By Dr. Sawraj Singh
Recently, we spent about two weeks in Kerala. Kerala’s model of development seems to be working much better than Punjab’s model. Many Punjabis who visit Kerala are very impressed by Kerala’s progress and have told us that we must go there to see the difference. The feeling among Punjabis seems to be unanimous that Kerala is doing much better. Generally, people feel that Kerala’s development is better planned and organized. They also feel that Kerala is much cleaner. The difference between Kerala and Punjab, in a broader sense, represents the difference between Northern and Southern India.
Punjab used to be much ahead. However, in 2011, Kerala’s per capita income became larger than that of Punjab. Kerala now leads India in the Human Development Index, literacy rate, as well as in female to male ratio. There are more women in Kerala than men while in some districts of Punjab and Haryana the gender ratio is less than 900 girls to 1,000 boys. Education and health care resources are much more evenly distributed throughout Kerala than Punjab or other northern states where they are heavily concentrated in a few big cities. In Kerala, people do not have to travel long distances to access those resources.
Diversity of crops is very visible in Kerala. Coconut trees, rubber trees, orange trees, banana plantations, tea plantations, spice gardens, and bamboo plantations make Kerala look so green and beautiful. In Punjab, more than 90% of the area under cultivation (AUC) has wheat and paddy (rice) crops. Not only does crop diversity add to the beauty of the state, farmers also yield much more income per acre than from wheat or paddy. Kerala seems much more committed to maintain its greenery. If a road needs to be widened, then it has to be done with the least damage to the trees. Similarly, if a new home is to be constructed on a plot that has old growth trees, the home can only be built by incorporating the trees into the landscape and they cannot be cut down. In Punjab, trees are cut down years before the roads are actually widened.
We did not see marriage palaces in Kerala. Marriage palaces have unfortunately become an important part of the landscape in Punjab. The institution of marriage has become much more commercialized in Punjab. The marriage ceremony in Kerala is much simpler than in Punjab. Marriages in Punjab have become an occasion to show off and to party. The number of parties associated with a Punjabi marriage keeps growing. In some marriages, there are seven to eight different parties. People are spending 1,000 to 5,000 rupees per plate in these parties. In Kerala, people spend that money to give gold jewelry to their daughters. Unlike the money spent upon expensive catering and dining, the daughters can use the gold in the time of need.
People with whom we talked about Kerala’s future, seemed very optimistic about Kerala’s future. They told us that Kochi is soon going to replace Bangalore as the IT center of India. Kochi is going to increase its ship building capacity by many folds and the Kochi Metro public transit system is under construction. In Punjab, it is not common to see such enthusiasm about the future. One of the reasons for the growing problem of drug addiction in Punjab is that people, particularly the youth, are not optimistic about its future. Kerala does not seem to be facing the drug addiction problem that Punjab is. Although Kerala has the highest per capita alcohol consumption in India, the government and health care response is much better as Kerala is providing more resources for the treatment of alcohol dependence and is moving towards prohibition of alcohol over the next few years.
Immigration has affected both states in different ways. Immigration does not seem to have helped Punjab overall. Some people feel that there is a net outflow of capital from Punjab; people from other states who are working in Punjab send more money to their families than the Punjabis in foreign countries send back to Punjab (foreign remittance). Many working people from Kerala have migrated to the Middle East. One can see the contribution of middle Eastern countries in Kerala’s development; we saw international banks and other buildings built with their money in every city that we visited. Many tourists from these countries help Kerala’s tourism, particularly in the lean months of the summer. In Punjab, one can hardly see any development by Canada, America, England or the other western countries where many Punjabi immigrants now reside. All these countries only seem to be interested in assuring a continuous flow of immigrants to work menial jobs and support their declining fertility rates, particularly of white people.
Our tourist guide told us that many policies which are helping Kerala were started decades ago by Communists—in fact Kerala made history by being the first state in the world to democratically elect a Communist government. All parties are committed to Kerala’s development. No matter which party comes to power, it will continue the development programs started by the previous government. In Punjab, the two major parties seem to be constantly trying to discredit each other. Therefore, development programs started by one party are rarely completed by the other party. Even within a party, one faction is not too kind to the other faction.
If Punjab leads in any fields today, those are the loss of its culture and value system and in adopting decadent aspects of western culture and consumerism.
Dr. Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S. is the Chairman of the Washington State Network for Human Rights and Chairman of the Central Washington Coalition for Social Justice. He can be reached at [email protected].
