Kerala is nature’s paradise with greenery, enchanting flowery plants with coloured flowers, mystic , cosmopolitan, with age old traditions, culture, and with temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, built during pre-dated historical times. It is god’s Own Country. From time in memorial, travllers and merchants came to this tiny land with their wares and took back spices, ivory, herbs. Christianity was established here even before Europe was aware of it; the most mosques were built here, way back in the 7th century. Vasco-da-Gama, landed on her shores, which led way to other European settlements.
Today, Kerala can boast of human indices which have no par with amongst other states of India. It has 100% literacy, and the highest newspaper readership, women overtaking men in Census, expatriates around 1 million who remit money back to their homes which accounts for around 8% of the Foreign Exchange Reserves which is equivalent to 80% of the foreign institutional investment in India. The private sector which provides higher educational courses provides a strong climate for bringing out high professionals in medicine and engineering. Kerala has the highest suicide rate in India. The Banks do not recycle money to productive activities so that production units can manufacture goods getting income to distinct people at different stages making money circulate. Instead of putting money into commodities, the Banks do not circulate the money in Kerala which would have caused manufacturing expansion, capital money circulating brings about employment, realize itself in an expanded value. Money does not circulate in the state but is siphoned off to nearby states for disbursal as credit and creation of capital there. Capital and Labour are mobile. That is what is happening in Kerala. Those sectors which have production facilities like Coir, banks heavily on raw materials from Tamilnadu- coconut fibre has to be transported from Tamilnadu while manufacturing units are in Kerala. Kerala produces 93% of natural rubber, to feed manufacturing units mostly concentrated in North India.
Absence of industrial landscape makes Kerala, a consumer state. Its production base being zero, whether in vegetables, or others, it banks on import from other states. Kerala has plenty of abundant water with 41 rivers flowing west and three flowing east, crisscrossing the state. Yet, in terms of per capita consumption, the state is next to Rajasthan, in the 20th place amongst the States.
Kerala’s economy is imponderable. It has sky rappers like any metropolitan city. The fleet of cars imported with flashy bodies, colours, engines, worth Crores is seen on the roads. Even National Highways and Street Highways which may look like Village Roads do not have the capacity to hold the traffic. Investment in concrete jungles, highest pollution, has made people here susceptible to diseases. In this State Build, Operate and Transfer won’t work. First, people may not surrender their land. Secondly, they won’t pay any toll.
Another reason why there is no economic activity is on account of heavy spending of household on Gold. India’s 10% of gold sold is in Kerala with an annual growth of 20%. Liquor is another industry that thrives. Tourism brings in foreign exchange but the visitor is the medium end traveler whose spending capacity is narrow.
One of Kerala’s best natural Ports, Kochi, seem to await cargo. It deals more with import cargo, rather than export cargo. It lags behind the latest Ports like Tuticorin and Vishakapatanam. It can at best be a transshipment port. Export cargo should come from different places. There is a need to amend the Cabbotage Law.
Kerala has wealthy temples- Lord Padmanabha at Thiruvanathapuram, Sri Guruvayoorappan at Guruvayoor, Shri Ayyappan at Sabarimala. These temples are worth billions.
Kerala has many political leaders, who had held very important portfolios at Delhi. Unlike other state ministers, they seldom use their position to bring giant projects to India. Textiles units and telecommunications, Software units are all over the state of Tamilnadu. Railway connectivity is 100%. Kerala is no where in the picture. Kerala’s bureaucracy is apolitical with a few with definite leanings, but none of them are development oriented. Kerala’s communism has made the state liberal in outlook. That was why Kerala executed the Mullaperiyar agreement in 1970 revising the original agreement signed on 29 Oct 1886. If Tamilnadu was in Kerala’s shoes, would they have signed this agreement?
It was during Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s time, Kerala came into being in 1956. It was PM Shri Nehru, who dismissed the first Communist Government which was elected to power in Kerala in 1960. Pt Nehru seemed to find in Kerala’s intellectual traditions exactly what he needed in order to understand the troubled mind of India. He attributed Adi Sankara’s intellect to be the reason for his Advita thoughts (Glimpses of World History). However, in his Discovery of India, while praising Sankara’s striving to synthesize the diverse currents that were troubling the mind of India of that day, Pdt Nehru had mistakenly stated that Adi Sankara was born in Malabar, while he was actually born in Kaladi, the present day Angamali. Distorted history and impregnable virtues of a Malayli makes Kerala look for greener pastures.
Kerala gets handful, but it deserves more than it gets. But it does not yearn!
Monday, January 23, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Kerala- state has no industrial activity?Can somebody help?
Kerala is a consumer state with manufacturing output and manufacturing industries in the micro, and small sectors doing very little to increase industrial output. The states GDP vis-à-vis manufacturing sector may well be negative. Kerala entire income is derived from the service sector, hospitality sector, tourism, gold and jewellery, thriving liquor industry.
Kerala came up with the Land Reforms Act. Though it was a brave attempt, fragmentation of land limited agriculture, coconut plantations which became homestead, and large scale farming became impossible and the cost: benefit analysis was not favourable to the farmer.
The fisheries industry in India, on which the economy of most of the places were bound, caught up with modernization, and herd, which resulted in the traditional fishing industry non thriving. The mechanized boats, trawlers, saw the ruin of traditional fishermen. And the organized industry of speed boats and trawlers, were owned by people who were from outside the states. With the result, the fisheries economy, did not find change of hands in Kerala through goods and services.
Kerala is the home to many traditional industries like coir, coconut, rubber, etc. Though these industries are export centric, their capacity and production is so feeble that Kerala does not even contribute 3% of the total Indian exports of US $ 275 billion. Kerala’s exports include Spices, marine products, cashew, tea, coffee, rubber, coir, coconuts, etc. The entire manufacturing sector include one or two big tyre companies, rubber chapels, light engineering, software, ship building unit (government owned), etc. Kochi Port which was way back one of the finest natural all-weather Port, is mainly known for import of cargo, with lot of idle space. The Vallarpadam transshipment container will succeed, if the containers meant for various Ports with mother ships are received here. But it is a tall order.
There is a strong pillared private sector education institutes which provide specialized post-graduate education. It is the private sector investment in educational institutions, hospitals that had made Kerala a highly literate state with high medical facility.
If you want vegetables, Kerala depends on Tamilnadu. For chicken, again Tamilnadu. It is perhaps the only state where kerchiefs are not manufactured or stitched. It is a state where 'service industry' is the economy.
God’s Own Country brand has attracted tourists all over the world. It is the private investment again that has been able to attract low end and medium end tourists to the state of Kerala. Kerala is not the destination for high end tourist.
Kerala’s employment bastion is overseas. Malayalam speaking nurses are all over the World. There can hardly be a hospital in India where you do not have Kerala nurses. With a good demand across the world, Kerala nurses are in every hospital everywhere. The skiled workers are all over the place except in Kerala. Today, the vacant places have been filled by people from Bihar, Bengal, Orissa,, and other states with the least opposition from the militant Kerala labour. There are many Restaurants which bring the staff also from where the entrepreneur hails.
There is a strong view by Economists that the money order economy is responsible for Kerala’s economic growth triggered by income growth and not due to equitable development. This is not hundred percent true, though correct to an extent.
The state political leadership lacks a vision, a perspective industrial Policy imbued with export Policy to make the state an attractive preposition for industrialists. We have the most sophisticated modern Cars on Kerala Roads which are full of holes and pits. We have the most primitive drainage and sewage system. We still depend upon the age old system of throwing wastes on the thoroughfares. The civic amenities provided by the Corporations and Municipalities are of a low order. We have craze for gold ornaments. High rise buildings. Fancy cars. The hot drinks are a favourite pastime of our households. Cinema is a passion. Construction activity is a wholesale industrial activity.
We have 44 rivers with water to the brim, 41 flowing west draining water to the Arabian Sea. Three are east flowing. One upon a time, we sold electricity produced. Today we are borrowing electricity. We are in the 20th place in the per capita consumption of Water after Rajasthan.
We have Kathakali. Many of our poets have been awarded the Jnanapeed Award. We have an intellectual population and a fair amount of newspaper circulation, having the highest density in terms of readership in the Country. We have ancient temples, mosques and churches. There is Sabarimala, Guruvayoor, and Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple. Adi Sankara is our own man. The architect of Green Revolution, Dr M S Swaminathan is from Kerala.
But Kerala did not have a Sir Visheshwaryya , or a Naidu, or a CV Raman, who could trigger the resources to industrialization. It is a mind set. It is a ritual.
Kerala came up with the Land Reforms Act. Though it was a brave attempt, fragmentation of land limited agriculture, coconut plantations which became homestead, and large scale farming became impossible and the cost: benefit analysis was not favourable to the farmer.
The fisheries industry in India, on which the economy of most of the places were bound, caught up with modernization, and herd, which resulted in the traditional fishing industry non thriving. The mechanized boats, trawlers, saw the ruin of traditional fishermen. And the organized industry of speed boats and trawlers, were owned by people who were from outside the states. With the result, the fisheries economy, did not find change of hands in Kerala through goods and services.
Kerala is the home to many traditional industries like coir, coconut, rubber, etc. Though these industries are export centric, their capacity and production is so feeble that Kerala does not even contribute 3% of the total Indian exports of US $ 275 billion. Kerala’s exports include Spices, marine products, cashew, tea, coffee, rubber, coir, coconuts, etc. The entire manufacturing sector include one or two big tyre companies, rubber chapels, light engineering, software, ship building unit (government owned), etc. Kochi Port which was way back one of the finest natural all-weather Port, is mainly known for import of cargo, with lot of idle space. The Vallarpadam transshipment container will succeed, if the containers meant for various Ports with mother ships are received here. But it is a tall order.
There is a strong pillared private sector education institutes which provide specialized post-graduate education. It is the private sector investment in educational institutions, hospitals that had made Kerala a highly literate state with high medical facility.
If you want vegetables, Kerala depends on Tamilnadu. For chicken, again Tamilnadu. It is perhaps the only state where kerchiefs are not manufactured or stitched. It is a state where 'service industry' is the economy.
God’s Own Country brand has attracted tourists all over the world. It is the private investment again that has been able to attract low end and medium end tourists to the state of Kerala. Kerala is not the destination for high end tourist.
Kerala’s employment bastion is overseas. Malayalam speaking nurses are all over the World. There can hardly be a hospital in India where you do not have Kerala nurses. With a good demand across the world, Kerala nurses are in every hospital everywhere. The skiled workers are all over the place except in Kerala. Today, the vacant places have been filled by people from Bihar, Bengal, Orissa,, and other states with the least opposition from the militant Kerala labour. There are many Restaurants which bring the staff also from where the entrepreneur hails.
There is a strong view by Economists that the money order economy is responsible for Kerala’s economic growth triggered by income growth and not due to equitable development. This is not hundred percent true, though correct to an extent.
The state political leadership lacks a vision, a perspective industrial Policy imbued with export Policy to make the state an attractive preposition for industrialists. We have the most sophisticated modern Cars on Kerala Roads which are full of holes and pits. We have the most primitive drainage and sewage system. We still depend upon the age old system of throwing wastes on the thoroughfares. The civic amenities provided by the Corporations and Municipalities are of a low order. We have craze for gold ornaments. High rise buildings. Fancy cars. The hot drinks are a favourite pastime of our households. Cinema is a passion. Construction activity is a wholesale industrial activity.
We have 44 rivers with water to the brim, 41 flowing west draining water to the Arabian Sea. Three are east flowing. One upon a time, we sold electricity produced. Today we are borrowing electricity. We are in the 20th place in the per capita consumption of Water after Rajasthan.
We have Kathakali. Many of our poets have been awarded the Jnanapeed Award. We have an intellectual population and a fair amount of newspaper circulation, having the highest density in terms of readership in the Country. We have ancient temples, mosques and churches. There is Sabarimala, Guruvayoor, and Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple. Adi Sankara is our own man. The architect of Green Revolution, Dr M S Swaminathan is from Kerala.
But Kerala did not have a Sir Visheshwaryya , or a Naidu, or a CV Raman, who could trigger the resources to industrialization. It is a mind set. It is a ritual.
India: Greed,Corruption,enacting Laws
Anna Hazare was not the only man in India who thought that enough is enough about corruption, corrupt political class, greed, and an army of political parties and regional parties, who have been in charge of country’s wealth, with nothing to show that there was actually a drop in the Below poverty line, and they had access to primary education, and employment in the Public education, affair and decent living, even after 65 years of people of India have given to themselves this Great constitution signed by the great, patriotic founding fathers.
Anna Hazare’s resolve to elect honest people whose first mandate would be to revolutionize the Parliamentary system by enacting laws that strip them of their immune privileges, inordinate power to pander to bankers and their ability to hide behind their offices as if they are above every other Indian?
How about we hold them accountable for all their actions and make everything they do transparent?
How about we the people get to vote on whether they have engaged in criminal behavior while in our employ? And, we the people get to determine their punishment by voting on the outcome of public trials of public officials!
And, while we're at it, how about we control the big banks once and for all so they don't caugh off money illegally to the big Corporates without equivalent guarantee and the regulators who are supposed to be minding the public's interest but in practice supporting the political class. Many of their accounts fall in the domain of Non Performing Assets and in order to make it performing assets, the Loans are re-scheduled.
What's at stake is whether gross criminal activity and reckless disregard for the public will continue to be whitewashed by regulators like the SEBI, TRAI, Insurance Ombudsmen and other quasi judicial bodies which are set up to be watch dogs but these bodies try to circumvent the crime by filing half-baked civil fraud charges with weak arguments so that the culprits go often scot free. We have allowed the legislators who are having the power to pass stringent Laws to make meek laws so as to protect the dishonest who have means to prolong the criminal cases filed in the Court of Law through well paid Advocates who preach puberty in public life and argue for these corrupt businessman, politician, bureaucrat and save him from any punishment. Honesty and transparency will be remembered on Oct 2nd of every year when the netas gather at Rajghat. There is a section of Indians, who are greedy, who uproot every law, trample on every institution, in their pursuit to become richer! Courts after Courts will acquit them, because the prosecution case is decidedly made weak, records will be mutilated, witnesses will be intimidated, and the guilty parties will neither admit nor deny wrongdoing. In the face of weak evidence, distortion, the case will fall. They will be at their best after getting exonerated by the Court of Law. And the government, instead of making a post mortem of what went wrong, will find fault with the judiciary! While all these will go on, our respectable fourth estate through continuous breaking news broadcast will confuse the issue by bringing experts who will opine everything under the sun except the case in question.
It's our God-given right, and we better exercise it before our ability to save ourselves from what we have become destroys the magnificent experiment our Founding Fathers and our heroic patriotic national leaders have fought for.
We are lying to ourselves if we do not believe that we are all part of this problem. It's not that most of us aren't honest. It's that we venerate money and wealth too much.
Rather than being disgusted by dishonest manipulators, liars and cheats, we excuse the less-than-obvious perpetrators as if their example of cutting corners to get ahead, as far ahead as possible, might clear a path for some of our own pursuits.
What have we become? Are we a nation of people with liberty and justice for all, or just a bunch of money grabbers stepping on each other's liberties to pursue self-centered happiness by becoming filthy rich?
Nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires. Most of them have gotten much richer in office over the past five/ten years while the country has become much poorer. They do not have to prove their worth when salaries and allowances are increased, they get service entitlement, constituency allowance, medical allowance, telephone allowance, free motor car, gadgets, house, telephone, etc etc. They are expected to travel on “fact finding” trips not only to different destinations in India but also overseas.
We have been making Laws and breaking Laws by inserting inert dozen loopholes into whatever seemingly sensible laws exist presently. Politicians need money to fight the elections and their power comes from the office they hold. It is at this busy intersection that the Politicians collide with the Corporate by taking money to bequeath opportunities when they get into power later. There are many examples of rags from riches story amongst the political and business class.
We must ask ourselves whether we want an honest government or a government which obliges the Corporates through deliberate wrong acts. Whether it is noble to pretend that we are an honest country or to put our arms around the nexus of money and power that has corrupted our integrity, our morals, and our future, and by opposing them, crush them, is what all Indians should be actively debating.
We need to usher in a Government who are faithful to the ideologies of the Constitution created by our founding fathers, and sincere to the people who voted them to power. This change should happen in the nearest two election cycles, if we want to usher “Ram Rajya”
Anna Hazare’s resolve to elect honest people whose first mandate would be to revolutionize the Parliamentary system by enacting laws that strip them of their immune privileges, inordinate power to pander to bankers and their ability to hide behind their offices as if they are above every other Indian?
How about we hold them accountable for all their actions and make everything they do transparent?
How about we the people get to vote on whether they have engaged in criminal behavior while in our employ? And, we the people get to determine their punishment by voting on the outcome of public trials of public officials!
And, while we're at it, how about we control the big banks once and for all so they don't caugh off money illegally to the big Corporates without equivalent guarantee and the regulators who are supposed to be minding the public's interest but in practice supporting the political class. Many of their accounts fall in the domain of Non Performing Assets and in order to make it performing assets, the Loans are re-scheduled.
What's at stake is whether gross criminal activity and reckless disregard for the public will continue to be whitewashed by regulators like the SEBI, TRAI, Insurance Ombudsmen and other quasi judicial bodies which are set up to be watch dogs but these bodies try to circumvent the crime by filing half-baked civil fraud charges with weak arguments so that the culprits go often scot free. We have allowed the legislators who are having the power to pass stringent Laws to make meek laws so as to protect the dishonest who have means to prolong the criminal cases filed in the Court of Law through well paid Advocates who preach puberty in public life and argue for these corrupt businessman, politician, bureaucrat and save him from any punishment. Honesty and transparency will be remembered on Oct 2nd of every year when the netas gather at Rajghat. There is a section of Indians, who are greedy, who uproot every law, trample on every institution, in their pursuit to become richer! Courts after Courts will acquit them, because the prosecution case is decidedly made weak, records will be mutilated, witnesses will be intimidated, and the guilty parties will neither admit nor deny wrongdoing. In the face of weak evidence, distortion, the case will fall. They will be at their best after getting exonerated by the Court of Law. And the government, instead of making a post mortem of what went wrong, will find fault with the judiciary! While all these will go on, our respectable fourth estate through continuous breaking news broadcast will confuse the issue by bringing experts who will opine everything under the sun except the case in question.
It's our God-given right, and we better exercise it before our ability to save ourselves from what we have become destroys the magnificent experiment our Founding Fathers and our heroic patriotic national leaders have fought for.
We are lying to ourselves if we do not believe that we are all part of this problem. It's not that most of us aren't honest. It's that we venerate money and wealth too much.
Rather than being disgusted by dishonest manipulators, liars and cheats, we excuse the less-than-obvious perpetrators as if their example of cutting corners to get ahead, as far ahead as possible, might clear a path for some of our own pursuits.
What have we become? Are we a nation of people with liberty and justice for all, or just a bunch of money grabbers stepping on each other's liberties to pursue self-centered happiness by becoming filthy rich?
Nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires. Most of them have gotten much richer in office over the past five/ten years while the country has become much poorer. They do not have to prove their worth when salaries and allowances are increased, they get service entitlement, constituency allowance, medical allowance, telephone allowance, free motor car, gadgets, house, telephone, etc etc. They are expected to travel on “fact finding” trips not only to different destinations in India but also overseas.
We have been making Laws and breaking Laws by inserting inert dozen loopholes into whatever seemingly sensible laws exist presently. Politicians need money to fight the elections and their power comes from the office they hold. It is at this busy intersection that the Politicians collide with the Corporate by taking money to bequeath opportunities when they get into power later. There are many examples of rags from riches story amongst the political and business class.
We must ask ourselves whether we want an honest government or a government which obliges the Corporates through deliberate wrong acts. Whether it is noble to pretend that we are an honest country or to put our arms around the nexus of money and power that has corrupted our integrity, our morals, and our future, and by opposing them, crush them, is what all Indians should be actively debating.
We need to usher in a Government who are faithful to the ideologies of the Constitution created by our founding fathers, and sincere to the people who voted them to power. This change should happen in the nearest two election cycles, if we want to usher “Ram Rajya”
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