PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

NEW DELHI, 3 September 2005             

FLIPSIDE TO GOD’S OWN COUNTRY

By Radhakrishna Rao

Kerala, which runs along the south-western tip of India as a green ribbon, compares well with many advanced countries of the world in terms of health standards, life expectancy, education and family planning. This densely populated State with near total literacy has an excellent and well-endowed network of Government hospitals and Public Health Centres (PHC).Its birth rate at 21 per 1000, as well as the infant mortality rate is the lowest among all the Indian states.

Sociologists and development strategists around the world have been holding out Kerala as an excellent example of superior quality of life under difficult conditions. In fact, it was the land reforms initiated by the first Communist-ruled Government in Kerala during the 1950s that conferred property right on the under privileged sections of the society. Thus, creating an environment for promoting an egalitarian socio-economic order.

But then not every thing is hunky dory for the State. While the massive migration of Keralites to Gulf countries since mid-1970s did help bring sudden prosperity to a small section of the society, it also unleashed many social ills in the State, known for its high level of political consciousness and social awareness. Thanks to the wealth the Gulf remittances have spawned, Kerala has now earned the dubious distinction for its highest per capita liquor consumption in the world. In fact, liquor consumption in the State has become a status of social prestige. It is not uncommon in a family for the wife to pour the liquor in the glass for her husband.

The Gulf migration has also brought in its wake stress and strain in the families left behind to fend for themselves in the absence of male members. According to psychiatrists, the stress coping capability and tolerance of the population in the State has suffered a serious setback due to rapid urbanization, collapse of the joint family system and sudden increase in incomes owing to the Gulf boom. According to Health Action for People (HAP), a Non-Government Organisation (NGO), the State’s female suicide rate in the world has bypassed even Sri Lanka’s, which had hitherto topped the table.

Clearly and apparently, Kerala continues to be the “suicide capital” of the country with a rate touching thrice the national average .As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the State’s suicide rate last year was 30.6 per cent per 1,00,000 population whereas the national  average  is around 11 per cent. According to HAP sources, even young mothers in the age group of 25-35, who have children, commit suicide leaving the children destitute.

As observed by psychologists, literacy has made people more cognitive-oriented in that the people have intellectual reactions to their frustrations rather than emotional ones. The protective mechanism of emotionalism works as a sort of catharsis resulting in the frustration being dissipated. According to Dr. Elizabeth Vadakkekkara, who runs a suicide-counselling centre at Thiruvananthapuram, suicides related to causes other than the “Gulf connection” too have surfaced.

HIV is one of them. Several families silently commit mass suicide unable to bear the ignominy if one of the members contract AIDS. “We have had some very bitter experiences handling some cases,” she asserted. Increasing consumerism, financial problems, family conflicts, alcohol and drug abuse, adolescent problems even an impulsive reason such as failure in the examinations continue to dominate  the causes of suicides. Apart from female suicides, Kerala has registered the maximum number of family suicides, closely followed by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh

Growing consumerism and crass materialistic aggrandisement has failed to give a fillip to the process of industrialisation in the State. For most of the good consumed come from other States .With both agriculture and industries in a state of stagnation, only Gulf remittances help keep the economy going. In fact, in many cases economic ruination brought about by growing consumerism has been cited as one of the reasons for suicides.

A study by research scholars at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) at Thiruvananthpuram pointed out that migration of Keralites to Gulf countries had resulted in the emergence of “replacement migration”, wherein migrant workers dominate the labour market in the State There is a grievance that by accepting low wages, outside workers are taking away a lot of the work which legitimately should have gone to the Malayalee workers. 

On the other hand, high levels of remittances continue to create a gulf between the families having members working in the Gulf countries and those working locally. “The co-existence of high Gulf incomes with subsistence income families has aggravated the painful paradoxes in the Kerala model,” said Sivasankar, the District Collector of Malappuram. According to him, “the only way to tackle the distortion in the income spread is to harness remittances to productive investment, instead of conspicuous consumption or real estate”.

In the ultimate analysis, the Gulf remittances have proved as much a boon as a bane.  Indeed, ‘God’s Own Country’ seems to have lost its soul to the depredations of Mammon. In addition, the State continues to pay a heavy price for falling prey to consumerism, westernisation, cultural debasement and a host of family-related and societal problems. If things continue to slide, not even God can save God’s Own Country! -- INFA

(Copyright India News and Feature Alliance)