Over the years, parties have responded to commercial interests over the welfare of people

In 2018 Kerala was overwhelmed by an unprecedented natural event. Flooding combined with landslides caused many deaths. Floods were not new to Kerala, which receives high rainfall. What was new compared to the times of equally high rainfall in the early part of the last century was the flooding due to inept dam management and the vulnerability of the terrain induced by the pattern of land use.

In 2019 we have seen some of this repeated. This year it is the landslides that have caused most deaths. They are a relatively recent phenomenon, pointing to the role of uncontrolled economic expansion.

Kerala Model of Development-

The positive side, -Kerala has

• Comparatively low levels of basic gender inequality (reflected, for instance, in a high female-male ratio),
• Relatively equitable educational opportunities (indeed, near-universal literacy, especially among the young),
• Extensive social security arrangements (e.g. broad-based entitlements to homestead land, old-age pensions and the ‘public distribution system
• Limited incidence of caste oppression (e.g. few violent crimes against scheduled castes),
• Low rural-urban disparities.
• The role of basic education (and. particularly of female literacy) in promoting basic capabilities
• The favorable position and informed agency of women crucial to a wide range of social achievements;
• The access to public utilities;
• The role of public action in a wide sense, involving the State and the public at large.
• Lauded for the high human development indicators it is believed to have bestowed upon the State

Failures-

• The foremost is the inability to meet the employment aspirations of the people, pushing them to live under authoritarian regimes overseas.
• Second, the laudable public provision of health and education has been financed by borrowing.
• Kerala has the highest per capita public debt among States, implying that we are passing on the bill for our own maintenance to future generations.
• Kerala has not done so well when viewed through the lens of gender justice. High levels of female education have not led to an equally high participation of women in the labour force or in governance, even though they participate equally in elections.
• The extraordinary events that we have witnessed this year range from fountains sprouting out of the earth due to the hitherto unknown ‘water piping’ to constructed structures shifting, physical phenomena not yet widely understood.
• There has been overbuilding in Kerala, with absentee owners having invested in luxury houses they do not always occupy. As a result poorer households are crowded out of safe locations on the plains to precarious ones on the hills.
• Public policy has failed miserably to regulate land use including rampant quarrying, which destabilises the earth’s surface, with political patronage. Truth is that public policy is part of the problem
• The floodgates were opened in 2015 when the Congress party did away with environmental clearance for quarries in existence for three years.
• Then in 2017 the Pinarayi Vijayan government relaxed the rules for quarrying further.
• It also weakened the provisions of the legislation governing conversion of agricultural land into construction sites.
• The rice paddies had both produced food and served as gargantuan sinks for rainwater.
• Kerala’s principal political parties, irrespective of their ideologies, have responded to commercial interests over the welfare of ordinary people.

Way forward-

To come out of this morass the people of Kerala would have to rely on themselves. They need to acknowledge that their consumption pattern must change as it has adversely impacted the natural environment, the consequences of which have begun to hurt them. In this task they are unlikely to be guided by the State’s politicians and intellectuals who led them into this cul-de-sac in the first place.