Kripa - Kerala Model Development

Kerala Development Model - IV

So, what can Malayalees do make Kerala a better place? What can Malayalees do to give its youth a chance in life within Kerala, so that they don't have to exile themselves away from their family? How can we balance fundamental fairness and compassion along with competitiveness and increased standard of living? I believe that any ideology should be subserviant to the greater goals of society and the environment. Capitalism, or socialism should be for the benefit of the society. We need to be sufficiently pragmatic and at the same time, maintain our compassionate character. The tide should lift all the boats. Everybody should get a chance. So, who is preventing us from doing all these?

I think the first thing for Malayalees to do is to get a feeling of themselves in the world. "No civilization has excelled in isolation". We need to compare ourselves with other societies. We are exceptionally good people. Malayalees should be very proud of these things. Every Malayalee child should be told of the good things we do as a society. Because, pride can take a society a long way to excellence and further goodness. Societies (like individuals) with an inferiority complex can never excel. British used this as a strategy and educated people (liberals) in their colonies to inject this inferiority complex. Never mind the fact that they never want to discuss about the hundreds of billions of dollars they have looted from countries like India and the untold miseries they have created throughout the rest of the world. Indian liberals may tell us that everybody else is good and we are not. That is total crap. We may have done some very bad things in the past. Probably, caste system is the greatest evil India has seen. With all the evils of this in mind, let me put this worst evil in perspective. Brahmins or any other caste never mass murdered other castes. How many societies have not done genocides? What is the worst thing a human being commit against another human being? Killing him/her. Next worst crime may be raping a women. How many murders (per 1000 population or so) might Indians have done in the past several thousands of years? Compare this with any European (or US) nation. What did Europeans do in Latin America and Africa? Now, as far as I think, every other fact comes secondary to this basic statistic. Only a few places comes to match India (China being one, ie. until it became a modern republic.)

Christianity came to India about 2000 years back. May be India is the most peaceful place as far as Christianity is concerned. Hindus didn't commit genocide against Christians nor did Christians did the same against Hindus (all of them Indians, by the way). (Portugese, like typical European invaders, did some evil things in Goa under the banner of Christianity, but on a smaller scale.) Some Jews escaped to India/Kerala to escape persecution. They lived there (still some live there) without much problem for generations and generations. Parsis also came to India and found refuge in India and they still live in India. In the recent history, Buddists escaped China's invasion of Tibet and found refuge in India. What about the 10million Bangladeshis who ran away to India in 1971? What about the Sri Lankan Tamils coming as refugees.

But we need to be extremely proud of the good things we had/have. We will not understand the extent of the goodness of Kerala/India, until we realize that not many places have done as good as India. Apart from the 1947 (Indo-Pak division, which was again an ideological division), India never has had, in my knowledge, any large scale ethnic violence. The current day diversity in India is a direct result of this culture of tolerance. For example, the idea of multicultural society is largely a post-WWII idea as far as Europeans are concerned. Look at the composition of other societies and compare with India. It is this thousands of years of tolerance that made India so diverse.

Now let me go some issues like economic development and compare Kerala with other societies.

conitnued...

By Haridas

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX