Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Baby-friendly State

Sir, — Congratulations, mothers and babies of Kerala. The State has done it again, and this time, for the world's leading ``baby-friendly State''. More than 90 per cent of Kerala's maternity hospitals support breast-feeding, whereas the UNICEF requires 80 per cent minimum for its commendation. Kerala's achievements in the social scale are attributable to a near 100 per cent literacy, every child, male or female, being sent to school by parents. Child labour is hard to find anywhere. The rest is history, a history of a least-developed State, in the industrial sense, with the highest social welfare standards.

Kerala's stringent labour-protection laws and high labour wages get blamed for the industrial backwardness of the State. It is the environment-friendly industrial policy (the credit should go to ``militant'' labour unions), combined with empowerment of the local administration that brings world acclaim to Kerala. It is a lot easier and cheaper for the Government to get results by empowering ordinary people than industrialising willy-nilly.

Subbiah Venkataraman,
Thiruvananthapuram

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• Greed and market failures
• For regional stability
• Kashmir: no miscalculations please!
• Democracy and development
• Anger, frustration widespread
• Prisons & justice
• Ambiguous statements
• Engineers maligned
• Baby-friendly State
• Teaching law
• Repurchase cheques
• More of democracy

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu