State Number 1? Who are we fooling?

Picture this. A city in Kerala boasts of the first shopping mall in India, long before mall-mania caught up even in metros. But decades later, while every other city and town has opened up to the idea of providing better service, more choices, and higher quality products to its consumers, Kerala painfully lags behind, despite its initial headstart. Sometimes I feel that malayalis have failed to understand the meaning of "service". This lag pans across almost all the sectors and indices one can think of, be it healthcare, womens empowerment, education, agriculture, and pretty much every positive indicator of progress and development.

Ofcourse, one could argue and list out the number of new "shopping malls" that have come up in Thrissur or Trivandrum. A new "mall" that opens in Kerala, just for example, will inevitably have an "Ammus Fancy Store", a "Pretty Ladies Center", and a "Shanthi Bakery". Add to it a "Kailas IT and Communications Center" which sells mobile recharge cards and provides photostat services, and "Sheetal Multicuisine Restaurant" which will have chicken fried rice and chilly chicken in the menu.

Alright, now thats a wee bit of an exaggeration (just a little bit of humor, so the sensitive ones out there, please dont take it to heart) but the point is, despite headstarts and huge "first" advantages, we have literally fallen back on almost all fronts and stagnated. As citizens, we seldom have choice and continue to be stuck with whatever is thrust upon us. And without the power of choice, we can never call ourselves empowered or progressive.

The most classical example is of the Technopark in Trivandrum, which was claimedly India's first IT park, started in 1994. But 14 years later, how far behind other states are we in terms of generating IT jobs and revenues? (Its great to see that finally we are picking up pace and increasing our IT exports. But vultures in the form of politicians and unions are ominously waiting to fleece the industry and ruin the new-found pace.)

Or take the example of Tourism. While Kerala Tourism has done exceedingly well and created a real good avenue for catapulting our state in the international tourists map (we almost made it), I can sense a decline over the last couple of years. Its partly due to lack of infrastructure keeping pace, and partly due to the attitude of the people. I have seen how harassed tourists are in Kerala. Whether it is by professional beggars or touts selling "collections", or auto/taxi walas trying to fleece them, or punks trying to tease the women, or the infamous year-long hartal festivities, it all adds up.

Last week at the Cochin airport I could see a airport security person really tormenting a foreigner couple, shouting in Hindi at him to keep his cellphone in the bag for Xray screening, while the couple were helplessly fumbling not knowing what to do. The other officers and officials at the airport, most of them malayalis, just giggled and stood watching. I spoke to the couple and they were all praises about the wonderful state that we have. But they also mentioned how a few of the people can really cast a negative shadow on the overall great experience and beautiful state that we have. They also mentioned how disorganized the tourism experience in the state is, despite its huge publicity and hype, allowing only seasoned travellers manage without getting harassed.

Questions for our politicians: Apart from fleecing and milking any entrepreneur or industry that does well, what has the government done to help our people progress? As soon as tourism started to develop and private players started making progress, the political buffoons have interfered and ensured that they get a large piece of the pie (all in the name of the poor, but what did they really get?). Its the same with healthcare or higher education. 75% of the healthcare in Kerala is provided by private hospitals, but apart from fleecing the hospitals in the name of various taxes and regulations, the government has done nothing concrete or sufficient to promote healthcare on its own. Similarly for higher education, instead of ensuring that the private players maintain a standard, our politicians were only interested in making sure that their parties and leaders get their coffers filled. In the process, they have made sure that the sector has been ruined.

Questions we should ask ourselves: Isnt it time we felt a bit ashamed of electing such inefficient people, year after year? How has our much-acclaimed 100% literacy, best in India health indices, best in India education indices, and other ratings that we rant about at the drop of a hat, helped us as a state? Have we really been able to take advantage of them or made any genuine progress since then? Or for the least, have we, as a community, been able to refine our behaviour and attitude? We are failing to provide a good environment and congenial atmosphere even to our own children, and they are left with no choice but to go elsewhere to learn or earn a living comfortably, and live a better life. And worst, we have now begun to see them, quite easily, as a separate group who dont belong to us. Now, that is a very ominous trend.