What Happened to Traditional Illam’s of Kerala?

If you had asked this question to great economist Joseph Shumpeter he would have suggested that they are the victims of the ‘creative destruction’. He suggested the idea of ‘creative destruction’ as the new technology emerges; old get replaced with new one. For example, before the advent of industrial revolution, British society was dominated by aristocracies and local elite whose main source of income was form landholdings. With the arrival industrial revolution, new system emerged with new workers, new output and life style which made agriculture less profitable as workers moved to industries causing wages to rise. Thus, they replaced with new system. Similar development can be seen in kerala also. With the economic prosperity brought about globalization and subsequent migration of labor to other parts of the world especially to gulf regions, considerable change in the socio-economic profile of the people occurred. This brought about a paradigm shift in the socio-economic perspective as well as attitude of the people in complete contrast with the era of Illams. For instance, while the vast stretches of farm land under the ownership of the illam in the remote areas away from the roads were considered to be a matter of prestige during the   glorious period of illams, today what matters is barren land often close to National Highways which can be used for realty business. This apathy to agriculture generated by the socio-economic freedom unleashed by the economic prosperity also made agriculture not only less economically attractive as happened in Britain but also made it tenuous to keep people under serfdom. In the past, while illams saved as much money as possible in their shelves and thereby saved for the future, today people are living with credit cards and thereby dis-saving for the future. Illams were not trained as well as accustomed to this type of socio-economic storm and therefore, they were sidelined. Of course, I do not believe that this destruction is fully creative, but partially as it enabled people to stand on their own legs, at the same time it has caused considerable destruction to the agriculture, health of the people and  as well as the ecology. Thus, illams are victims of a partially destructive and partially constructive destruction.  

The Reality behind Reality Show

Reality shows are one of the major items in the basket of numerous television channels today. A close look at this recent phenomenon shows how best arts, culture and politics can be effectively synthesized to mobilise required energy to land up in the profit maximizing landscape of economics. Of course, even though this kind of a marketing strategy need not be applicable to all television channels, some of them operating in the frontiers of Malayalam can be seen resorting to this kind of tactics. To be sure,  travel across Kerala and notice the ingredients of the tall advertising canvasses in major cities preferably in the head quarters of the districts regarding such reality shows,  you can very much convince yourself of this business strategy. The strategy is simple: choose candidates based on names, promote them during the show and market them according to the appeal of their names (culture) across the state so that you can indirectly increase your viewership by appealing the cultural sentiments of the viewers and thereby your profitability. For instance, select and promote a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian and erect tall advertising boards featuring the Hindu in the city of Calicut, the Muslim in the head quarter of Malappuram district and Christian in the district of Kottayam. Thus, the ongoing reality shows presents a classic example of using arts, culture and religion for the promotion of business motive, at least some of them in Kerala. This example shows not only the mindset of the business men but also it further sheds light on the mindset of the people as a  whole reflecting how divided they are. How many of the viewers are really aware of this kind of a naked reality of such reality shows?  

Politics of Lightning

According to recent statistics available, more than 100 people die on an average in Kerala every year as a result of lightning. However, what surprises me is not only the enormity of the catastrophe but also the apparent ignorance or negligence about this annual catastrophe in Kerala. If so one can justifiably ask a naïve question as to why this repeatedly happens and at the same time it did not attract required attention not only from the govt but also from the general public. Before coming to the possible answer this question, I would like to reflect on a possible criticism to be leveled against me for dragging govt and general public into this kind of a natural phenomenon which is beyond the control of human being. Obviously I am not contending that govt or general public must control lightning from happening as it is impossible. Instead, my contention is that both govt and people have a joint responsibility for not getting this kind of perpetual catastrophe the required attention so that, even though, we are not able to control lightning, we can reduce the extent of the causality as much as possible by adopting measures such as spreading the awareness of the extent of the problem among the people and thereby encouraging them to undertake precautionary measures as well as helping the people even financially to make adequate precautionary measures not to get electrocuted by way of installing available technologies capable of dampening the impact of lightening in the households.  

Now let us foray into the possible answer to the question as to why it did not fetch deserving attention both at the level of govt and at the level of the general public so far even after Kerala has been witnessing this catastrophe annually. Two factors are responsible. First, being lightening from the so called God, opposition parties cannot effectively blame the ruling party for this unfortunate event and thereby make political dividends based on this as they will have to blame the god for being responsible for this unfair practices which, for sure, instead of encouraging the people to rally behind such a leader, will force them to take him/her to the nearby rehabilitation centre for mentally sick. Second, we being reared in a democratic setting has got somehow programmed or habituated to be only concerned about large numbers or majority rule and therefore, the sporadic incidents of the lightening claiming life of individuals in a sparse manner often fails to make impact in a system which is already programmed and accustomed to the simple majority-rule in which what matters is large numbers rather than the least numbers. In other words, in the absence of any strong political compulsions and leverages like the killing of T. P Chandrashekhar, our society including the rulers of that society will close their eyes towards this kind of sporadic less politically compelling and appealing deaths. To make my point clear, let me draw attention to one illustration as the political storm that Kerala had witnessed over either the killing of Rajan in 1970s or the death of the people by consuming illicit liquor in the past.  Obviously, I have a question here why Rajan’s issue or liquor tragedy certainly killing people less than 100 made political storm in Kerala whereas loss of life to more than 100 people annually failed to elicit required attention. Again, my legs will pulled here arguing that Rajan’s issue or liquor tragedy was a political issue or a political killing and that is why it created political storm. In my view it is the cruelest interpretation of what is politics. Politics is not about killing. It is about the choice of the rules to govern the people for their welfare (if it is in a true democracy). Thus, instead of killing people under the aegis of politics, the true politics is all about saving the people from either being killed or being died prematurely.

The failure of the govt and people to give required attention to the issue of lightening-death will be clear if and if only if we look at this issue through the eyes of true politics I have described above, instead of looking through the troubled-eyes of killer politics. If you look politics with such a view, you will realize why Rajan’s case or liquor tragedies attracted political attention. For, it provided ample opportunity for blame-game for both opposition and ruling parties and thereby it provided a scope for reaping political dividends. If not, even a single death, let alone 100 deaths, as a result of the lightening should have received at least the same socio-political attention as did in the case of Rajan or liquor tragedy because for a single person his/her life is the precious one irrespective of whether he/she is getting killed because of bad politics or bad weather indicating that to attract required attention to this issue, you need not wait to get entire malayalees killed on account of lightening.   

Thus, the point I am making is NOT that the issue of death or killing should be judged along the principles of time, space and numbers, instead my point is that in a true democracy govt has to protect individuals not only from the detrimental effects of the actions or inactions of other people, but also govt has to protect people from the vagaries of the nature like lightening, Tsunami, Katrina etc. Thus, our rulers who are so keen to declare judicial inquiries to look into the death of a single fellow or few fellows or our rulers who persuade people through media to purchase a ‘karunya’ lottery for the social cause or our rulers who subsidize the solar panel to encourage the habit of using renewable energy must also apply their mind to the sporadic incidents of lightening causalities by way of increasing the awareness of people about protective measures or by providing protective tools to the people to protect them from this kind of shocking incidents.  Govt is not just about collecting taxes and distributing it to various departments mostly to be distributed in the form of salaries to the boot-lickers of the same govt. Govt  has to rule the people least and live among the people the most. However, let me reiterate here one thing that my criticism of govt or politics should not be misconstrued as if targeted only against a group of people like our professional politicians or trade unions. Instead, in my conception, the state or govt is the collective responsibility of each and everyone manifested in the form of useful mechanisms, systems, institutions, rules etc. Therefore, the failure of rulers otherwise indicates the failure of people or the behavior of the rulers is the reflection of the behavior of the people whom they represent.

Contrasting Industrial Economy and Knowledge Economy

As I mentioned in a previous post, world is drastically shifting to a modern knowledge economy from a traditional industrial economy in which the basic principle of economics remains intact. I pointed out then that be it industrial economy or knowledge economy, the underlying driving force of these economies is the selfishness of human being which appears in a contrary shapes depending upon the context. When it comes to industrial economy, people satisfy their selfishness by restricting others from sharing their assets like land, industry or gold whereas under knowledge economy, people satisfy their selfishness by sharing their asset - knowledge- with others. That is, what matters ultimately is the selfishness of the human being which is originally an outcome of their  realization and comprehension of the complex reality that they can’t eat gold they  have accumulated or they can’t swallow the vast stretches of land they have acquired or they can’t chew large piles of currency they have shelved and therefore, they were eventually developing a mental capacity to translate this physical inability to their  mental satisfaction by making use of accumulated assets to satisfy their selfishness. That is why people are vying with each other to accumulate their wealth. The more the wealth they have, the richest they will be not in their eyes because their stomach did not actually expand with the expansion of their wealth, instead they are richest in the eyes of  others (non rich) not in the sense that with the increase in their (riches’) wealth others (non riches’) stomach will be expanding, instead others (non riches’) stomach will be contracting which otherwise implies that the stomach of the richest will ideally be expanding implying that richest attains a distinguished  status in the society about which they are proud of and it is this proud that fuels them to carry forward their endeavor to become further rich and thereby much more distinguished. I am sure that at least few may disagree with me in this endeavor to analyze the relevance economics just based on the size of the belly of the people. Of course, they may appear to be sensible to another few who are opulent and since they are opulent their concern would go beyond stomach to Rolex, Ferrari, Johnny Walker etc whereas for a majority here still what matters is the expansion and contraction of their stomach. Given this, I think it is still sensible to evaluate the economics today based on the size of the stomach and the capacity to manage it.

What we have seen above is the obvious dissimilarity between industrial and knowledge economies in the form of restraining others from acquiring what rich has like land in the industrial economy while sharing with others what rich posses in the form of knowledge in the knowledge economy and also we have seen how this dissimilarity can be traced back to the original ethos of economics - selfishness. However, a deep look into the structure of past industrial economy and modern knowledge economy will also reveal an interesting similarity between them in the form of private property rights. As private property rights were used in the past during industrial economy and even today to restrict others from enjoying the benefit of your wealth, today in this knowledge economy too, a variant of the same property rights namely intellectual property rights (IPR) such as patents or copy rights are used to restrict others from enjoying the benefit of the asset you posses in the form of knowledge.  Of course, here we cannot argue that entire benefit is restricted to others in this knowledge era through IPR. Instead, here we have to make a distinction between past wealth and present wealth. In the past, wealth in the form of land, gold etc had only economic appeal or component compared to the modern asset - knowledge, apart from its economic appeal or component; knowledge has got an intrinsic appeal of enlightenment or intrinsic component of information. Therefore, while the modern owners of the knowledge restrict others from enjoying the economic component of their knowledge through IPR as did in the past, they share the appeal of enlightenment with others through, for instance, blogs or Youtube or books.

Again as I pointed out, this kind of division of what should be shared and what should not be shared is dictated by the selfishness of the human being. That is, in the case of knowledge, those who possess knowledge today come forward to share its power to enlighten people as a part of their selfishness that they can boast of the fact that others got empowered through his/her knowledge which will increase his/her image as a knowledgeable person attracting recognition from others. At the same, others are restricted to get empowered economically though his/her knowledge as he/she is aware of the fact it will ultimately boomerang on himself/herself as others will be economically empowered in due course of time if he/she share the  economic component of their knowledge  with others leading to his/her selfishness getting hurt as he/she would be, at best, one among many equals while his/her selfishness is so eager to put him/her on the top of the list as, for example, the richest person of the world. Thus, in no way, the modern knowledge economy undermines the traditional principles on which the discipline of modern economics is built, despite certain superfluous camouflage. 

It is here the practical long term global significance of the Joseph E Stiglitz’s view on the Intellectual property rights like patents, copy rights should be understood as he has sounded alarm regarding the detrimental effect of current system of patenting on the developing and poor countries in his book making Globalisation Work. His argument for a fare patenting regime was similar to what I have demonstrated here. Stiglitz argued the current regime of patenting dominated by rich countries should be reformed in such a way that it will help the poor or developing countries to benefit from spill-over effect of knowledge so that they will be empowered to innovate  on their own as  knowledge , innovation and technical progress are the result of a virtuous cycle of sharing and collaboration of the past wisdom with present across the spectrum and at the same time, the economic interests of the innovators in rich countries should be protected without getting their economic incentives for further innovation trampled upon. Stiglitz observed that IPR have both cost in the form of incentives for monopolization and benefit in the form of incentive for innovation and therefore, a well-designed IPR requires balancing the costs and benefits. This is what exactly I have described above. The economic component of modern knowledge should be protected to safeguard the economic incentives of the innovator; at the same time the enlightenment component of  the modern knowledge or innovation  must be shared between all so that those who are at the bottom of the innovation like developing countries can be empowered to move up to the top. Therefore, finally,  we will wind up this discussion reflecting on the importance of the democratization of the global politics which shapes the rules of the game at the global level so that a ‘give and take’ approach of collaboration can be carved out for a better world tomorrow because in the absence of a true democratic rules of the game at the global level, it is impossible to bring this kind of a structural change in the global politico and economic regime to the complete disregard of the plight of the helpless majority of the world.  

The Fallacy of the Democracy

At the very outset, I would like to ask this question; can we justifiably expect justice from the kind of democracy we have in India today which is heavily controlled by few powerful at a time when a sizeable portion of India’s population is still illiterates? How can we expect true democratic justice from those political leaders who supply TV, cloth, cycle, even rice for Rs 1/kg to their voters on the eve of election? How can we expect true democratic justice from such leaders who replace their posts of Chief Minister, Minister, MP etc when they get sentenced by Judiciary for crimes they committed while they were in power with their wives or wards? Of course, I am not posturing that Indian democracy is full of vices and evils with no elements of virtues. For instance, certain legislations passed by current government like RTI Act, Land Acquisition Act etc are remarkable piece of legislations as far as Indian democracy is concerned. It is worth mentioning here that the oldest democracy of the world, USA, took centuries since its independence in the year 1776 to pass a legislation called Freedom Information Act in the year 1961 similar to our RTI Act whereas we took just 60 years to achieve such a milestone in our democracy. However, there are certain grey areas that politics will be wary of dealing with for the betterment of the society. The best example is the field of education in general and higher education in particular. How can we expect the political system infested with aforesaid forces of evils to empower the minds and bodies of the ordinary citizens by creating an environment in which they can get educated to the highest extent possible? Aren’t such evil political forces smart enough to realize the simple fact that if people at large are educated leading to improvement in their political and civic consciousness which will ultimately wash away the vote banks of such political parties? Obviously, that is why they, instead of concentrating on such fundamental issues like education even at a time when majority of Indians today are young waiting to be trained and coaxed for a better socio-economic life through quality education, these politicians concentrate on distributing cycle, TV or rice for Rs 1/kg which is finally served to buffalos reared by such households to make use of plenty of rice available at throw-away price. What makes us suspicious is the complacency noticed on the part of the same govt which passed historic legislations as pointed out above to push through some important educational bills pending before parliament as a result of the strategic stalling of parliament by the opposition to change the face of Indian higher education. Of course, govt would attempt to pull their head out excusing the recalcitrant attitude of the opposition parties who believe, in Indian democracy irrespective of parties, that their only duty is to remain as road-blocks.  However, this excuse will have to be applied with a pinch of salt as the same govt did everything to ensure that Telenagana bill is passed amid total chaos and pandemonium in the parliament by opposition before the election as they are smart enough to realize that it will help to reap its political dividends during election. The question posed here is why this govt did not evince same interest and alacrity to get educational bills such as Innovation University bill which has been pending before parliament for years passed as it did in the case of Telenagan bill? The answer is obvious; first, educational bill lacks the charm to appeal to the sizeable illiterate Indian voters. Similarly, politicians are aware of the fact that it will boomerang though not at present, but in the future. How young India can afford such a knee-jerk policy at this historical juncture. Today’s young India, if adequately trained and educated, will be an asset of tomorrow or today’s shunted and blunted young India will be a liability of tomorrow.

The emergence of AAP in Delhi is the manifestation of the aforesaid boomerang that has struck at the very face of those who initiated the moves that enabled the people of Delhi to respond in a fitting manner. The AAP is a city based educated working middle class phenomenon. Who created them? Obviously, they were the creation of the very Manmohan Singh as a result of the economic prosperity that India witnessed, at least in its cities, after the liberalization and globalization of 1990s. These educated middle class also got politically conscious and sensitive creating an impulse to question the anarchy going on around them in the form of the rampant corruption which is also a  by-product of both gloablisation characterized by technological innovation (2G) and mutilated or truncated  Indian democracy  characterized by the dominance of  regional parties which often clips the wings of the main  national parties to achieve a pan-Indian perspective rather than misusing the available political wind-fall opportunities for either personal or regional benefits, as often did by these regional parties. Thus, the point I am making is that a phenomenon like AAP is essentially the creation of the recent institutional and structural reforms like liberalization and globalisation that India has witnessed as the very champions of these reforms failed to recognize the possible long term socio and political impact of these reforms as a result of their overly preoccupation with possible economic impact of such reforms with an eye on vote bank politics. This act also otherwise blunts the view of certain critics of the AAP saying India has had seen similar political outfits emerging time and again in the past and all of them also got eclipsed as the country moved forward and therefore, AAP’s destiny will, in no way, be different from its so called predecessors. This view is highly shallow in the sense that AAP, unlike its so called predecessors as I described above, is the corollary of the structural and institutional reforms that India was subjected to after 1990. Of course, I am afraid that I will be countered showing the example of the so called socialist revolution North India witnessed during 1970s under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan  However, it is quite unfair to draw parallel between AAP and Jayaprakash Narayan’s revolution because 1970s upsurge was not an outcome of any sort of structural or institutional changes in India except the fact that it was mainly an upsurge of people’s anger against the  draconian attitude of the then existed India’s political establishment. Thus, if someone argue that a phenomenon like AAP will be sustaining as indirectly indicated by the Time Magazine’s recent survey probably held among educated city based people that only Aravind Kejriwal is fit to become the prime minister of India compared to other major candidates, we cannot completely disregard their view.

Therefore, what I am advocating is not that India will remain to be a land of illiterates forever. Instead, given the nature of current politics, we will be lagging behind especially in the case of education. After having said all these, I also did not subscribe to the view that it is only the professional politicians who are our potential policy makers responsible for the pathetic state of the affair in Indian higher education. Instead, it is an outcome of a tacit unsavory collusion between the formal professional politicians outside the educational system and the informal amateur politicians inside the educational system. Therefore, our higher education, like anywhere else, can be saved only if we break this unholy alliance between formal and informal politicians in the scene of higher education in India implying that Indian higher education is eagerly waiting for the emergence of another Aravind Kejriwal as nowhere in the world change or transformation or revolution did not take place until and unless it imposed forcefully and peacefully on the status-quo.