Reflections on the Kerala model - a rejoinder

By K. V. Nambiar

In his article on ``Reflections on the Kerala Model,'' (The Hindu dated January 26) Mr. S. Swaminathan has tried to sketch out some of the salient aspects of the LDF government's decentralised development experiment in Kerala described as Peoples' Plan Campaign. Some of the observations appearing in that article do not seem to reflect the realities of Kerala's social history and its development process.

First, there is no such model as a Kerala Model of development built up consciously by the State nor has there been any conscious Marxist orientation of policy implicit in the State's development approach as observed by Mr. Swaminathan. Kerala's pattern of socio-economic development has evolved itself over the years. The social and egalitarian approach underlying such a development pattern may be traced back to the policies pursued by the erstwhile rulers of Travancore and to a lesser extent of Kochi also, especially in the matter of education and promotion of literacy.

Such activities were later followed by the Christian missionaries who came to the State. Subsequently, various non-governmental organisations such as the NSS, SNDP and MES representing the interests of different communities in the State pursued similar activities not only in the educational field but in the field of medical and public health as well.

These activities were initially concentrated in the southern parts of Kerala. Even now, these regions stand at a much higher level of socio-economic development as compared with the northern parts of the State covering the Malabar region. Thus, long before the present State of Kerala was formed in 1956, it was largely such private initiatives which took up the cause of the social advancement of the State. Subsequently, the elected governments which came to power in the State from time to time could not but support such activities on popular demand by giving priority to the development of social services in their overall development strategies.

This emphasis continues even today to the neglect of the material advancement of the State. This has created its own problems of low economic growth and growing unemployment. Kerala has become a highly consumer-oriented State with high levels of conspicuous consumption thanks to the large amount of foreign remittances flowing into this region. Does not this development smack of an anti-Marxian orientation?

The second point relates to the statement attributed to Dr. I. S. Gulati, the present Vice Chairman of the State Planning Board, who describes the key principle of decentralisation as an ``article of faith'' rather than a constitutional mandate. That may be taking an idealistic view; but the fact remains that but for the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution making it mandatory on the part of the States to go in for the Panchayat Raj system of governance, no State including Kerala would have gone in for decentralisation. The Central Government was compelled to bring about these historic amendments, as the States were not willing to introduce decentralisation on their own. Here, one should be fair to the late Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, who initiated this major reform.

A third point relates to an observation reported to have been made by Dr. Gulati that in matters of development and plan implementation there is a `vibrant synergy' in the villages of Kerala. This is only partly true. The fact that there are strong political undercurrents in the people's plan campaign cannot be denied. The major gainers of this movement have been a particular class of people representing the interests of the major partner in the ruling coalition. It is the initiative and enthusiasm of people belonging to this particular class and their active local level participation in the people's plan campaign that creates a mistaken impression of 'vibrant synergy'. Here, the dominant factor is the politics of planning. If there had been a genuine synergetic approach to development, several previous decentralised development experiments in the State prior to the introduction of the Panchayat Raj system should have proved successful in a highly literate State such as Kerala. There were many such programmes like the `Untied grants scheme' to panchayats to formulate and implement programmes of their own, 'Self reliant village scheme' under which resources were allocated to select panchayats for their need-based programmes formulated by the panchayats themselves, rural self employment schemes with financial assistance from banks (which is a continuing programme), setting of Krishibhavans in every panchayat to give guidance and help to farmers etc. which have all failed to take off due to local inertia, apathy and indifference of people towards development matters. This has generally been the experience of the present writer white serving as Collector in a couple of districts in the State.

One would, however, agree with Dr. Gulati that wisdom and capabilities are not the exclusive qualities of the higher echelons of polity, but at the village and district levels also people do rise to the occasion. Here the point that needs emphasis is that to enable them to do so, they should be provided with all the necessary administrative infrastructure support and the required physical and financial inputs, and more importantly, the freedom to formulate their own need-based and area specific programmes, and implement them according to the guidelines issued to them in the interest of sound financial management. This has not yet been done in the State which, by transferring a wide range of functions to local bodies, has put the cart before the horse it were! A related point is the choice of projects and programmes in the local development plans. It would appear that the same mistake committed at the State level, of spreading scarce investment resources thinly over a large number of projects leaving most of them unfinished and making them spill over from year to year, has been committed at the local level. As per the 1998-99 annual Plan, investments in the local level Plans are spread over more than 55 types of activities with a total number of nearly one lakh projects (95,584 to be precise). This would work out to about 100 projects per panchayat on an average. Instead of taking up simultaneously so many programmes with a thin spread of investment, it would, perhaps, have been much better if a dozen or so crucial development areas capable of improving the performance of the productive sectors of the rural economy and thereby enhancing rural employment opportunities, had been prioritised and taken up for speedy implementation.

To illustrate, for a highly employment intensive programme such as sericulture development, the aggregate annual provision is only Rs. 1.20 crores, covering 23 projects in select panchayats. Even the provision for an item like 'art and culture' is much higher. Similarly, the provision for important productive activities such as development of horticulture which can be implemented in all the thousand and odd panchayats, the provision is totally inadequate. One does not find much of an innovative approach in the schematic pattern of local level plans. By and large, the State level pattern has been repeated. When shall we be able to cut loose from this `tyranny' of uniformity in patterns in matters like regional development?

A last point is regarding assessment of the decentralisation experiment that has been going on in the last three years. An objective assessment of achievements in terms of the goals of decentralisation is essential to reach valid conclusions.

The main question to be addressed is: To what extent has it contributed to an easing of the State's socio-economic problems in terms of reduction of rural poverty and unemployment, creation of sound rural assets, more effective exploitation and utilisation of local resources - physical and financial - larger absorption of bank credit and institutional finances? Available data would indicate that no worthwhile improvement is perceptible in such areas. On the contrary, the situation seems to have worsened in many areas such as agricultural and horticultural production, rural employment generation and utilisation of bank credit and institutional finance for project implementation. Such aspects would need a more focussed attention by the planners in future.

(The author is a former Planning Secretary, Government of Kerala)

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