Sukumaran C. V.
The legend
about the origin of Kerala says that the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu,
Parusuram, threw his axe across the ocean to the north from Kanyakumari and the
sea in between Kanyakumari and where the axe landed retreated and thus emerged
Kerala. It happened aeons ago.
In the 19th
and 20th centuries Kerala gave birth to its eminent social reformers—Chattampi
Swamikal, Sree Narayana Guru, Ayyankali and V. T. Battathirippad. The Swamikal
and Guru decried caste system, Ayyankali defied it and Battathirippad tried to
eliminate it. He asked the people of his caste to snap their sacred thread by
doing it himself. As a cumulative result of these manifold thoughts and acts,
Kerala emerged as a land of a more or less egalitarian society.
The class
and caste demarcation in Kerala has not been as glaring as it is today. The
presence of religion also was not so visible. People didn’t cry for each other’s
head or hand on trivial issues relating to religious matters. People were
humane and humanity was the only thing that mattered.
Suddenly the
Free Market arrived as a flash flood and it washed away all the human values
and ushered in the era of cut-throat-competition. Money has been deified and
all the negative aspects against which the social reformers waged relentless war
and defeated have begun to emerge in full force. Now caste is important, class is important, religion is important and
Money is all important. Values are not important, environment is not important,
agriculture is not important.
Today,
if we
want to make Kerala emerge from the abyss to which it has been pushed by
the Market
oriented policies of the Servants of the Corporate Elites, who have been
ruling
the country ever since 1991, we should rejuvenate agriculture, we should
stop
acquiring agriculture land for providing infrastructure to the corporate
business, we should strengthen the public distribution system, we should
not
allow PPP in any field, let alone in education. We should exorcise the
fields
of education and healthcare of the money spinning elements. We should
not allow the first private international airport in India to be built
in Aranmula on acres of paddy fields. A government which
is committed to the people of the land and its environment should initiate such
creative efforts to make the people prosper and self-reliant.
But in the Carnival
named Emerging Kerala, we have seen that the God’s Own country being put on a
platter in front of the Corporate Elites by the apostles of Free Market. One of
the apostles is reported to have said that “food security can be assured by
bringing in food from other parts of the country”! Won't he utter these same words when he goes to the other parts of the country to welcome the Free Market?!
The hype on ‘Emerging
Kerala 2012 Global Connect’ reminded me of what Arundhati Roy says about the 'Kingdom
in the Sky' in her article Listening to
Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial and Celebration. Ms. Roy writes:
“Ironically,
the era of the free market has led to the most successful secessionist struggle
ever waged in India—the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country
of their own, somewhere up on the stratosphere where they merge with the rest
of the world’s elite. This Kingdom in the Sky is a complete universe in itself,
hermetically sealed from the rest of India. It has its own newspapers, films,
television programs, morality plays, transport systems, malls and
intellectuals. …But there is a problem, and the problem is lebensraum—living space.
A kingdom needs its lebensraum. The Sky Citizens look toward the Old Nation.
They see thousands of acres of farmland, and think: These really ought to be
Special Economic Zones for our industries. They see Adivasis sitting on the
bauxite mountains…They think: That is our bauxite, our iron ore, our uranium.
What are these people doing on our land? What is our water doing in their rivers?
What is our timber doing in their trees?”
It is
natural that the Sky Citizens will certainly try to deprive the people of their
land, rivers and even their right to live. Who will protect the people in a
democracy if those who are elected by the people become the servants of the Sky
Citizens? Emerging Kerala is the beginning of the submersion of the people for
the sake of the Sky Citizens. Who will reclaim Kerala from the Sky Citizens and
their apostles? If the people are waiting for an axe-wielding Parasuram; it will certainly be a Waiting for Godot.
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