remarkable achievements in social development, its performance on the economic front had been rather poor. In 1994-95, the state's per capita income was only 83.1 per cent of the national average. It was only less than half that of Punjab. As in the case of other states, Kerala economy had been undergoing major structural changes during the plan period. The importance of primary sector in the state domestic product has been coming down steeply. From 56 per cent in 1960-61, it has come down to 34 per cent in 1994-95. The major shift away from the primary sector took place during the seventies when the share of this sector came down to 39 per cent. The eighties saw only marginal
decline. The share of primary sector in Kerala's sdp is marginally higher than its share in the country's Net national product. The shift away from primary sector has been more or less equally towards the secondary and tertiary sector. The secondary
sector improved its share from 15.2 per cent in 1960-61 to 26.1 per cent in 1994-95. Much of the gain of this sector took place during the 18seventies. The tertiary sector improved its share from 28.9 per cent in 1960-61 to 40 per cent in 1994-95. The shift towards this sector took place in all the decades more or less continuously." The Study notes.
NEW PROBLEMS, FRESH CHALLENGES" sees the phenomenon of Kerala Model development like this
"The percentage share of those under the poverty line in Kerala has declined due to faster economic growth.Does it mean that if the same policies are followed, eventually those considered desperately poor as a section will cease to exist in Kerala Society? It is difficult to happen. Three reasons are pointed out by this study in support of such a conclusion. 1) The social and cultural cleavage between the desperately poor and those above them, more than economic differences, are on the increase. Those immediately above the desperately poor can afford to purchase services from sources other than public institutions and services. To the poor, the only way out is to get such services from the public channels. Since they are turned to be the only beneficiaries of public institutions and services, they only will demand the upkeep and maintenance of efficiency of such institutions.
Since they will not be able to exert as much pressure as other social groups in public decision making their interests will not get much attention. 2) In democratic decision making, the most important are the political parties. The poor whose interests get systematically neglected will not be able to make themselves heard in the forums of political parties. This possibility is higher in Kerala where the polity is trapped into a two party or two front system. To set a polarization started in favour of the desperately poor within such a closed polity is difficult. 3) Though there have been some organizations and organized moves from among the poor themselves,they have yet to prove to be able to surmount the obstacles that their predecessors had to face and failed to surmount completely. Therefore, however welcome the recent economic growth is, through it alone Kerala’s
comprehensive development is difficult to be realized."
Tharakan is able to source together a set of studies which presents the lopsided nature of Kerala Model, Excerpts:
"It was in 1975 that the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, under the academic leadership of Professor K.N.Raj, brought out a volume for the United Nations Committee for Development Planning, titled Poverty: Unemployment and Development Policy: A Case Study of Selected Issues with Reference to Kerala (UN/CDS 1975 now onwards). This volume did not coin the term Kerala Model of Development. Nevertheless many other studies which followed the analysis given by this volume, used the term and made it imprinted in academic usage. What this volume did was to project the state of Kerala as a case which will support the basic needs and special targeting of development. Not only did UN/CDS 1975 bring to academic and policy makers’ attention, the different type of development experience that Kerala had undergone, it also brought up possibilities for looking at developmental process altogether differently. Scholars have raised doubts about the use of the term Model to describe Kerala’s different experience of development [PARAYIL 2000, 1-15]. Since we have precedents of analytically and empirically conceptualising a different regional development experience, such as the Swedish or Scandinavian Model [CHILDS 1980; PONTUSSON 1992], the use of the term Kerala Model, already well-entrenched in literature; cannot be faulted. It was pointed out that Kerala’s experience has proven wrong the general principle that improvement in the standard of living of common people can be realized only after the achievement of high economic growth [ISSAC and THARAKAN 1995]. The fact that Kerala has done well in terms of quality of life and human development indicators in comparison with other States of India and most of the developing world and that in Kerala, basic facilities and welfare measures are fairly evenly distributed across gender and rural-urban divide and among Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) as others, need not be restated [THARAKAN 1998]. Even when the arguments in favour of the pattern of development followed in Kerala were strong, there were some disturbing questions raised with regard to its sustainability and replicability. These questions arose mainly in relation to the slow economic growth of the region. It was not only slow in general but the growth of the commodity-producing sector was particularly low. The low growth in the economy reflected in high levels of unemployment. With a high residue of unemployment of educated human power, the capital investment required for giving them employment was found to be high. Besides, some national schemes for unemployment reduction did not suit the peculiarity of Kerala’s unemployment problem. In addition, the growing fiscal crisis faced by the region from mid-1980s, added to these problems [GEORGE 1998, 1999]. The capacity of the state and civil society organisations to invest in the social sector depends, in the long run, on the rate of economic growth. A welfare state cannot be maintained for long by large-scale borrowing, because the expectations of people for welfare services also will become increasingly costly [GEORGE and THARAKAN 2005]. At the international level, nations with less welfare obligations get a competitive advantage leading to the exodus of capital to the low wage, low welfare regions. Kerala has to face a similar competition not only from other countries of the world, but also from other low wage, low welfare states in India. The sustainability of the Kerala Model has been questioned from the environmental perspective too [CHATTOPADHYA 2001]. With a comparatively low per capita income, till very recently, the per capita consumption in the state has been very high. This has to be seen in the context of the increasing role played by migration to, and remittances from outside the state and India; in sustaining the development pattern in Kerala to the present [ZACHARIAH et al. 2003; ZACHARIAH and RAJAN 2004] though there is hardly any evidence to suggest that migration and remittances had any role in initiating the Kerala Model. The high consumption that is found in Kerala is made possible by externalising environmentally unsound production [VERON 2000]. Such higher consumption leads to larger generation of waste and also larger utilization of non-renewable natural resources like forests, clay, river sand, water etc. Lately, evidences are forthcoming to suggest that Kerala has got out of the low-growth syndrome. This had its positive implications for reduction of poverty too. By 1999-2000, the incidence of poverty in the State was just over 10 per cent [ECONOMIC SURVEY 2005]. One close observer of the Kerala scene [KANNAN 2005] has suggested analysing the turnaround in growth that may well be the beginning of a virtuous cycle of growth based on human development. The current excitement is generated by recent empirical evidences which show greater “economic growth seemingly helped by early achievements on the human development front” [CHAKRABORTHY 2005, 541]. Irrespective of some important problems like persisting female disadvantage in social and economic roles, and the issue of social security including reprioritisation of health care facilities for the increasing population of the aged; a new development ‘narrative’ is suggested for Kerala [Ibid]. Several advantageous factors for future development, such as a demographic transition leading to very low rate of population growth, an educated labour force, a structural transformation of the economy which has led to two thirds employment being generated outside agriculture and a labour migration which has familiarised people from Kerala with modern forms of organisation and management of work, are brought to attention [KANNAN 2005]. Some important issues are raised even within the context of the positive experience of economic growth in this region. Some of them interrogate the nature of growth itself. One of them is that the growth that is taking place is in the ‘non-tradable’ services, which are influenced by local demand. On the other hand, the growth has not adequately been felt in the commodity producing sectors or in those segments of high ‘value adding’ or export oriented services sectors which depend upon comparative advantage vis-à-vis other states and regions. The growth has not been accompanied by appreciable employment generation; which is important in the context of considerable accumulated unemployment. The employment elasticity of growth in Kerala between 1993-94 and 1999-2000 was estimated to be just 0.013 which was found to be the lowest among 15 major States in India [GEORGE and THARAKAN 2005]. In the past, Kerala economy had developed strong linkages with international markets [THARAKAN 1999]. The large-scale emigration of people from Kerala had strengthened these linkages. This migration provided opportunities for being exposed to modern technology and management skills practised elsewhere. But it is found to be not leading, in any significant extent, to transfer of such technology and management skills to the domestic economy at the local level [GEORGE and THARAKAN 2005]. Other questions have been raised about the apparent inadequacy of the development pattern to solve some of the major problems faced by Kerala society. The persisting female disadvantage in social and economic realms has been further underlined by a recent study [KODOTH and EAPEN 2005] which, looking beyond the state level gender development index in which Kerala is generally acknowledged to be ahead of other states, has brought out several aspects of Kerala society which questions gender performance in various dimensions of well-being. While tracing the plight of subaltern classes in general, another study has gone to the extent of stating that the “systematic marginalisation of the subaltern sections has been blot on the Kerala Model” [KUNHAMAN 2002, 100]. That there is a particular concentration of SC and ST population among the poor in Kerala and that poverty reflected in terms of consumption, asset holding and housing is high among them, has been brought out by D. Narayana [2003]. Apart from the SCs and STs, who have not been able to benefit from the Kerala Model to any great extent, there is also the case of the marine fishing community; who have been described as ‘outliers’ to the ‘central tendency’ of Kerala’s pattern of development [KURIEN 2000]. The preceding review of literature on the subject indicates that the Kerala Model is not without its problems. It is too early to say anything definite about whether the spurt in economic growth alone will solve these problems. One of the important problems faced by Kerala is the persistent exclusion of the marginalised – including women – from partaking the benefits of development. In this context, it is important to find out whether their exclusion was inherent to the development process itself. If it is, then extending the same development strategy further; with necessary amendments and with higher growth rate, will only strengthen the problem of exclusion further."
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