Vinod Mathew

One may not find the Malayalee to be too enterprising initially, especially in the backdrop of the recent goings-on in Kerala. But look hard enough and you will find proof to the contrary.

THOSE who have been going around spreading the canard that Malayalees are a non-enterprising lot surely have got their facts wrong. True, one may not find the Malayalee to be too enterprising initially, especially in the backdrop of the recent goings-on in Kerala. But look hard enough and you will find proof to the contrary.

One has had to face this charge of being without `drive' over the last many years and the charge was particularly loud in Gujarat, the land of the ultimate entrepreneur.

Given that almost all the secretarial staff in public and private sector offices in Gandhiji's land were run by Malayalees, one had very little to offer by way of defence.

This allegation may not be new to the Malayalee living in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and the few hundred thousands in the Gulf countries and even the US.

To go into the crux of the problem, one only needs to take a look at what is happening back home. Debates in Kerala these days are around the general premise that people disdain work in the confines of the State's geographical borders.

Satirical suggestions that the God's Own Country change its name to Dubai to see some change in work ethos has rubbed them the wrong way.

Clearly, the Malayalee has been charged with possessing a collective propensity to find innumerable reasons to stall major projects.

Thus, there is the Rs 1,500-crore Smart City project in the State's business capital of Kochi running into one hurdle after the other way before reaching the implementation stage.

That Kerala snagged the project from the hands of the more IT-savvy States such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh does not matter a whit and the promoter, Internet City of Dubai, is already getting the jitters.

All these may perpetuate the image of the Malayalee as un-enterprising and business-unfriendly, but one needs to scratch the veneer to find the business-minded Malayalee. Because, the one business that has been thriving for a while in Kerala and that is yet to be picked up by entrepreneurs in Gujarat and Maharashtra is the business of selling soil.

Of late, the Kerala Government has been singing paeans on the virtues of sand mining as the coastal sand in the State is reportedly rich with minerals.

The State is said to have the single largest ilmenite deposit in the world, with a titanium dioxide content of 60-62 per cent.

Valued around Rs 50,000 crore, this wealth may take a while before getting unearthed as political postures are getting taken yet again on the desirability or the lack of it of tapping this wealth.

But all this negativity has not kept the true Malayalee enterprise from blooming as the last couple of years have witnessed the emergence of a cottage industry in the shape of sale of topsoil by hundreds of thousands of families in the State.

This enterprise, coming as it does with the advantage of not having to do any hard work while the earth is pulled out from under one's house, has also given rise to multi-level businesses such as specialised trucks to cart the sand.

Lending a new meaning to the term `level-playing field', this phenomenon is threatening to reshape the lay of the land in God's Own Country into a dull, monotonous stretch.

True, it may take a number of years before the hillocks get flattened out and the ponds and other water bodies get filled, but the Malayalees are working like beavers at this new enterprise.

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