Politics, Women and Well-Being

Title: Politics, Women and Well-Being – How Kerala Became a ‘Model’

Author: Robin Jeffrey

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001 (First published 1992)

ISBN: 9780195656220

Pages: 285

Kerala is a small, picturesque coastal state of India located in the southwest corner of the country. Both geographically and by population it constitutes less than five per cent of India as a whole, yet the human development index of Kerala is far above the national average and is on a par with developed countries. This comes as a curious paradox as the state is long thought to be a hotbed of militant labour and its society is aligned against free enterprise by ideological conviction. This book analyses the puzzle of Kerala’s high literacy rate, high life expectancy, low infant mortality rate and high levels of the presence of women in public services and attempts to list out the reasons behind these above-normal parameters as compared to other states in India. The book also argues that there was no ‘Kerala Model’ in the sense of a package of shrewd policies that may be picked up and applied with predictable results in other places and times. It charts Kerala’s twentieth century history to show where that history was unique and where it had implemented policies that may work elsewhere. Robin Jeffrey is a Canadian-born professor with primary research interest in the modern history and politics of India, especially with reference to Punjab and Kerala. He has authored many books, of which the review of ‘The Decline of Nayar Dominance’ was posted here earlier.

The plight of women in Kerala was better off to begin with on account of a special custom called marumakkathayam (matriliny) in which inheritance passed through the female line. But matriliny did not mean matriarchy. Women did not rule families but old men did as karanavars (functioning head). He bequeathed the family property not to his son as in patriarchy, but to his nephew. This system, which made most men redundant except for the act of procreation, was developed to cater for the specific requirements of the Nair community which took up soldiering as its main occupation and wanted free men in the militias without too much attachment to his wife and children. Once the British disarmed the Nairs throughout Kerala in the 1810s, the matrilineal joint family was forced to cope with peace, which deprived young Nairs of soldiering and led to an increase in population. This stressed the production of food grain from available land. Matriliny tottered on the brink for many decades until it finally came crashing down through legislation in the 1920s. However, matriliny was much more liberal with girls. It allowed them to attend local schools when they opened by the middle of the nineteenth century. When education prepared them for professional service, the families were quite willing to send young women into salaried work.

Jeffrey claims that Travancore, which was the most prominent of the three segments which combined to form the Kerala state in 1956 was at the forefront of Indian princely states on social parameters during the British period itself. This was in spite of the severe caste restrictions existing in the kingdom as compared to other principalities. As long ago as 1857, the House of Commons noted Travancore as ‘something like a model Native State’. The Maharaja was generous to European missionaries and established a British-style administration that began to open up the country to plantation agriculture. By the 1840s, more than a dozen protestant missionaries pressed the Travancore government to modernise, told the world about the prospects for plantation crops and made education available to the Hindus they sought to convert. This ushered in a cash economy that made many lower caste families gain wealth as they processed coir and toddy. The change in demography and acceptance of the girl child in the family was confirmed in Travancore’s first census in 1875 which revealed that the state had more females than males – 1010 to 1000.

The book gives a succinct review of the profound transformation that occurred in Kerala from the year 1800 onwards. Before 1810, Kerala was part of a world market, but few Malayalis had to deal with it directly, because the state exercised monopoly of the resources and traded directly with foreign merchants. They relinquished this right and by the 1920s, Malayalis could hardly avoid the lure of trade. Land became a saleable commodity when the Maharaja transferred ownership to powerful families and middlemen. The introduction of cash crops like coffee (1830s), tea (1880s), rubber (1890s) and the increasing value of Kerala’s ancient spice and coconut trade steadily monetised the economy. At the same time, renovation of the human resources was also on the cards. New government positions needed education in a formal school or college which was costly. A typical matrilineal family provided free food and bed to its members, but had no means to distribute cash among them to pay for school or college fees. Matriliny begin to crumble when individualism was taught in schools and matriliny was universally mocked at as universal concubinage. Joint families were permitted per capita division of property by various legislation from 1925 onwards though it was fully abolished only in 1976. Kerala is known for the wide acceptance of political participation of the people. This was greatly facilitated by the collapse of the joint family in the 1930s. Whereas elsewhere urban intellectuals led the struggle, in Kerala, rural, primary educated upper-caste men led the people.

The author also explains the repercussions events like the Great Depression and the Second World War had had on Kerala’s transient social customs. The price of coconut, rice and rubber plummeted during the Depression but soared during the War. Tropical farmlands in Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia had changed hands with the Japanese conquest of these countries and the price of rubber shot up 750 times its pre-war figure. This conferred much wealth on a class of land-owning families. At the same time, the fall of Burma in 1942 stopped the import of rice. Millions died in Bengal due to the famine it caused, but Kerala managed to stave off famine deaths by instituting statutory rationing of essential items to the whole population. Kerala produced only half of its rice demand and the communists made clever use of the hardships on the civil society for their own political aggrandizement. Military service took almost three per cent of the people to move and work beyond Kerala’s boundaries. The idea that the state ought to perform functions for its people gained currency during this period.

Through the upheavals of the first quarter of the twentieth century, Kerala stumbled upon a right formula to extract maximum benefit from the administration. Large scale political participation of the people formed the right background for this change. In 1920, meetings, speeches, leaflets, marches and civil disobedience were shocking novelties. But in the space of a generation, such public political activity became an accepted part of daily life. Demanding people prodded governments into activity and the governments’ response to organised demands encouraged still further claims. Extensive social collapse engendered by the crash of joint families destroyed rigid ideas of hierarchy and forced people to organise and participate in public life. Intense political competition in a vigorous democratic system extracted programs and services from governments desperate to win support to retain power. The outcome has been the ‘Kerala Model’, of longer life, fewer infant deaths and a falling birth rate (p.204).

Jeffrey also takes stock of the cracks found in the Kerala Model in the 1970s. Agricultural productivity declined, probably due to the redistribution and resultant marginalisation of farmland to labourers as part of land reforms. This came at a time when the green revolution was producing significant increases elsewhere. Also, the author doubts whether the advancement of Kerala women had really contributed to their empowerment. Women may do more things in Kerala than elsewhere in India, but they do not enjoy equality with men. To go to school, read a newspaper, attend an office, draw a salary or seek trained medical care are widely approved activities for women. But if they venture to leave the accepted spheres like entering public politics, they face innuendo, ridicule and disappointment. This was the author’s observation in the early 1990s, but wide-ranging reforms in local administration brought in at the national level had offered half of the politically contested seats in the local bodies to women.

Kerala is known as a fortress of the communists as it had voted in a communist government to power in 1957. This is in fact quite wrong. The state vigorously follows a two-party system and alternates them in power for the last half century. But still, the strength of leftist organisations offer hassles to free enterprise which turns out to be a slur on the state's reputation to attract private investment. The Kerala Model itself may be thought of as a speculative countermeasure by leftist economists to showcase something good which came about by communist influence. The real reasons for Kerala’s growth, however, have no relation to the presence of the communists. The author is heavily influenced by scholars from the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram which is a warren of researchers openly affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI(M). This book invokes a lot of communist leaders in many social contexts even though their contributions were often marginal. After 1960, the description almost looks like a manifesto of the CPI(M) as seen in one of Jeffrey’s remarks which is typical: “In 1980, a CPI(M)-led government established an old-age pension scheme for agricultural labourers, which was paying Rs. 45 a month to more than 170,000 people within a year. When the CPI(M) returned to office in 1987, it raised the pension to Rs. 60” (p.184). The CDS itself is nothing but an avenue for rehabilitation of political wrecks and for providing easy doctoral degrees for the party workers rather than an arena for serious research. But the author notes naively that ‘the existence of institutions like the CDS and the deep investigation of Kerala’s problems by Malayalis themselves, suggest reasons to believe that solutions or significant amelioration are possible’ (p.227).

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star