God's own children...
“Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.“
"22nd is a bus strike," my two year old niece echoes. Welcome to God's own country, where cows graze on the road (the potholes provide abundance of green grass), 24 hartals in 6 months and new governments every five years. Generally when people in other parts of India plan for weekend getaways, my own malluland prepares itself for a hartal (Defining Harthal, "It is mass protest often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, courts of law as a form of civil disobedience"). While the whole world seems to surge ahead, Keralites are enjoying life at a pace of their own.
When we were kids, we would play musical chairs. The whole bunch would keep walking around chairs aligned in a straight line. When the music stopped, we would grab hold of the closest chair. Something similar what happens to the governing body in Kerala. For five years, we hear the opposition hollering out allegations. The ruling party brings about propagandas. Any project takes (at the min) 11 years to complete. Time enough for the party to come back to power. In the end, the voter bank is stupefied and we have another five years of tantrums and dirty politics.
A documentary by BBC News revealed alarming stats. Kerala is India’s tippler country. It has the highest per capita consumption – over eight litres (1.76 gallons) per person a year – in the nation, overtaking traditionally hard-drinking states like Punjab and Haryana. Also, in a strange twist of taste, rum and brandy are the preferred drink in Kerala in a country where whisky outsells every other liquor. Alcohol helps in giving Kerala’s economy a good high – shockingly, more than 40% of revenues for its annual budget come from booze. Talk about being sober.
A state-run monopoly sells alcohol. The curiously-named Kerala State Beverages Corporation (KSBC) runs 337 liquor shops, open seven days a week. Each shop caters on average to an astonishing 80,000 clients. This fiscal year the KSBC is expected to sell $1bn (£0.6bn) of alcohol in a state of 30 million people, up from $12m when it took over the retail business in 1984. Kerala is generally considered to be a state that lacks in discipline. But the orderliness and discipline outside the wine shops are totally amazing. People align themselves in queue and wait for their turn.
Every year visitors from within and outside India flock in to various corners of the state. Be it the clean beaches, rejuvenating Ayurvedic treatment, wildlife in Wayanad or the famed backwaters of Allapuzha - the scope for Industry is high. With 100% Literacy and one of the best education systems in the country (Someone once remarked that if someone threw a stone into Kerala, it would either hit a Doctor or an Engineer - most probably a politician) the state should have been a paradise for Industries. But the farce of the whole matter begins with this:
Swami Vivekananda (considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of modern times) remarked that Kerala was an Asylum, lunatic Asylum. There is reason enough to believe that he was shunned by a large segment of the population, but Vivekananda was an honourable man (any similarity to excerpts from Mark Anthony's speech is pure coincidence).
When we were kids, we would play musical chairs. The whole bunch would keep walking around chairs aligned in a straight line. When the music stopped, we would grab hold of the closest chair. Something similar what happens to the governing body in Kerala. For five years, we hear the opposition hollering out allegations. The ruling party brings about propagandas. Any project takes (at the min) 11 years to complete. Time enough for the party to come back to power. In the end, the voter bank is stupefied and we have another five years of tantrums and dirty politics.
Industries don't make it because of the rebellious nature of the labour laws. If that isn't bad enough, we have Harthals every fortnight. And such days bring the complete state to a standstill. Roads are blocked, offices are closed and buses are pelted with stones. Quite regularly, a few are burnt down as well. The sales of poultry and alcohol rocket sky high. Ironically the reasons for the harthals are quite amazing. It didn't rain on time didn't come on time, (On the destined day of the harthal, it rained pretty heavily), unable to contain swine flu in the state, petrol prices have gone up in the country, blah.. blah... blah... And does it change when the opposition comes into power?? Ahem.
A documentary by BBC News revealed alarming stats. Kerala is India’s tippler country. It has the highest per capita consumption – over eight litres (1.76 gallons) per person a year – in the nation, overtaking traditionally hard-drinking states like Punjab and Haryana. Also, in a strange twist of taste, rum and brandy are the preferred drink in Kerala in a country where whisky outsells every other liquor. Alcohol helps in giving Kerala’s economy a good high – shockingly, more than 40% of revenues for its annual budget come from booze. Talk about being sober.
A state-run monopoly sells alcohol. The curiously-named Kerala State Beverages Corporation (KSBC) runs 337 liquor shops, open seven days a week. Each shop caters on average to an astonishing 80,000 clients. This fiscal year the KSBC is expected to sell $1bn (£0.6bn) of alcohol in a state of 30 million people, up from $12m when it took over the retail business in 1984. Kerala is generally considered to be a state that lacks in discipline. But the orderliness and discipline outside the wine shops are totally amazing. People align themselves in queue and wait for their turn. So the style of living in God’s own country is pretty simple. Eat, sleep, drink and be merry! Work?? Harthals don't allow us to...
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