Sustainability in Kerala, India
Sustainability in Kerala, India
Sustainability in Kerala, India
941
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
(Indian average, 91) and almost full literacy. 5 While there are 1040 females per
thousand males in Kerala, there are only 928 women per thousand males at the
national level.6 While growth-based and planned development programmes did
not make a dent in reducing poverty, population growth, inequalities in income
and resource distribution, and ecological destruction in the Third W orld, Kerala
has stood out in demonstrating through democratic means that radical improvements in the quality of life of ordinary citizens are possible without high
economic growth and without consuming large quantities of energy and other
natural resources.
Although the intellectual roots of the Kerala model of development may be
traced to modernisation theory, its programmatic content and ideological basis,
and the human and physical resources to carry out the project, were indigenously
developed and mobilised. The project was carried out under great constraints;
furthermore, the state had to manoeuvre within the limited autonomy guaranteed
by the Indian federal structure for mobilising economic and political resources.
In fact, the development work of the state was severely hampered by hostile
Congress-led federal governments until recently. The roadblocks of development
included non-disbursement of eligible central funds for development projects,
and erection of bureaucratic barriers to implementing programmes like land
reforms and food distribution to the needy through fair price shops. 7 It is being
argued that it is very much a new model of development that came about as a
result of the unique historical experience and agency of the Third World. It
bodes well for other states in India and many Third World nations to pay
attention to the lessons from Kerala in order to follow a new development path
that was charted within the South, especially given the lack of a credible
alternative. As Samir Amin, re ecting on Kerala s achievements comments: ` it
is incorrect to think that nothing can be done until revolution, and that until then
the worst is the best . On the contrary, there is room for progressive reforms
T ABLE 1
Infant mortality rate (per 1000)
Year
Kerala
India
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
128
94
61
34
a
16.5
140
129
114
110
91
T ABLE 2
Birth rate (per 1000)
Year
Kerala
India
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
44
39
32
26
18
40
41
37
34
30
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
T ABLE 3
Life expectancy at birth: (in years)
Year
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
Female
Kerala
Male
Female
India
M ale
45
50
61
68
74
43
48
60
64
71
32
41
45
50
60
33
42
46
51
59
T ABLE 4
Literacy rate (%)
Year
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
Female
Kerala
Male
Female
India
M ale
32
46
63
76
87
50
65
77
88
95
8
13
19
30
39
25
34
40
56
64
T ABLE 5
Sex ratio in population: (females/1000 males)
Year
Kerala
India
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
1028
1022
1016
1034
1040
946
941
930
935
928
implementing some of the most comprehensive land reform and other redistributive programmes outside the communist world. The elimination of absentee
landlords and the return of land to the tiller was the key feature of the land
reform programme. The most notable part of the land reform and redistributive
programme was the right given to the tenants of the households to retain full
ownership of their dwellings plus full title to one-tenth of an acre of the
house-compound land.20 Some surplus land, mostly rice elds, appropriated from
large land-holders was distributed to the peasants as well. The land reforms were
enacted despite ferocious opposition from reactionary landowners and religious
groups, and a hostile Congress-led central government.21 The state government
spent large amounts of the state budget for primary and secondary education,
health care, immunisation, agricultural credits and housing targeted at poor
citizens of the state. One of the most widely cited reasons for the improvements
in the quality of life of poor Keralans is attributed to the establishment of
945
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
T ABLE 6
Provision of selected basic services among all Indian states, by the late 1970s
Feature
W ithin two kilometres
All-weather roads
Bus stops
Post of ces
Primary schools
Secondary schools
Fair-price shops
Health dispensaries
Health centres
W ithin ve kilometres
Higher education
facilities
Hospitals
Fertiliser depots
Agricultural pump
repair shops
Veterinary dispensaries
Credit cooperative banks
Commercial banks
Seed stores
Railway stations
In the village
Drinking water
Electricity
Kerala s rank
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
98
98
100
100
99
99
91
47
46
40
53
90
44
35
25
12
97
21
1
1
1
78
93
65
35
44
19
1
1
1
2
8
82
96
96
63
23
45
61
40
40
18
5
3
96
97
93
33
Source: R W Franke & B H Chasin, Kerala: Radical Reform as Development in an Indian State,
p 13.
fair-price or ` ration shops through which essential staples were made available
at subsidised rates. School lunch and feeding programmes have also helped to
improve the nutritional standards of young children. 22 As part of the land reform
programmes, the state government introduced a comprehensive Agricultural
Workers Reform Act in the 1970s that provided permanency for labourers
attached to the farms, a provident fund and old age pensions, greatly reduced
hours of work (between six and eight hours per day), scheduled breaks, tea and
lunch, and a minimum wage which is the highest in India. 23 The evolution of a
coalition of tenants, landless labourers and industrial workers into an active
labour movement (which has staked a claim in the governance of the state)
facilitated through democratic institutions has become an enduring feature of the
radicalisation of the working class movement in Kerala.24
Besides actively taking part in electoral politics, large number of Keralans
have shown an interest in social movements and NGO s working in the areas of
environmental protection, culture and education. The well-organised citizens
movement may be a direct indication of the dialectical relationship between
improved literacy (which again is a result of the active participation of social
946
T ABLE 7
and per capita state domestic product
( SDP) for 15 major Indian states for the year 1991
PQLI, HDI
States
PQLI
HDI
SDP (Rupees)
Andra Pradesh
Assam
Bihar
Gujarat
Haryana
Karnataka
Kerala
Madhya Pradesh
Maharashtra
Orissa
Punjab
Rajastan
Tamil Nadu
Uttar Pradesh
West Bengal
All-India
42.70
44.03
18.17
58.38
55.68
39.55
89.11
16.08
53.27
6.70
66.28
28.41
48.09
15.39
48.31
36.14
0.3397
0.2542
0.1334
0.5453
0.5995
0.4772
0.7749
0.1863
0.6430
0.2132
0.7115
0.2294
0.4873
0.1095
0.4176
0.3974
5570
4230
2904
6425
8690
5555
4618
4077
8180
4068
9643
4361
5078
4012
5383
5424
Source: E PW Research Foundation, ` Socialindicators of development II , Economic and Political W eekly, 21 May 1994,
pp 13001308. The sdp values are at current prices for the year
199192.
movements like the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad or KSSP (about which more
later) and other NGO s engaged in literacy promotion, environmental protection
and rural development campaigns among the population), 25 and the deepening of
democratic traditions and values in the civil society of Kerala. Parallel lessons
can be drawn between the development of civic traditions in postwar Northern
Italy that Putnam describes,26 and that of Kerala s. The role of social movements
in Kerala s socioeconomic development needs to be emphasised in the description of the Kerala model. One of the most active social movements which
organises environmental conservation, science and literacy popularisation campaigns is the KSSP, which may be loosely translated into English as Kerala
Scienti c Literacy Society.27 Armed with a campaign theme of ` science for
social revolution , the KSSP urges the government to adopt a ` prudent application of science and technology for development. The measure of success the
KSSP has had in in uencing development policies to follow an environmentally
sound development path is borne out by its ability to stop or modify numerous
ecologically controversial industrial and energy projects. 28
Kerala, a model of sustainable development?
Although the development literature is replete with suggestions as to how
sustainable development ought to be practised, no coherent articulation of the
theory and no easily implementable method of achieving it can be found.
Sustainable development may soon become another rhetorical ourish in the vast
947
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
environment and development issues. 46 According to Franke & Chasin, the best
description that can be ascribed to Kerala s experience is a ` social justice model
of development.47
It is being argued that the Kerala model may be taken as an early prototype
of sustainable development because of the following factors: (1) improvements
in the quality of life indicated by sustained and progressive improvements in the
standard of living evidenced by the reductions in infant mortality and birth rates,
substantial increases in life expectancy at birth and overall improvements in the
status of women; (2) improvements in environmental stability indicated by the
disappearance of irreversible ecological changes and frugal and ef cient use of
energy and natural resources; (3) improvements in relative social and economic
inequality and the importance accorded to social justice as a prerequisite for
development; and (4) decline in political strife orchestrated by the establishment
of democratic institutions, and traditional communal harmony maintained between the three major religious groups. 48
These ndings are based on the changes that have taken place in Kerala during
the past three to four decades that Alexander, Amin, Ramachandran, Heller, Sen,
Jeffrey, Ratclife, Franke & Chasin and numerous other analysts have pointed
out. To support the sustainability thesis from the environmental point of view,
ndings from the author s own eld research in Kerala, and the natural resources
accounting survey conducted by the KSSP and the comprehensive Peoples
Resource Mapping Programme provide empirical support.49 The People s Resource Mapping Programme mobilises villagers and village-level institutions to
develop detailed maps of their resources. These maps and information are
combined with scienti c data to form a geographical information system (GIS ) to
conduct micro-level planning for development. Environmental considerations,
optimal use of local resources and long-term consequences of resource use form
the basic thinking on achieving sustainable development. Electricity in Kerala is
produced exclusively from small-to-medium-scale hydroelectric projects. Largescale deforestation did not take place as a result of these projects.50 The state
government claims that almost all households (about 2.5 million) in Kerala are
electri ed. Energy for cooking comes, mostly, in the form of bioenergy which
is derived from household plots and renewable marginal forests and hills.
Coconut trees provide nearly 30% of cooking energy in the form of renewable
palm fronds, coconut shells, husks, dried stems and shoots of coconut bunches.
Cooking fuels like bottled gas and electricity are also being used by a growing
segment of the population. Although the acreage of rain forests has declined
from pre-independence gures, popular campaigns to preserve the existing
forests seem to be successful. It appears that the energy use and consumption
pattern is stable and sustainable.
It is hoped that further studies will be able to corroborate the above claims.
As Karl Popper eloquently pointed out, theories and hypotheses cannot be
proved as true or false. 51 They can only be corroborated as statements on the
probable state of reality. There is no non-circular way of af rming a metatheoretical claim that the Kerala model of development has paradigmatic features of
sustainable development based on the historical (empirical) observations enumerated here, given the radical contingency of all knowledge claims. The
951
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
historicist turn taken by social theorists like Marx, and most recently, Thomas
Kuhn, among others, has weakened the divide between such dualism as theory
observation, factvalue, normativeempirical and prescriptivedescriptive.
Nevertheless, the normative can be retained by resorting to a practically re exive
theorising; that is, theory should re ect or correspond to practice (praxis). 52 The
normative claim that the developmental trajectory charted by modern Kerala
since the inception of the radical development programmes shows a resemblance
to a possible ` sustainable development model is very much in solidarity with
this re ection.
Conclusion
As argued earlier, criteria for sustainability should include not only environmental stability and improvement, but social, political and economic justice, improvement in the quality of life of vulnerable sections of the population at low
cost, and an improvement in the overall status of women. Though Kerala has a
low throughput, the indicators of social progress have not suffered because of
sustained efforts to limit population growth rate and social inequality, and to
conserve resources frugally and use them on a shared basis. Environmental
analysts like Hazel Henderson and Herman Daly argue that managing with low
throughput itself is an indication of sustainability within a steady-state economic
framework.53 William Alexander argues that Kerala may be a prototype of
sustainable development because of its low throughput and the high rate of
sharing of resources among members of the extended family and community.54
The test of practising sustainable development should be based upon a society s
ability to maintain and further improve upon the quality of life of its citizens by
living within its own resource means. It is thus still debatable whether Kerala has
entered a mature stage of self-sustaining development. It can only be hoped that
the political leadership and the policy makers concerned will continue to
implement policies to take it to the mature stage. We can only share the
optimism of Samir Amin that ` Kerala sachievements are the best way to prepare
for the next stage, if only because they result in strong popular organizations,
and give reasons for hope, and something to guard .55
The objective here is not to romanticise and take out of context the Kerala
model of development. As pointed out earlier, Kerala s development has just
begun, and a lot more has to be done to make it more enduring, and most
importantly, to make it more inclusive of those who were left out of the earlier
development programmes. The fact that industrial and agricultural growth has to
be achieved to improve the material standards of living of all Keralans is
undeniable. But the high indicators of social development and a highly literate
populace are conducive to rapid industrialisation of the state, which is essential
for creating more jobs and material outputs to meet local needs.56 As E M S
Namboodiripad the veteran communist leader and the rst democratically
elected Chief Minister of Kerala whose administration initiated much of the land
reform and other redistributive development programmes mentioned earlier
warns, a country or state cannot prosper without industrialisation, modernisation
of agriculture and the ` development of modern secular and scienti c edu952
cation .57 P K Vasudevan Nair, a communist leader and a former Chief Minister,
correctly points out that the Kerala model needs follow-up, while duly acknowledging the major positive indicators of development in the state, which he,
among others, helped to bring about.58
The case being made here is that the ` Kerala-model is not based on any one
of the existing theories or models of development and modernisation. Costa Rica
(a nation with a fraction of Kerala s population) or Sri Lanka or Cuba might
have some interesting comparative features. However, the East Asian ` tigers are
special cases of export-led development, made special by their political and
economic dependence on the industrialised West for speci c historical reasons.
The sustainability of the ` spectacular growth and development of these nations
is dependent on the economies of the West. Also, the ` development of these
nations and states is occurring at a very high cost, such as deteriorating
environmental conditions and poor civil and democratic rights for workers and
ordinary citizens. 59
Since the Third World is littered with failed development models, the Kerala
model should be studied earnestly for improvements and possible replication.
That Kerala has come closest to the sustainable development ideal in practice
makes it more interesting to study. Thus, a normative claim can be made that a
successful model which emerged from within the Third World might be more
appropriate for other developing societies than models derived from a different
historical and cultural tradition. It is, however, duly acknowledged that histories,
cultures and economic systems should not be viewed through an essentialist lens,
but taken merely as historically contingent and shaped entities. One must
deconstruct any essentialist claims to any model of reality and the Kerala model
is no exception. There is nothing essentially unique about Kerala that makes it
sui generis and thus unsuitable as a model of development for other states or
societies. Valuable lessons can be drawn from this case for applying the ndings
to other states and societies in the Third World in a shared sense of solidarity.
Notes
This is a modi ed and updated version of a paper presented at a seminar, ` The Kerala model of sustainable
development re-assessed , which was jointly organised by the South Asia Program and the Department of
Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University on 8 April 1994 while the author was Fellow in Science,
Technology, and Global Environment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies during 199394.
Thanks are due to Shelly Feldman, Sabu George, Ron Herring and Peter Taylor for their critical comments on
my talk.
1
For a critical genealogy of the concept of sustainable development, see S Lele, ` Sustainable development:
a critical review , W orld Development, Vol 19, No 6, 1991, pp 607621; P Ekins, ` Making development
sustainable , in W Sachs (ed), Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Con ict, London: Zed Books,
1993; and M Redclift, Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions, London: M ethuen, 1987.
2
It may be recalled that the ` Earth Summit or the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development ( U NCE D ) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 gave of cial blessing to the concept of sustainable
development. How the future of the world can be shaped through sustainable development was amply
illustrated in the UN CED report known as Agenda 21. See United Nations, Agenda 21: Programme of Action
for Sustainable Development, New York: United Nations, 1993.
3
For a normative critique of sustainable development, see G Parayil, ` Environment and development: a
normative appraisal of sustainable development , Philosophy and Social Action, Vol 22, No 2, 1996,
pp 2336; and, Redclift, Sustainable Development.
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GOVINDAN PARAYIL
4
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
The fertility rate for Kerala in 1991, according to A K Sen, ` Population: delusion and reality , New York
Review of Books, Vol 16, No 15, 22 September 1994, pp 6271, was 1.8. The birth rate had fallen from a
gure of 44 per thousand in the 1950s to 18 by 1991. A fertility rate of 1.8 and a demographic replacement
net reproduction rate ( NRR ) of 1 (reached in 1985, see Kannan et al, note 10) may indicate a negative
population growth trend.
V K Ramachandran, ` A note on Kerala s development achievements , M onthly Review, Vol 47, No 1, 1995,
pp 1924; and Sen, ` Population .
Ramachandran, ` A note on Kerala s development achievements .
T V Sathyamurthy, India Since Independence: Studies in the Development of the Power of the State:
Centre State Relations, the Case of Kerala, New Delhi: Ajantha Press, 1985; I S Gulati, ` Central funding
agencies neglecting Kerala , The Hindu, 9 October 1995, p 5; R W Franke & B H Chasin, Kerala: Radical
Reform as Development in an Indian State, Oakland, CA: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1994.
Samir Amin, ` Four comments on Kerala , M onthly Review, Vol 42, No 8, 1991, p 28.
B A Prakash, ` Demographic trends in Kerala , in Prakash (ed), Kerala s Economy: Performance, Problems,
Prospects, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994, pp 4360.
K P Kannan, K R Thankappan, V R Kutty & K P Aravindan, Health and Development of Rural Kerala,
Trivandrum, Kerala: Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, 1991.
Ibid.
Sen, ` Population ; Sen, ` Indian state cuts population without coercion , New York Times, 4 January 1994;
and Prakash, ` Demographic trends in Kerala .
A K Sen, ` Freedoms and needs: an argument for the primacy of political rights , The New Republic, 10
January 1994, pp 3138; and Sen ` Economic development and social change: India and China in
comparative perspectives , Development Economics Research Programme Discussion Paper Series ( D E P
No 67), London: London School of Economics, December 1995.
Kannan et al Health and Development of Rural Kerala.
A K Sen, ` The economics of life and death , Scienti c American, M ay 1993, pp 4047.
For an excellent overview and analysis of the problems of measurement of development, see J Felipe & M
Resende, ` A multivariate approach to the measurement of development: Asia and Latin America , Journal
of Developing Areas, No 30, 1996, pp 183210.
The Physical Quality of Life Index or P QL I was developed by the Overseas Development Council (see D M
Morris, M easuring the Condition of the W orld s Poor: The Physical Quality of Index, New York: Pergamon
Press, 1979) in order to show the hollowness of economic indicators as measures of (social) development.
PQLI is a composite measure of three social indicators of development infant mortality, life expectancy and
literacy. Each component of the composite is converted into a scale of 0100, and a linear combination is
developed by giving equal weights to the three indicators, with the lowest performing country assigned the
zero value and the highest performing country the hundred in each category. The Human Development
Index or H DI is a deprivation measure which was constructed by the United Nations Development
Programme, Human Development Report 1990, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Unlike PQ LI, H D I
includes per capita GD P as well. The HD I composite is constructed with three indicators life expectancy at
birth (longevity), adult literacy (knowledge) and the log of G D P per capita (standard of living) adjusted for
purchasing power parity. First, a deprivation index is indicated on a scale of one to zero, with a minimum
value (the maximum deprivation set equal to one) and a desirable value (no deprivation set equal to zero)
speci ed for each of the three components. HD I is arrived at by subtracting this deprivation composite from
1. In 1991 the ` knowledge indicator was amended to include mean years of schooling (one-third weight)
along with adult literacy (two-thirds weight).
R W Franke, Life Is a Little Better: Redistribution as a Development Strategy in Nadur Village, Kerala,
Boulder, CO: W estview Press, 1993, p 2.
E PW Research Foundation, ` Social indicators of development II , Economic and Political W eekly, 21 May
1994, pp 13001308; and United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1994, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
House-compound land is of great economic value in Kerala, as Franke & Chasin, Kerala point out, because
income-generating trees and food crops, such as coconuts, bananas, vegetables, cashews, mangoes, cassava
and areca nut are grown on these lands.
See Sathyamurthy, India since Independence; and Franke & Chasin, Kerala. For a historical account of the
land reform struggles in Kerala, see E M S Namboodiripad, Kerala, Society and Politics: an Historical
Survey, New Delhi: National Book Centre, 1984; K K N Kurup, M odern Kerala: Studies in Social and
Agrarian Relations, New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1988; Kurup, Agrarian Struggles in Kerala, Trivandrum, Kerala: CBH Publications, 1989; T J Nossiter, M arxist State Governments in India, London: Pinter
Publishers, 1988; and R J Herring, Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South
Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.
R W Franke & B H Chasin, ` Development without growth: the Kerala experience , Technology Review,
No 93, 1990, pp 4251.
954
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
R J Herring, ` Dilemmas of agrarian communism: peasant differentiation, sectoral and village politics , Third
World Quarterly, Vol 11, 1989, pp 89115.
P Heller, ` From class struggle to class compromise: redistribution and growth in a South Indian state ,
Journal of Development Studies, Vol 31, No 5, 1995, pp 645672.
See G Parayil & W Shrum, ` Non-governmental research organizations in Kerala , Science, Technology, and
Development, Vol 14, 1996, for an empirical study of the contribution of Kerala N G O s in the areas of
agriculture and environment.
See, R D Putnam, Making Democracy W ork: Civic Traditions in M odern Italy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1993.
G Parayil, ` Social movements, technology and development: a query and an instructive case from the Third
World , Dialectical Anthropology, 17, 1992, pp 339352; and M Zachariah & R Sooryamoorthy, Science for
Social Revolution? Achievements and Dilemmas of a Development M ovement The Kerala Sastra Sahitya
Parishad, London: Zed Books, 1994.
G Parayil, ` Science for social revolution : science and culture in Kerala , Impact of Science on Society,
Vol 39, No 155, 1989, pp 233240; and Parayil, ` Social movements, technology and development .
World Commission on Environment and Development ( W CE D ), Our Common Future, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987, p 43.
For a critical view of the development of sustainable development discourse as a means to impose a global,
that is a W estern, solution to environmental problems in the Third World, see W Sachs (ed), Global
Ecology: A New Arena of Political Con ict, London: Zed Books, 1993.
WCED , Our Common Future, p 1.
Herman Daly, ` Sustainable growth: an impossibility theorem , Development, Nos 3/4, 1990 pp 4547,
presents convincing arguments against economic growth as the solution to attaining sustainable development.
See, ` What the Bank doesn t tell you , The Ecologist, Vol 24, No 1, 1994, p 2; S B Hecht, ` Logics of
livestock and deforestation: the case of Amazonia , in T E Downing et al, (eds), Development or
Destruction: The Conversion of Tropical Forest to Pasture in Latin America, Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1992; G M onbiot, Amazon W atershed: The New Environmental Investigation, London: Abacus, 1992; G
Parayil & F Tong, ` Pasture-led and logging-led deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: the dynamics of
socio-environmental change , working paper, Hong Kong, 1995; and R Pineda-Ofrenco, ` Debt and
environment: the Philippine experience , in M C Howard (ed), Asia s Environmental Crisis, Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1993, pp 221233.
For a normative critique of development economics within the neoclassical paradigm, see M Edwards, ` The
irrelevance of development studies , Third W orld Quarterly, Vol 11, No 1, 1989, pp 116135; D Seers, ` The
birth, life and death of development economics , Development and Change, Vol 10, No 4, 1979, pp 707
719; and G Parayil, Development studies, a progressive research tradition, Journal of Science Studies, Vol 3,
No 2, 1990, pp 4756.
Blaming the victims for the environmental problems in the Third W orld has become an accepted wisdom
in the environment and development eld. It has become a respectable position for environmental analysts
in the West and some among the Third World elites to blame the poor people in the Third World for causing
deforestation, deserti cation other environmental problems. See G Hardin, Living W ithin Limits: Ecology,
Economics, and Population Taboos, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; Hardin ` The tragedy of the
commons , Science, No 162, 1968, pp 12431248; P R Ehrlich & A N Ehrlich, The Population Explosion,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990; and G K M effe & A N Ehrlich, ` Human population control: the
missing agenda , Conservation Biology, 7, 1993, pp 13.
For an excellent exposition of these issues, see Redclift, Sustainable Development; and G Parayil,
` Environment and development .
Daly, ` Sustainable growth , p 45.
In fact, Heller, in ` From class struggle to class compromise , shows that labour mobilisation in the context
of Kerala s electoral politics has facilitated the redistributive programmes of the state by being able to
mediate the class con icts, because the labour movement s voice was taken seriously by the elected
governments. The scal problems the state government faces and the potential consequences they may have
for Kerala was analysed by K K George, Limits to Kerala Model of Development: An Analysis of Fiscal
Crisis and its Implications, Trivandrum, Kerala: Centre for Development Studies, 1993. Rachel Kumar,
` Development and women s work in Kerala: interactions and paradoxes , Economic and Political W eekly,
No 241, 1724 December 1994, pp 32493254, analyses both the gains and losses to women s participation
in employment in Kerala. She argues that women s participation in the employment sector has gone down
lately. W hether a causal relationship can be found between the developmental trajectory and this paradox
would be an important nding.
Heller, ` From class struggle to class compromise . Former Kerala Chief Minister, A K Anthony, ` Kerala
model neglected productive aspect , The Hindu, 25 September 1995, p 5, also echoes the sentiment that
industrialists still harbour the notion of labour militancy in Kerala without any basis, and asserts that Kerala
is one of the most (industrially) peaceful states in India.
955
GOVINDAN PARAYIL
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
One of the major items in the election manifesto of the Left Front coalition which was returned to power
in the 1996 general election was to mobilise capital within Kerala to invest in electric power projects. For
more on Kerala s developmental bottlenecks, see Franke & Chasin, Kerala and Gulati, ` Central funding
agencies neglecting Kerala .
R W Franke & B H Chasin, ` Female-supported households: a continuing agenda for the Kerala model? ,
paper presented at the ` Seminar on W omen in Kerala: Past and Present , Government College for Women,
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 1115 February 1995, p 1. Franke & Chasin estimate the outlier to be about
15% of the total population. Signi cant though this number is, they emphasise that 85% bene ciaries is a
` remarkable achievement .
Ramachandran, ` A note on Kerala s development achievements ; Heller, ` From class struggle to class
compromise ; Franke & Chasin, Kerala; and T J Nossiter, Communism in Kerala: A study in Political
Adaptation, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.
A K Sen, Inequality Reexamined, Cambridge, M A: Harvard University Press, 1992; and Sen, ` The
economics of life and death .
Sen, ` Population ; Sen, ` Freedoms and needs ; R Jeffrey, Politics, W omen and Well-Being: How Kerala
Became a M odel, London: MacMillan, 1992.
J Ratcliffe, ` Social justice and the demographic transition: lessons from India s Kerala , International
Journal of Health Services, Vol 8, 1978, pp 123144; W Alexander, ` Prototype for sustainable development:
Kerala , paper presented at the Conference on Varieties of Sustainability, Agriculture and Human Values
Society, Paci c Grove, CA, 912 May 1991.
Zachariah & Sooryamoorthy, Science for Social Revolution?
R W Franke & B H Chasin, ` Kerala state: a social justice model , M ultinational M onitor, Vol 16, Nos 78,
1995, pp 2528.
Critics and independent analysts argue that, as a result of the recent changes in Indian polity and economy,
the drive to accelerate economic liberalisation and reduce welfare spending is cutting into Kerala s gains.
Being only a sub-national entity, Kerala is not immune to national policy strictures and political
realignments. However, my basic arguments stand. These new changes are not a result of the earlier policies
that created the near sustainable development indicators that Kerala achieved. If the above-mentioned
problems were caused because of the radical reform policies, that would be a different issue altogether.
The author conducted eld research in Kerala in 1988, 1992 and 1994. For details on Kerala s environmental, natural and social resource base, see Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, Keralthinde Ettam Paddhathi
{Kerala s Eighth Five Year Plan}, Trivandrum, Kerala: Social Scientist Press, 1988; Centre for Earth Science
Studies ( C E SS), Project on Panchayat Level Resource Mapping for Decentralised Planning with People s
Participation, First Annual Report, Thiruvananthapuram: CE S S, 1992. CES S is a state-government funded
research institution. As part of an agriculture and environment eld research project, CE S S scientists were
interviewed by the author in June 1994. According to the CE SS scientists, creating ` land literacy among the
people of Kerala is one of their major resource mapping objectives.
It may be taken as the power of the grassroots social movement N GO s like the K S S P that a major hydroelectric
project planned by the government was blocked and later abandoned because of fear that the project might
destroy a rainforest called the ` Silent Valley . For more on this episode, see Parayil, ` Science for social
revolution ; and D D Monte, Temples or Tombs? Industry versus Environment: Three Controversies, New
Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1985.
As Karl Popper, The Logic of Scienti c Discovery, London: Routledge, 1992, pointed out, theories or
hypotheses cannot be proved true or false. All we can do is to corroborate them through better evidence.
Thus, my claim is not that the hypothesis of the ` Kerala model of development is the only true version of
truth or reality gleaned through a method of induction or intuition, however self-evident it may appear to
be. The objective, simply put, is to provide evidence to support a hypothesis and to withstand refutation.
For an expanded theoretical exposition of the concept of practical re exivity, see R Gunn, ` M arxism and
philosophy: a critique of critical realism , Capital & Class, No 37, 1988, pp 87116. For an example of
using the concept of practical re exivity in social theory, see G Parayil, ` Practical re exivity as a heuristic
for theorizing technological change , Technology in Society, Vol 19, 1997 (forthcoming).
See H Henderson, ` From economism to systems theory and new-indicators of development , Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, No 37, 1990, pp 213233; H E Daly, Steady-State Economics: Second
Edition with New Essays, W ashington, DC: Island press, 1991; and Daly ` Sustainable growth .
Alexander, ` Prototype for sustainable development .
S Amin, ` Four comments on Kerala , p 29.
Kerala s per capita state domestic product ( S DP ) has been increasing since 1987, industrial growth has
improved and agriculture has seen an annual growth of 7.5% recently. See, ` Growth with dignity: comment ,
India Today, 15 August 1996, p 5.
E M S Namboodiripad, ` Kerala model is one of deindustrialisation , The Hindu, 11 September, 1995, p 5.
Namboodiripad s claim that the Kerala model is one of ` deindustrialisation may be a sign of exasperation
on his part because of the lack of investment in the industrial sector and of its lacklustre performance in
job creation. However, the situation is getting better as indicated above (see note 56).
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P K Vasudevan Nair, ` Kerala model needs follow up , The Hindu, 18 September 1995, p 5. Nair points out
that the bottleneck for further progress comes from inadequate investments in agriculture, industry and electric
power sectors.
F C Deyo, (ed), The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialization, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1987. The continuing repression of the populace in several East Asian countries with the excuse of maintaining
stability and economic growth is testimony to this fact.
R EVIEW EDITO R
D r Christine Woodhead, U n iv e rsity o f D u rh a m , U K
T h e B ritish J o u rn a l o f M id d le E a ste rn S tu d ie s is a re fe re e d a c a d e m ic jo u rn a l
p u b lish e d b y C a rfax P u b lish in g C o m p a n y fo r th e B ritish S o c ie ty fo r M id d le
E a ste rn S tu d ie s (p o p u la rly k n o w n a s B R IS M E S ). F o u n d ed in 1 9 7 4 a s th e
B R IS M E S B u lle tin , th e B ritish J o u rn a l o f M id d le E a ste rn S tu d ie s assu m e d
its p resent title in 19 91 re flec ting its g row th into a fully -fled ged sch ola rly jou rn al.
T h e e d ito rs a im to m a in ta in a b a la n c e in th e Jo u rn a l s c o v e ra g e b e tw e e n th e
m o d e rn so cia l sc ie n c es a n d th e m o re tra d itio n a l d isc ip lin e s a sso c ia te d w ith
M id d le E a ste rn a n d Isla m ic S tu d ie s. T h e y w e lc o m e sch o la rly co n trib u tio n s o n
a ll a sp e c ts o f th e M id d le E a st fro m th e e n d o f c la ssic a l a n tiq u ity a n d th e rise o f
Isla m . A rtic le s o n th e la n g u a g e , lite ra tu re , h isto ry, p o litic s, e c o n o m ic s,
a n th ro p o lo g y, so c io lo g y, g e o g ra p h y, a n d th e re lig io n s a n d c u ltu re s o f th e
re g io n a re e n c o u ra g e d .
T h e B ritish J o u rn a l o f M id d le E a ste rn S tu d ie s a lso in c lu d e s a v ig o ro u s
re v ie w se c tio n c o v e rin g p u b lic a tio n s o n a ll su b je c ts c o n n e c te d w ith th e
M id d le E a st. T h is in c o rp o ra te s a w id e ra n g e o f re fe re n c e a n d b ib lio g ra p h ic a l
m aterial se ld o m re v iew ed e lse w h e re .
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