Rethinking Development: Kerala's Development Experience (Set of 2 Volumes)

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The papers presented in the two volumes chosen out of 150 papers presented in 12 working sessions and 5 symposia addressed several issues of Kerala sustainability besides raising questions of significance relating to development and policy. While Vol.I is a broad critique of the 'Kerala Model' of development, Vol. II seeks to reappraise the issues relating to the sustainability of the model from specific sectoral perspectives, prefaced by an excellent discussion on the implications of the fertility decline and demographic transition of the State. The two volumes containing contributions by eminent scholars undoubtedly will make a rich addition to the theory and practice of development which has been undergoing great rethinking in recent times.

Prof. M.A. Oommen, currently senior fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi is an economist of repute with a rich collection of professional papers and twenty books to his credit. A postdoctoral scholar of the Rockefeller Foundation and a Visiting Fellow at the Yale University, he was also a Senior Fulbrighter. He has taught in the Universities of Kerala, Calicut and Botswana over a span of more than three decades, and has occupied several important positions, besides serving several important commissions and committees in India and abroad. His books include Kerala Economy, Economics of Cinema, Issues in the Teaching of Economics in Indian Universities and Panchayats and their Finance.

KERALA State was formed on 1 November 1956 as part of the States' Reorganisation exercise integrating Malabar from Tamil Nadu with the princely States of Cochin and Travancore. That Kerala has made significant progress in several areas of human attainments is now widely known and well documented. The United Nations and most of its affiliates-the UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP as well as the World Bank and ILO-have acclaimed the achievements of Kerala and some even held it out as a 'model' for the less developed world to emulate. Kerala's social development was achieved through a long process of social intermediation and public action whose roots go back to pre-Independence times.

Along with high social development, Kerala is beset with several problems like a very high rate of educated unemployment, lack of excellence in education, low level of investment and productivity in productive sectors and social anomic resulting in high suicide rates and the like. Therefore, the oft- repeated ques- tions have been: Is Kerala's development experience a sustainable one? How far is it replicable? And several others. The cuphoria over the exceptionally unique achievements on the social development front was increasingly giving way to a feeling of pessimism and even cynicism over the viability of this pattern of development. Given the dismal performance by the productive sectors of the economy and the financial crisis facing the State, scholars have been deeply concerned about the sustainability of Kerala's pattern of development experience. To what extent this was replicable has been, therefore, a moot question.

The International Congress on Kerala Studies organized by the A. K. Gopalan Centre for Research and Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, on 27-29 August 1994, convened by the veteran Marxist thinker and leader E.M.S. Namboodiripad in his capacity as Director, A.K.G. Centre was a loud expression of the growing concern about the threats Kerala society faced. This Congress evoked enormous enthusiasm among scholars working on Kerala; the large number of papers presented on various facets of Kerala's development was an eye-opener. During and after the Congress it was felt that what has been happening in Kerala in the field of Human Development must reach out to a wider audience.

The following year Professor M.A. Oommen and I had the opportunity to participate in the Social Summit held in Copenhagen both in the NGO Convention prior to the Summit and the Summit itself. In the Summit as well as in the various Prepcom meetings where we participated, the major thrust of discussion was poverty eradication and human development. Kerala's experience came up in several group meetings and presentations and some of our comparative highlights on Kerala were eagerly sought after. While in Copenhagen Professor Oommen and I decided that an Interna- tional Conference on Kerala's Development Experience should be organized in New Delhi, the national capital with the widest partici- pation possible, including countries like Costa Rica and Sri Lanka. The idea that germinated in the Social Summit 1995 became a reality in 1996 with the International Conference for four days from 8 to 11 December.

The Conference drew upon the wealth of ideas and papers presented in the 1994 Thiruvananthapuram Congress, research done at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, and by a vast number of other social science research centres, University departments as well as individual scholars all over the world.

The International Conference on Kerala's Development Experience (ICKDE for short) primarily sought to reappraise the issue of the sustainability of the Kerala Model and to draw lessons for the nation and the wider humanity enveloped by global capitalism.

No single region on the globe has attracted so much scholarly attention, as did Kerala in recent times. Even international institutions have hailed the experience of this region. By the 1970s, Kerala had already become "an object of fascination for scholars and policy makers concerned with development", the world over (R. Jeffrey (1992): p. xi). No wonder, the literature on Kerala's development has been as profound as it is prolific. The enquiry and debate on Kerala still continue unabated. The papers in the two volumes, chosen out of over 150 presented in the International Conference on Kerala's Development Experience (ICKDE) organised by the Institute of Social Sciences on December 8 to 11, 1996 form part of this ongoing debate.

Walled off by the Western Ghats and watered by the Arabian sea, the small strip of land called Keralam (this endearing Malayalam term has been Anglicised into Kerala), with only 1.2 per cent of the geographical size of India, but housing a population as large as Canada and almost double of Sri Lanka and ten times that of Costa Rica, has attracted the attention of the world for its achievement in human development comparable to that of the affluent countries. That this has been achieved without conquest or colonialism, foreign aid, or high economic growth, but through a unique confluence of historical factors and forces has surprised both theoreticians as well as policy makers. Kerala's development experience has been widely referred to as the Kerala Model' (a large part of vol. I is devoted to its critique), which is but a post facto generalisation of an experience historically evolved but promoted by public action' (which inter alia includes socio-religious reform movements, a wide and active press, adversarial politics etc.) and sustained by social demands. This 'model' obviously is in sharp contrast to the conventional ex ante economic models built on such variables as income, savings, investment, capital-output ratio and the like. Neither an ideal type nor a predictive construct, the Kerala Model is at best only "a specific set of social, political, cultural and economic experiences in a specific trajectory of historical developments" (Michael Tharaken (1997): p. 8). Still dynamic and live, the 'model' continues to be a paradigm meaningful for democracy and people's well being.

The myth that there is no alternative for the tadpoles' of the world (underdeveloped/developing countries) except to grow like the 'frogs' (the developed capitalist countries) has been successfully promoted as exemplified in the terms developing, developed and the like, widely used in development discourse today. The ideological hegemony and the move towards homogenisation of the cultures of the world implicit in such a 'tadpole philosophy' of development remains almost unquestioned. Probably, a David is needed to encounter the Goliath. It is in this setting that Kerala's development experience needs renewed examination. A development model in whatever way you would like to characterise it has relevance only to the extent it contributes to improve human wellbeing in a sustainable way. Otherwise, it will be a 'thing of beauty', with joy for none.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages