Mint has published a post on the Dakshina Kannada model I made on the Indian Economy blog as an article in today’s edition. I rewrote the post almost completely to make it an article. Did I make it better or worse?
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Yes, the new version fails to grab one’s attention and makes assertions that are tempered down compared to the original. The reasons for the act being obvious.
The Mint article is better. The Kerala canard, though, has already been exposed to a great degree by Errol D Souza et al when they showed that greater than 50% of all bank deposits in Kerala are the result of remittances and that measuring Kerala’s GDP understated the wealth generation and income by a huge deal. (effectively clinching the argument againts Amartya Sen’s assertion that income wasn’t a good measure of a society’s progress and that Kerala was a good example of that).
Nilu, the thing is… I did not consciously set out to tone it down.. I was not asked to.. I did not have wordcount constraints (I had space left over after cutting down) nor did I have time constraints. I had time to get feedback and incorporate it. If anything, the mishap must have occurred because I changed the structure of the article. My post started off with describing DK and got to the point by the third para, while the article stated the problem upfront and got around to resolving it (or at least describing a way to resolve it) later. The latter way, I thought, would be much better for an article… but maybe something went wrong.
Ritwik, yes of course I am not the first to question the Kerala model. My bright idea is of course, to use Dakshina Kannada as a control, and my challenge was to get both Kerala and DK into the reader’s mind in the lede.
i agree with nilu. the one on the IEB was much better. somehow the “flow” was missing from this article.
What are the different communities in Dakshina Kannada? The only mention are of Konkanis and Shettys. The first is a transplanted group (from Goa and before that from Kashmir). The Brahmins among them were not given enough respect by the local Brahmins. Like the Quakers they were outside the establishment and hence had to foster their own entrepreneurial ventures. The Shettys if I am not wrong are a trading community.
This is akin to putting up Kerala Christians as an example of how entrepreneurial Kerala is.
It is a fact that within Kerala, there are different attitudes to capitalism based on the region. Communism has a strong base in north Kerala but most entrepreneurs from Kerala have also come from there. This correlates with the fact that north Kerala is the most underdeveloped part of Kerala with the angst being channelised into political struggle and entrepreneurship coming from the need to survive in face of neglect from the government (first from the far off Madras Presidency and later from the far off government in Trivandrum.)
Also, Kerala had a different set of social groups that had influence on society. It was political-oriented former-militia caste of the Nairs that was powerful in Kerala. Their tendency indeed would have been to find political/social solutions to the problems faced rather than enter into money-making (Finance indeed was monopolized by Tamil Brahmins, Konkani Brahmins and later Christians.)
Attacking the remittance-dependent Kerala Model is akin to attacking the growth of the software industry and its ancillaries. I am guilty of the latter but the fact of the matter is that the outcome is still benevolent to the people. The excellent social indices are not just the products of remittances. Culture, traditions and good administration by the erstwhile Kings also played a role. Kerala has always had strong links to the outside world, sometimes stronger than to the hinterland from where all the attackers came. Kerala grabbed the opportunities provided by the Oil Boom in the Middle East simply because it already had the cultural and trade links. At the end of the day the people in Kerala have a much better standard of living than the rest of the country. It’s been a good run.
My comment was a bit haphazard all over the place thing. Anyway I have never believed that the Kerala Model can be replicated elsewhere. Latin America is a good example of how it can all go wrong and it still can happen in Kerala. One big difference between Latin America and Kerala is that unlike Latin America and more like Japan, S. Korea and Taiwan, Kerala has had land reforms/redistribution which completely broke down feudal structures. This has been one of the basic necessity for future economic development.
Dakshina Kannada reminds me of Canara Bank. I have heard people say that when this bank was private it used to mostly recruit Konkani Brahmins. Many would get jobs right out of college while people from other groups sat idle. Nationalization was the best thing to happen. It broke down these caste barriers and spread the benefits of such organizations to the wider society thus building a stake for all social groups in economic development and nation building.
1) Konkanis are very much a part of DK’s culture. Just because they came from Goa some centuries ago, it does not affect the argument. I am not making an argument about genes, but about the culture of the pace.
2) In addition to the Konkanis and the Shettys, Shivalli Brahmins too have an entreprenuerial culture. A comment at the IndianEconomy post tells me that Muslims too had some aspect of trading culture, but I have no personal knowledge of that. (I am originally from DK, but have never stayed there. )
3) No one is criticising the remittance based model of Kerala. They are just pointing out that growth from remittances cannot be credited to enlightened government policies. I am happy to say the same about the software industry.
4) About Canara Bank – true, but broadening the patronage network from Konkani Brahmins to all employees is hardly a good example of nationbuilding.
Good points.
1) The Konkanis are still outsiders from the local Tulu Brahmin perspective (just as Tamil, Tulu & Konkani Brahmins were outsiders in Kerala even after being there for more 400 to 800 years). It’s a peculiarity of Kerala and Tulu Brahmin hierarchical rules. So non-Brahmin Tamils have very much mixed in with the locals in Kerala in Karnataka. I put forth this point to show why people outside the establishment have to build their own livelihoods. Its like the Quakers and Jews in Europe. This tradition then was maintained and this network was useful when capitalism replaced feudalism. Kerala and Dakshina Kannada have different social mixes and it shows.
2) Kerala Christians have an entrepreneurial culture. They were the designated caste traders in Kerala and were in a good position to take over when the change to capitalism occured. Then there are Muslims and some small Hindu castes. I just thought that you generalized the people of Kerala. There are pockets are small-scale industries too. People in some parts are known to be extremely entrepreneurial. The enormous power of labour unions does restrict their growth though.
3) Mostly agreed. It was more cultural and the emphasis on education etc came out of this cultural instinct rather than a deliberate policy. Without the underlying culture, the policies might fail. It also has to do with the long tradition of trade with foreign nations that in some ways broke the north Indian Hindu tradition of not directly dealing with foreigners. In my opinion, this was because of the need to obtain capital for war.
4) Canara Bank was just one step in the destruction of the old order. It was Indira Gandhi who undertook this not Nehru who pretty much built the ‘self-reliance’ model on the demands of the local industrial tycoon. (refer to the work of Vivek Chibber of NYU)
I just think you have compared a specific experience to a bigger generalized one. What about Coimbatore Model? or Vizag Model?
The remittances have been both a boon and a bane. The thuggish ‘labour unions’ survived only because people wealthy enough to pay them off rather than take the trouble of resisting their demands. As the remittances reduce, we might see a rearrangement of the social order.
Again, no quarrel with you. Just clarifying towards the more specific from the general.
Oops! That was too long. No more comments. 🙂