The Hindu Business Line : Growing paradox

For too long has Kerala depended on the State apparatus to deliver its developmental needs. It is now time to explore public-private partnerships to take the State forward.

Last week's visit of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, to Kerala may have initially been marred by the unfortunate security lapse that led his motorcade off the well-rehearsed sanitised path to the Raj Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram. But absolutely on track were the economist Prime Minister's prescriptions for Kerala's development, delivered during his subsequent speeches in the city.

Inaugurating the celebrations to mark the golden jubilee of the formation of Kerala State, the Prime Minister expressed the hope that "the next century will be Kerala's century." Champions of the `Kerala model of development' may well argue that that claim was appropriated by the State long back, given its sterling achievements in human and social development. The current century is Kerala's, they point out, and the rest of India - and much of the developing world - would do well to emulate its experience of public action and affirmative State policies.

As Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, points out, "Demographically, Kerala mirrors the United States on about one-seventieth the cash. Kerala utterly lacks the squalid drama of the Third World - the beggars reaching through the car window, the children with distended bellies, the baby girls left to die.

"In countries of comparable income, including other States of India, life expectancy is 58 years, and only half the people (and perhaps a third of the women) can read and write; the birth rate hovers around 40 per thousand," McKibben continues. "Development experts use an index they call PQLI, for `physical quality of life index', a composite that runs on a scale from zero to a hundred and combines most of the basic indicators of a decent human life.

"In 1981, Kerala's score of 82 far exceeded all of Africa's, and in Asia only the incomparably richer South Korea (85), Taiwan (87), and Japan (98) ranked higher. And Kerala kept improving. By 1989, its score had risen to 88, compared with a total of 60 for the rest of India. It has managed all this even though it's among the most densely crowded places on earth - the population of California squeezed into a State the size of Switzerland. Not even the diversity of its population - 60 per cent Hindu, 20 per cent Muslim, 20 per cent Christian, a recipe for chronic low-grade warfare in the rest of India - has stood in its way."

Cynics, however, will say all that is pure humbug, and superior human development indicators may sound like rousing music to social scientists and economists, but given the low industrial status of Kerala, the State ought to be the one doing the catching up. They may well have a point, which was precisely what the Prime Minister was making.

Author McKibben frames Kerala's problems in simple terms: "There is chronic unemployment, a stagnant economy that may have trouble coping with world markets, and a budget deficit that is often described as out of control."

The Prime Minister was more poetic. "God's Own Country", he said, had become a magnet for seekers of peace, relaxation and rejuvenation. However, it has lagged behind its neighbours in the development of modern industries and the knowledge economy, the Prime Minister said. Clearly, unless Kerala makes concerted efforts to ramp up its industrial growth, all the gains made on the human development front will come to waste. And it can no longer fall back easily on the charge of official neglect by New Delhi. The Central Government, for its part, says it is ready to help.

During his State visit, Dr Manmohan Singh urged Kerala's political leadership to evolve a consensus for development and explore new avenues of economic growth and employment generation. He said that his government is committed to improving the agricultural and plantation economies of Kerala and is aware of the anxieties of the plantation sector in the State. He also added that the Centre would consider favourably the State's demand for setting up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and an Institute of Science Education and Research in Kerala.

Yet, the Prime Minister sounded a word of warning. Those who have invested in the plantation sector should diversify their investments and make better use of new market opportunities in India and abroad, he said. He added that they should be prepared to deal with competition from neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

During the inaugural ceremony for the expansion of the Trivandrum International Airport, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Mr Praful Patel, said that the public-private partnership model should be adopted for airport infrastructure development in the country. That, perhaps, should be the way forward for Kerala to take its place in the next century.

For too long has Kerala depended on the State apparatus to deliver all its developmental needs. It is now time to explore public-private partnerships to take the State forward along the path of industrial development.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com