Kerala's passion for government jobs

The recent news that the Kerala Public Service Commission (KPSC) received over 12 lakh applications for its advertisement for vacancies in the lowest rank in government service, namely, the last-grade peon post, reveals a mindset of Malayalees that seems to be pretty much fixed – globalisation, liberalisation, industrialisation, whatever.

The average Keralite – and surprisingly enough, a great portion of the youth of the State, supposedly disdainful of sarkari jobs in favour of more glamorous positions in new-fangled sectors like information technology (IT) – seems to still favour government jobs over those in the private sector.

And this, at a time when the State government is working overtime to promote Kerala as a favoured IT destination. Witness the recent brouhaha over the proposal to set up Technocity, an integrated complex of IT infrastructure, residential apartments, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, educational institutions and other support facilities, a satellite adjacent to Thiruvananthapuram, the State capital and home to Technopark, Kerala's pioneering IT park. Billed as the largest IT township in India, the Technocity, the mega-project envisages an investment of over Rs 6,000 crore and is expected to provide direct employment to over one lakh persons and indirect jobs for another four lakh.

And yet, the recent KPSC advertisement managed to woo 12,31,499 applicants. According to a report by K P M Basheer in The Hindu, this is the largest number of applications the KPSC has ever received for a job advertisement. Not surprisingly, Thiruvananthapuram district – the quintessential abode of Kerala's babudom – produced nearly 1.75 lakh applicants; followed by Kozhikode (1.25 lakh) and Ernakulam (about 1.11 lakh). Behind them came Wayanad (35,000) and Kasaragod (40,000).

According to The Hindu report, the total number of applicants for the KPSC advertisement is roughly four per cent of Kerala's population. “If you consider the fact that the applicants are in the 18-40 age group, more than 10 per cent of the young population in the State have applied for the lowly peon's position, which is a relic of the British Raj,” writes Basheer.

And even more ironically, most of the applicants are overqualified. While the minimum educational qualification for the job advertised is the ability to read and write Malayalam, the majority of applicants are those who boast college and professional degrees; there are even some M Phil and Ph D researchers. According to the 2001 population census, 63.4 per cent of Kerala's population was in the age group of 15-59, who make up the labour force. The labour force projected for 2011 is 237.30 lakh. Keralites comprise 2.6 per of the country's total labour force.

Of Kerala's labour force of 102.91 lakh workers, 16.54 lakhare agricultural labourers and 3.65 lakhwork in household industries. The organised public and private sector together employ 11.33 lakh persons, with the private sector accounting for 46.33 per cent of the employment in the organised sector.

According to the Kerala State Planning Board, of the total of 6.07 lakh employed in the public sector during December 2008, 0.63 lakh were Central government employees, 2.66 lakh State government employees, 2.56 lakh quasi-government employees and 0.26 lakh local government employees.

According to the Kerala State Planning Board's Economic Review 2009, an analysis of the sector-wise growth of employment in public and private establishments in Kerala in 2009 revealed that the highest employment is in the community, social and personnel services (44.11 per cent), followed by manufacturing (23.24), financing and business services (9.02), transport (8.51), agriculture (7.03), electricity, gas, water and sanitary services (2.45), construction (1.9) and mining and quarrying (0.436).

If the recent deluge of applications for the peon's post indicates anything, it is that in the average Keralite's mind, there is still a special place for the hallowed government job. Not only does it offer assured security of tenure and attendant perks like pensions and travel allowances (not to mention the leisure time to pursue other interests !), it is also a source for securing loans from financial institutions and employee's co-operative societies.

It seems like all the ballyhoo of “new economy” and IT jobs has not made any significant dent in the Malayalee's penchant for a safe and secure government job.

Reviving the Nila river

A group of locals, led by Gopinath Parayil, launch a pioneering responsible travel company to try and save Kerala's Ganga, the Nila.

"In its own sphere, the Nila is as significant as any of the great rivers of our country: On its banks thrived the ancient astrologer Vararuchi and the mathematician Aryabhatta. In more recent years, the river has imbued the work of littérateurs such as Jnanpith awardee M.T. Vasudevan Nair and O.V. Vijayan. The river has watered paddy fields, sustained rural livelihoods of farmers and traditional healers.

"All that now stands threatened by the pressures of modernity. The state’s remittance economy has fostered a building boom; the source of sand—essential construction material—is the river. Forests in the catchment area, responsible for rainfall, are disappearing. Many of the Nila’s tributaries have been thoughtlessly dammed. But all is not lost yet..."

Read Gopi's account at
http://www.livemint.com/2008/06/14000317/Alternate-Life--River-of-drea.html

Sabarimala: A man-made myth?

In a stunning revelation the Sabarimala authorities admit that the mysterious fire, which gives the festival its name, and which flashes thrice in the forests of the Ponnambalamedu hill, across from the ancient Ayyappa temple, during the Makaravilakku festival, is a work of human hands.

Read K A Shaji's report in Tehelka at http://www.tehelka.com/story_main39.asp?filename=Ne210608allhumantoohuman.asp

Women in Kerala: engendered or endangered?

Kerala's women

The paradox of the status of women in Kerala lies in the confusion between `gender equality' and `gender equity'. The notion of gender equality assumes that the needs and interests of women and men are identical, whereas the notion of gender equity presumes they are different.

Each year witnesses the ritualistic observation of yet another signpost in the long march towards equality and justice of a still marginalised section of much of the world's population - women. March 8 has traditionally been observed as International Women's Day, celebrated in various incarnations since the turn of the century, and formalised in December 1977, when the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a UN Day for Women's Rights and International Peace.

On March 8, 1857, garment workers in New York City in the US, staged a protest against inhumane working conditions and low wages. The police attacked the protestors and dispersed them. Two years later, again in March, these women formed their first labour union to try and protect themselves and gain some basic rights in the workplace.

Such assertion of political and human rights has been the forte of women in Kerala too, especially in the trade union movement in the coir and cashew industries and in the plantations, in the peasant and agricultural labour movements and in the struggles for land reform.

Kerala's women have not remained out of sight of official patronage. As a day of celebration, assertion and review of the status of women in society, March 8 was therefore duly consecrated in Kerala too - with meetings, rallies and speeches.

Women and Kerala have a hallowed relationship, especially in the goggle-eyed wonderment of social scientists, who drool over the power of "women's agency" in advancing the social and economic development of a State.

Frankly, though, for Kerala, which claims the most exalted status for women in social development in the whole of India, the ritual of the red-letter day smacked of sheer pietism - a sham tribute to a largely amorphous empowerment.

Development scholars point to past and current levels of female literacy and education, late age of marriage, declining fertility and a greater female work participation rate to establish that Kerala's women are a privileged lot. However, there is a yawning chasm between official statistics, public policy and everyday lives.

The fact is, as anyone who has lived in Kerala for even a short spell will tell you, Kerala's women are empowered only in a virtual sense - many of the rights and powers they are bestowed with are not inalienably intrinsic to their status as females.

They are, in many cases, the outcome of historical processes husbanded - the word is used here deliberately in its politically incorrect and chauvinist meaning of "being managed" or "stewarded" by males - by institutions and organisations that defined the course of Kerala's history.

In Kerala, women's rights are mediated through different agencies, institutions and practices, most of which remain patriarchical and oppressive, albeit coated in a veneer of progressive postures. The paradox of the status of women in Kerala lies in the confusion between "gender equality" and "gender equity."

Yasushi Uchiyamada, a senior researcher in anthropology at the Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development, Tokyo, who has studied land and modernity in Kerala, explains that the notion of gender equality assumes that the needs and interests of women and men are identical, whereas the notion of gender equity presumes they are different.

Focusing on gender equality - as much of the discourse in Kerala did on International Women's Day - tends to conceal rather than reveal the specific needs and interests of women. Even when women articulate these, the dominant discourse of Kerala society distorts these self-representations, getting them "masculinised" to conform to the expectations of men.

Without institutions that listen and respond to their suppressed voices, women in Kerala will remain content with celebrating International Women's Day year after year - as their international sisters move on to true emancipation and empowerment.

Shopkeepers, traders, merchants

Is Kerala a land of traders?

Napolean reportedly called England a land of shopkeepers. Closer home, some observers like to slap that epithet on to Kerala. In the absence of a rousing industrial culture, the closest Keralites come to displaying some entrepreneurial dash is when they are behind a shop counter.

The proverbial Malayalee teashop owner who greeted Edmund Hillary atop Mount Everest with a rousing cup of hot tea may be the work of a feverish imagination, but it does point to the ubiquitous nature of the Keralite shopkeeper mentality.

Thus it was not really astounding to learn that the Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi (KVVES), the State's largest and most powerful organization of traders, had recently declared that the organization had decided to "physically" prohibit multinationals (MNCs) from opening large retail chain stores in the State.

The KVVES distrust of MNCs is nothing new. Some years ago it locked horns with Hindustan Lever over the margins that the company was passing on to its retailers. That it had to finally cave in without wresting many significant concessions from India's largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturer says as much about the divisions amongst Kerala's traders as about the power of the MNC.

It is, however, difficult to understand - or sympathise with - the KVVES stand. Not only does it have nothing to really fear from the operations of a foreign retail chain or a strong FMCG firm but it also ought to be actually encouraging more such entities to open shop in Kerala. The KVVES is perhaps underestimating the power of its own members - who number close to 5 lakhs - and the ingenuity of Kerala's shopkeepers.

It only has to look at the Margin Free Market, the chain of supermarkets started by the Consumer Protection and Guidance Society, to realise the weakness of its claims that a foreign retail chain will wipe out Kerala's traders, especially the smaller ones. Registered in 1993 in Thiruvananthapuram, the State capital, the Margin Free Mark et is a co-operative venture of the Consumer Protection and Guidance Society and the management, which set up the first Margin Free Market, in Thiruvananthapuram on January 26, 1994.

Since then the group of supermarkets has spread to become India's largest retail chain, offering products at prices marked down as much as 40 per cent of the maximum retail price. Even a large well-established supermarket group like Foodworld or Spencer's from the RPG stable has not really been able to upstage the Margin Free brand.

Given the Keralites' increasing disposable incomes and their tendency to opt for convenience goods even at the cost of fancy packaging, it is possible for the State to accommodate several more retail outlets. The KVVES ought to realise that the strength of Kerala's trading community - as well as the organisation's own prowess - stems from the free play of competition.

Rather than threatening to block newcomers, the KVVES ought to be encouraging them to enter, in a more-the-merrier spirit. After all, the organisation does have an altruistic side to it: soon after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, its Kollam district unit announced it would construct 42 shops for the traders of Alapad who lost their shops to the tsunami waves.

So, evidently, the KVVES has a heart. Now it needs to find its guts too. After all, as Oliver Goldsmith said, "Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes." Competition, not confrontation, should be the motto for this land of shopkeepers.

Monsoon trawl ban in Kerala

Monsoon fishing woes

By implementing the annual monsoon trawl ban effectively and fairly, Kerala can show others how to manage fisheries resources and conflicting resource users in a reasonable and healthy manner.

As the southwest monsoon is due to set in over Kerala next month, on its way north, there is one part of the home State that is a mite worried - the fisheries sector and the fishing communities and traders who depend on it for their livelihoods.

There are two principal sources of bother - the annual 45-day monsoon ban on trawling in the State's waters 12 nautical miles from the shoreline, and the issue of safety at sea for the fishermen who venture out to sea braving the rough monsoon conditions.

For almost 20 years now, Kerala has used the annual fishing closure as a fisheries management tool that several other coastal States in India have subsequently followed. The first 45-day trawl ban was imposed in 1988 as a result of a sustained and strategically focused campaign by the traditional fishing sector, led by the Kerala Independent Fishworkers Federation, and representing around 1.75 lakh fishermen. (An earlier ban in 1981 lasted a mere three days, before it was withdrawn due to pressure from the mechanised sector that operates fishing vessels equipped with high-horsepower inboard engines and large gill-nets.)

The main impetus for the monsoon trawl ban is its resource conservation value - the monsoon is the spawning season for many varieties of fish, including shrimp, especially the highly valued karikadi variety. Besides, the ban has another welcome spin-off - the potential to prevent violent physical conflicts between the artisanal small-scale sector, operating traditional craft such as the catamaran, and the mechanised sector, which comprises inboard-powered vessels.

However, this year, there appears to be an interesting twist to the call for an annual fishing ban. This time around, it is the mechanised sector that wants the ban imposed. The traditional sector, on the other hand, is against a blanket comprehensive fishing closure, claiming that its own fishing techniques are environment-friendly and non-destructive as far as fish resources are concerned. It claims that the mechanised sector's call for a total ban is a cover for allowing cheap imports of fish. The traditional sector wants only trawling to be banned since, from experiences the world over, bottom trawling has been shown to be destructive of both habitat and marine resources.

Yet the traditional sector is not beyond reproach as far as resource conservation is concerned. Last week, for instance, the Fisheries Department launched a major drive against the use of stake nets in Ashtamudi Lake, near the harbour mouth at Shakthikulangara in Kollam, the central launching point for trawlers in the south of the State.

The use of stake nets during high tide has been banned under the Travancore Cochin Fisheries Act 1950. A comprehensive study of the lake by the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad has stressed that stake net fishing is a highly destructive mode of fishing. They are allowed to operate only during the low tide.

During the monsoon, over 30 species of commercially valuable marine fish enter the Ashtamudi Lake through the estuary at Shakthikulangara, either for spawning or to find safe nurseries. These include schools of fries (newly hatched or born fish) of different species. The stake nets set at the entry point into the lake trap the fish that come to spawn as well as the fries that come in search of nurseries. Since the fries enjoy no commercial value, they are merely dumped back into the lake. Such capture of fries would lead to the depletion of future resources, say fisheries scientists.

Thus, in order to conserve the State's marine resources, both the traditional and mechanised sectors need to engage in reasonable resource management. This is all the more important since for Kerala, the fisheries sector is a major source of employment, income and food, and small-scale fisheries and aquaculture are important for sustainable development of coastal communities in the State.

Kerala's annual monsoon trawl ban follows international trends in fisheries resource management, where fishing closures are used to revive nearly collapsed fisheries or sustain potentially over-fished fisheries. Honduras, Peru and Indonesia are some of the countries where such annual fishing bans are in position.

It is important to guard against any dilution of the principle of a precautionary approach to fisheries resource management. After all, 75 per cent of the world's fishers' population are in the artisanal and small-scale sub-sector, which accounts for nearly half the global capture fisheries production. Kerala can show them how to manage resources and conflicting resource users in a reasonable and healthy manner.