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Chapparapadavu Panchayat (village) rises to only 75 meters
(244 feet) above sea level. But the foothills of the Western Ghat
Mountains of southern India are rugged, forcing the 27,000 people
of the 70 square kilometers (27 square miles) community to live on
steep slopes and rocky terraces. Despite the difficult terrain,
70% of households farm rice, coconuts, cashew and areca nuts,
rubber, and vegetables. Local accounts claim a 1,200 year his-
tory for the panchayat, which is said to be the home of some
notable medieval scholars and poets.
Chapparapadavu takes its name from the chapparam tree, one
of which stood at a place called Therandi, along the river that
cuts the panchayat in half, carving 11 kilometers (7 miles) of
steep slopes that give way in only one or two places to a landing
where a ferry (kadavu) can be operated. Chapparapadavu means
"the village at the ferry under the chapparam tree" (the one at
Therandi).
It was only in 1985 that the Kerala State Government finally
built a bridge over the river, making possible modern vehicle
access to the panchayat. Now some agricultural products are sold
in the nearby lowland and coastal towns of Taliparamba and
Kannur, but most production remains for local subsistence. At
Therandi itself, a frustrating situation developed when the gov-
ernment built a primary school on one side of the river, compel-
ling students to cross the river on the pole-propelled ferry boat
that holds only 10 people or to walk 3 kilometers (almost 2 miles)
to the bridge and 3 kilometers (2 miles) back to the school --
repeating the trip at the end of classes. The homemade roads
along the sides of the river make even jeep travel barely possi-
ble. Students who could see their school from their homes could
spend 3 hours getting there and another 3 hours getting back.1
In late September 1996, Panchayat President P. P. Balan met
with residents of Ward 2 where he lives. They had been called
to meet as part of Kerala's decentralization campaign in which the
state's new Left Democratic Front (LDF) Ministry, elected in April
1996, had organized what it calls the "9th Plan, People's Plan."
As part of India's 9th national 5 year plan, to run from 1997 to
2002, the LDF in Kerala increased state development grants to
local communities from 5% -- the amount in the first to eight plans
-- to 40%. Communities were asked to hold meetings, air grievanc-
es, plan projects, and take development directly into their own
hands. We saw elements of the plan in action during our visit to
Kerala from December 14, 1996 to January 16, 1997. We inter-
viewed campaign officials, opposition activists, and ordinary
people across the political spectrum in four major cities and in
seven villages where we also witnessed meetings, debates, accom-
plishments and frustrations.2
P. P. Balan told how his grama sabha (ward assembly) heard
speaker after speaker demand the Public Works Department con-
struct a bridge at Therandi to make their lives easier. They had
asked for many years, but never got a positive response. Balan
asked whether the residents, in the spirit of the people's cam-
paign, could build their own bridge. Surprised by a sudden
burst of enthusiasm from some farm laborers who said a locally-
built bridge was possible, Balan found himself obligated to inform
his neighbors that no panchayat funds were available for the
project and he could not say how long it would take for the 9th
plan funds to be released. Having painted himself into a corner,
he suddenly announced he would contribute 500 rupees personally
to the project if others would come forward to help. Three
hundred households put together a fund of 6,000 rupees -- about
$200 or 76% of one per capita income in the region.3
The first meeting to plan the construction was held in the
Kumaran Asan Reading Room -- one of Chapparapadavu's 8 village
libraries, this one named after a poet famous in Kerala for his
passionate denunciations of the caste system.4 "The ward mem-
bers said they could build a bridge as wide as a foot path. They
could not build a structure to hold vehicles. Even then, the big
problem was to drive in the piles," recalls Balan.5 Then farm
laborer Kolangarakath Kumaram rose to speak. "I know how to
do it," he told the assembly. With his friend Puthiyaveettil
Govindan, also a laborer, both with only primary school educa-
tions, he described how he had often watched the Public Works
machinery drive piles. He thought they could make a home-made
pile-driver.6
They poled the ferry across the river, dragging a coir
(coconut fiber) rope, marked with a knot at each 5 meters (16
feet). At each knot they took the depth of the river in the dry
season, finding 2.5 meters (7 feet) to be the greatest depth.
Local households donated 32 coconut tree trunks, two for each 5
meter stretch of the 85 meter (276 feet) long rope. Working from
boats, Kolangarakath hung a 200 kilogram (440 pounds) wood
block on a pulley from a 10 meters (33 feet) high tripod of
coconut tree trunks. Volunteers held the tree trunks under the
block, the block was released, and slowly each pile was pounded
into the river bed. Runners, supports, the bridge floor, and
railings were added with wood from areca nut, coconut and other
trees donated by households and fashioned at a local sawmill.
After 25 days of the volunteer labor of 402 people, the Chappara-
padavu "people's bridge" was complete. Immediately, 500 to 1,000
people were crossing daily. Bicycles and motorbikes can be
walked across along with pedestrians. The bridge is functional
for 7 months of the year, but is submerged under the monsoon
waters the other 5 months. When we crossed the bridge on 7
January 1997, accompanied by local musicians and hundreds of
flower-bedecked school children, the local press came to Chappar-
apadavu; we may have been the first western visitors since colo-
nial times. P. P. Balan and other local residents used every
interview to call for a Public Works permanent bridge. They are
still waiting.
Ninth Plan, People's Plan
Kerala's decentralization program is probably the largest of its
kind in the world at present. Three million people, 10% of the
state's population, took part in the grama sabhas, or local assem-
blies, that aired complaints and identified the major problems in
their villages and urban neighborhoods in September and October,
1996. Imagine 1.8 million New York metropolitan area residents
meeting for 6 hours, arguing, and electing problem-solving
working groups to plan strategies for overcoming local problems.
Imagine thousands of them continuing to meet for weeks to
hammer out local plans for which a massive portion of federal and
state funds would be allocated. Imagine technically trained re-
tired people in their communities forming associations of experts
to help make the plans technically sound. Imagine all these
people doing all this work for nothing more than bus fare and
lunch. According to proponents of Kerala's program, people
"have to be activated for the new democratic project to improve
their daily lives." They should "create a new development cul-
ture" that is democratic, participatory and that transcends politi-
cal parties often prone to sabotaging development programs for
short-term election goals.7 Government is to become more dyna-
mic and more accountable. State Planning Board member and 9th
plan activist T. M. Thomas Isaac says of the campaign, "we're
getting the bureaucrats out of their offices, getting them to work
with the people."8
Kerala's democratization is but one variety of a larger struc-
tural change taking place in India. With that nation's 73rd and
74th constitutional amendments, states were required to delegate
29 general administrative functions to lower level bodies, along
with some taxation powers to finance them. The precise nature of
the devolution of central powers was left to the states to deter-
mine, creating a wide range of plans, some of which may be more
state or district bureaucracy-empowering than people-
empowering.9 Kerala's left activists decided the amendments were
a perfect device for trying to create genuine local democracy in
which ordinary people would see the main empowerment.
No new layer of bureaucracy is being created to implement the
9th plan. Only one new group has been set up, the "High Level
Guidance Council," an advice-giving and public relations body,
headed by E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the venerable 88-year-old
leader of the Kerala branch of the Communist Party -- Marxist or
CPM, and including all living former Chief Ministers of Kerala
from all political parties. Chapparapadavu Panchayat President P.
P. Balan is a member of India's Congress Party; his enthusiasm
for the 9th plan campaign overrides his opposition to the Left
Front Ministry led by the CPM.
Methala
Midway from Chapparapadavu to Kerala's southern border,
Methala Panchayat lies near the Arabian Sea. It lays claim to the
Cheraman Juma Masjid, India's oldest mosque said to be built in
629 A.D. Much of the original mosque is preserved inside an ex-
panded modern structure. Moslems make up 20% of Kerala's
population. Just 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) distant in neighboring
Kodangallur Panchayat is the site where St. Thomas is said to
have landed in India in 52 A.D. to found one Christianity's oldest
communities. A cathedral, religious study center, and ice cream
parlor have been built around a vault in which one can view a
relic of Thomas's left thumb bone. Like Moslems, Christians are
also 20% of Kerala's people.
In contrast to Chapparapadavu's Congress Party majority,
Methala is a leftist panchayat. Pro-soviet, Pro-Chinese, and
various other Marxists run the local government. Intraleft hostil-
ity has always been a problem, especially in Methala's (and Kera-
la's) activist trade unions. But in 1987, mutually hostile unions
from the two major Communist parties, the Congress Party, and
the Muslim League found common ground in a volunteer project to
build a bus terminal.10
Nandini is a middle-aged, low-caste widow. She and her 12-
year-old daughter Abherma were homeless until the 9th plan cam-
paign reached Methala. The campaign training manual for the
grama sabhas clearly stipulates that people should not use the
assemblies to bring up personal problems, but Nandini's despera-
tion combined with her ignorance of the manual to bring on an
emotional appeal for a house. Ignoring the training manual, the
assembly spontaneously voted to organize a collection which
brought in 12,000 rupees and several hours of volunteer labor
from unionized construction workers to build the two women a
simple, one-room house with a stone floor and a tile roof. Their
new house stands across a temple pond from a Maharajah's palace
complex which the 9th plan organizers hope to turn into a mu-
seum.
Nandini is not the only homeless person in Methala. Along the
state highway at the edge of the panchayat, 16 squatters' huts
crowd together. Without running water or toilet facilities, the
huts line up like boxcars, leading to their local name: the "train
colony." Almost all are from the lowest castes. Methala's devel-
opment seminar designated new housing for the 251 squatter fa-
milies of the panchayat as the number one priority of its local
development plan. Because the Kerala 9th Plan Campaign trans-
fers 40% of the state plan over to the panchayat, such a decision
is possible. The new housing is to be an apartment complex next
to the bus station. A coalition of all the trade unions in Methala
has volunteered to provide free skilled labor to build the com-
plex. A publicly owned swamp next to the bus station will be
drained and landscaped to house the project. Ninth plan organiz-
ers have appealed to communities to add 25% to government alloca-
tions in the form of monetary contributions or volunteer labor.
Across Kerala hundreds of thousands of people built clinics,
repaired roads, dredged canals, and painted schools on November
1 1996, the 40th anniversary of Kerala State, declared as "reha-
bilitation day" by the LDF government. Methala activists hope to
continue the one-shot event to make homelessness and squatter
communities a thing of the past. Other local actions include
cleaning several mosquito-infested canals in low-caste fishing
communities and developing cooperative vegetable gardens and
marketing institutions to counteract the high price of vegetables
imported from other parts of India.11
Low-tech, High-tech and Community Idealism
Methala's version of the campaign illustrates a wide range of
approaches to development. Along with the housing program is a
campaign to raise a "love fund," to finance medical care and other
emergency needs of the poorest residents. Another plan is for a
quarterly anti corruption magazine in which all project expen-
ditures will be explained to citizens. Some young computer spe-
cialists have formed a worker-owned software company that de-
signed, "Pharm-assist," a program in Malayalam, the language of
Kerala (and the reason Kerala's people call themselves "Ma-
layalees,) for hospitals to use in monitoring dispensing of medi-
cines. A larger all-Kerala project now underway plans to install
a computer and television-capable monitor in every panchayat to
make possible both local database management and local satellite
reception of education programs in science, math, and English.
Email capabilities would allow village offices to communicate their
problems and demands instantly to central state offices -- and
receive broadcast messages from them. CD-ROMs would help
village teachers prepare discussion questions around state-based
educational programs. A several-panchayats pilot project is
already starting, based in part, 9th-plan fashion, on volunteers.
Kerala may become the first state in India with complete village
electronic "connectivity."12
The 9th Plan Unfolds
Five stages make up Kerala's 9th plan.13
Stage 1. Ward assemblies. The Grama Sabhas (ward assemblies)
took place in September and October 1996 in all 14,147 wards of
the panchayats and urban neighborhoods in Kerala. As we noted
earlier, about 3 million people attended these assemblies. Sound
trucks, processions, and street theater created a festive at-
mosphere, but a serious note was added when campaign organiz-
ers delivered written invitations to each household in their ward,
asking their participation. Some panchayats developed innovative
methods of mobilization, such as a development quiz in the
schools, or a coconut oil lamp procession the night before the
meetings.14
From 50 to several hundred persons attended in each ward.
After some introductory speeches, people were encouraged to
speak up about the problems in their ward. Meetings began at
noon and lasted in many panchayats well into the evening. Par-
ticipants broke down into 12 topic groups, assigned to 12 areas of
local development as required by the state organizers:
1.Agriculture and irrigation
2.Fisheries and animal husbandry
3.Education
4.Transport, energy, and markets 5.Industry
6.Housing and social welfare
7.Public health and drinking water
8.Culture
9.Women's welfare
10. Cooperatives
11. Welfare of Scheduled [former untouchable]
Castes/Scheduled Tribes
12. Resource mobilization
Activists we spoke to in December 1996 recalled the difficulties
of the grama sabhas: people were eager to complain about the
lack of roads, medical facilities, housing quality, irrigation and
the like, but most wanted to join only the groups on industry or
on transport, energy, and markets. P. P. Balan recalls this
difficulty in Chapparapadavu: "At first everyone thought devel-
opment means roads and industry. We had to push people to get
them interested in the other groups, but once they started talk-
ing together, they found they had many complaints and lots of
ideas in all the areas."15 In what organizers call "semi-struc-
tured" discussions, each topic group listed areas of concern and
suggested one immediate project that could be carried out with
voluntary labor.
Panchayat Development Reports
Each topic group elected 2 representatives for the next stag,
the Development Seminars. But first all the group members
engaged in an intermediate activity: to collect data from village
and district offices, interview elderly residents about local his-
tory, and put together a printed book with all their information
and ideas.
Each of Kerala's 991 panchayats and 54 municipalities has
produced a development report. The reports run from 35 to 200
pages. Many are illustrated by community artists and some contain
detailed histories of their village. Each has a chapter on each of
the 12 task force topics listed above. Reports were printed in
500 to 1,000 copies and bound with often colorful covers. Print-
ing costs were subsidized by private donations, local cooperative
banks, and private businesses, some of which put ads in the
back pages. Some panchayats sold the reports while others gave
them free to interested persons. Panchayat development reports
have become a great source of pride in many Kerala villages.
The local drafting of a local report -- even with some tables that
don't add to 100% and other errors -- has given people a sense of
confidence that they really can plan their own projects. At
Calicut City Hall on January 9, 1997, we attended a public exhibi-
tion where about 350 of the reports were attracting a great deal
of public interest. The development reports were also intended
for the next stage of the people's plan.
2. Development seminars. The 250-300 people elected to the topic
groups reconvened in December 1996 to discuss their development
report. Development seminars took place in movie theaters,
schools, cooperative society halls, Hindu marriage halls, private
or public, donated or rented. Participants received no pay, but
got tea, snacks, and the typical Kerala lunch of twice-boiled rice,
one or two lentil curries, steamed cassava, banana chips, hot lime
or mango pickle, yogurt, fried fish, and fish curry (vegetarians
skipped the fish), all served on the traditional Kerala banana leaf
that makes an ecologically ideal serving device. After lunch, the
working meetings produced a consensus on the lists of problems
and project ideas to be carried forward to the 3rd stage. The
seminars also organized the elected activists into task forces to
carry out the 3rd stage.
Stage 3. The task forces. Each of the 12 subject areas got a
task force to distill the various project concepts into specific
proposals, giving the appropriate technical, cost-benefit, and
time-frame considerations, as well as an assessment of the re-
sources of the local community to carry out each project, empha-
sizing the possibilities for local contributions.
Stage 4. The panchayat plans. In March-April 1997, the exist-
ing elected panchayat boards selected the projects to implement.
The selection process required developing a consensus about
which projects should have priority over which others. As could
be expected, the task forces had come up with many more plans
than could be funded. "Economic planning is about setting prior-
ities," explained State Planning Board member and campaign activ-
ist Dr. T. M. Thomas Isaac. Out of 150,000 project proposals,
less than half would become finalized.
Stage 5. Integration of local plans into a wider, district level
plan. In April, the panchayat plans were forwarded to block and
district level assemblies for further discussion and consolidation
into larger plans. India has neighborhoods grouped into adminis-
trative units called "blocks," in which certain national develop-
ment activities take place. Organizers of Kerala's Ninth Plan felt
these blocks had to part of the process, although they often cut
across panchayat boundaries, creating an administrative maze. At
the district level, the blocks and panchayats finally correspond.
Kerala's 14 districts have put together plans that consolidate the
panchayat and block levels. These 14 plans are to be consolidat-
ed into an overall state plan to which certain state-level projects
will be added. The final stage for the first year is set to occur
in May 1998 in the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram at a state-
wide congress in which each panchayat will send delegates from
its task forces. Even as the congress takes place, the second
year of the 9th five-year plan will be in preparation in the locali-
ties.
Karimba-Meenvallam
Kerala was once an electricity surplus state, but the failure to
construct any new generating sources since 1976 has led to major
industrial losses and consumer inconvenience. By 1990, nearly
half of all domestic consumers received less than 150 volts of the
220 volts needed to run electrical appliances.16 Dependence on
big-dam hydroelectric power installations has meant dependence on
the whims of the Indian monsoon. Not enough water in the
reservoirs means not enough voltage to the power lines. When
the 1997 major monsoon came a week late on June 9, the State
Government was forced to cut power to industries resulting in
thousands of layoffs. Even factories producing oxygen for hospi-
tals had to shut down. The freezer-dependent seafood industry
was hard hit.17 Households across the state had to endure half-
hour power cuts each night called "load-shedding." Although we
found it convivial to sit by candlelight for 30 minutes with our
Kerala friends, parents of children who needed to study felt
otherwise about load-shedding. Even when the power is on,
rural consumers sit by light bulbs as dim as birthday cake can-
dles and people who want adequate voltage (when it's on) have to
invest much of their income in voltage stabilizers. Electrical
power is usually thought of as part of large-scale infrastructure.
Can local communities create electricity on a scale worth the
investment?
Karimba Panchayat is situated in Palakkad District near the In-
tegrated Rural Technology Centre (IRTC) of the Kerala People's
Science Movement (KSSP).18 With 65,000 members, the KSSP is
one of the largest voluntary organizations in Kerala. Starting out
in 1957 as an organization of science writers, KSSP developed into
a mass organization that works to popularize scientific thinking.
In recent years it has become Kerala's most significant environ-
mental organization. KSSP built the campus of IRTC entirely with
private donations; the Centre now functions mainly to create and
popularize participatory, small-scale development projects.
At Karimba, villagers joined with KSSP and several other
organizations to create the Meenvallam ("fishing boat") Small-Scale
Hydroelectric Project. Utilizing the energy of a waterfall in the
steep Western Ghat high ranges near Palakkad, the project is
generating local jobs and will connect the small-scale output sta-
tion to the local grid. Karimba villagers will get some priority in
use of the local current, and the experience gained may be trans-
ferable to the 50 or so other permanent waterfalls in the Ghat
ranges. If enough similar plants can be constructed, startup
costs will decline to as parts can be mass-produced. The Karim-
ba-Meevallam project draws inspiration and direct technical advice
from China, which has built nearly 90,000 such stations since
1950, accounting today for 6% of that country's electrical
supply.19 The Karimba-Meenvallam project is slated for comple-
tion in 3 years.20
Training -- a Key to Successful Democratic Planning
Drawing ordinary people into development planning requires
more than a utopian vision of a better world. Kerala's State
Planning Board activists realized that people would need to know
how to organize and run a meeting, how to draft a report, how to
do at least simple cost-benefit analysis, how to prepare a budget,
how to set up safeguards against corruption -- all sorts of tech-
nical skills. To generate these skills, campaign organizers used
two major techniques: training seminars and recruitment of
educated retirees as expert resource persons.
Each of the five stages of the campaign was preceded by
extensive training at all levels. The training sessions themselves
became part of the publicity for the campaign. Before launching
the grama sabhas, organizers trained 373 state-level trainers for
7 days. These trainees taught 10,497 district level resource
persons who conducted one-day workshops for over 100,000 local
activists. Trainees at all levels received travel costs, snacks,
and meals, but no salaries. We witnessed the 3-day training of
local volunteers for the 4th stage which took place at Calicut on
January 10-12, 1997. The 4,500 volunteers came from panchayats
all over northern Kerala. They attended speeches, workshops,
and "project clinics" from 10:00 am to midnight in the several
buildings of a local high school borrowed for the weekend by the
campaign. Despite planners' goal of at least a 30% female pres-
ence, only 15% of the participants were women. As the campaign
progressed, women were dropping out of leadership positions,
probably because of household and child care chores their spous-
es were not picking up. Even the 15% participation, however,
marks an increase over rates in most unions and other mass
organizations. Of the 29 4th stage trainers in Calicut, 9 (31%)
were women.
A notable feature of the 4th stage training was the convening
of "project clinics." A few panchayats with especially interesting
or advanced projects presented repeating seminars giving detailed
descriptions of their work. In one classroom we heard Chappara-
padavu's bridge team explain with charts and drawings to 60
activists at a time how they did it. Nearby were sessions on
Thrikkunnappuzha Panchayat's "Total Cleanliness Program,"
Thanalur's "People's Health Program," Thykkattusseri's "Tissue
Culture" (lab-based orchids and other plants), Kunnothuparam-
bu's Water Conservation Society, and Madikkai's creation of an
educational complex of primary through high school, along with a
"study festival" to encourage the idea that learning is fun.
Pelicode Panchayat representatives explained their project to
install 100% water-sealed latrines. Peringomvaykkara and Pappi-
nisseri Panchayats each described animal husbandry projects that
included artificial insemination facilities and rabies inoculation.
Many projects involved KSSP activists. Nearly all the projects
included data collection surveys and the survey forms were
shared among the participants. Trainees were thus exposed to a
variety of possible development activities along with concrete tools
to carry them out: instead of learning from government officials
from higher levels, they were learning from "experts" otherwise
like themselves. At the clinics, women were 6 of 69
presenters.21
Life Begins at 55: The Voluntary Technical Corps
One- or 5-day training sessions for ordinary people have lim-
its. Planners are aware that certain projects require expert
knowledge. India has a mandatory retirement age of 55 for those
in public service. Since Kerala's life expectancy is 70, most
Kerala communities have a supply of experts with free time to
give to local development. A special effort is being made to
attract such experts into a "Voluntary Technical Corps" (VTC).
Using the slogan "Life Begins at 55," the State Planning Board
began recruiting retirees to help evaluate and improve the quality
of local project documents in March, 1997. The initial call
brought forth 4,000 volunteers. State-level conventions were
organized for retired bank officers and college teachers who were
considered especially valuable resource persons to help with
project evaluation and write-ups. Contacts were also made with
professional associations of doctors, engineers, and
accountants.22 Willy-nilly, these experts were engaging in fur-
ther education of the task force members by making suggestions
on the project proposals.
Panjal
Most Kerala panchayats are not like Chapparapadavu, Karimba,
or the other exemplary project sites. How has the campaign
affected more ordinary places? Panjal Panchayat lies in the
midlands of Central Kerala along the Bharatapuzha River.23 The
ninth plan campaign has unfolded there without any spectacular
bridges or other projects. The grama sabhas were held on time,
and the participation rate was average. Some activists complain
that not enough young people are becoming involved. The devel-
opment report runs to 100 pages -- about medium length. The
most unusual aspect of the report is its title, "A New Adiyatram."
Panjal was the home of a famous Vedic priest, Itti Ravi Nambu-
diri, who, until his death a few years ago, was one of the last
men in India able to chant the complete "Sama Veda," one of the
four ancient texts of Hinduism. In 1975, Itti Ravi and other
Nambudiri priests conducted an "adiyatram," a rare and involved
Vedic ritual lasting for several days that was filmed by Frits
Staal of The University of California at Berkeley. The Universi-
ty's audio-visual department markets a 30-minute video of the
event as "the oldest religious ritual in the world."24
Panjal activists saw people's participation and the ninth plan as
the new beginning of an old tradition. The symbolism of "a new
adiyatram" is ambiguous, however, since much of an adiyatram is
repetitive and much of the people's participation is in the nature
of by standing. One leftist critic charged that the grama sabhas
and development seminar in Panjal involved too many speeches and
too much audience listening. "You were doing all the talking and
we were only listening. I felt very agitated by this," he told his
ward representative during a heated discussion on the verandah
next to where part of the 1975 adiyatram had taken place.25
Other critics said that key elders had not been approached for
their valuable organizing experience and that the campaign was in
danger of becoming just another government program -- the very
thing it should be avoiding.
The Panjal development report, however, indicates a lot of
serious thinking about local problems. Specific plans are laid for
repair of several canals and ponds needed to make the irrigation
system work more efficiently. Problems of coconut and rubber
cultivation are spelled out. A list of needed repairs and im-
provements on the village high school reflects input from the
teachers and staff. The details of water lines linking up the
most needy areas of the village are given. Sixty-five specific
road repairs are listed, with exact locations and exact improve-
ments: widening, enlarging the curve, reducing the steepness to
prevent accidents. Other proposals call for rerouting electric
lines away from the rice fields to make it safer for tractors to
enter the fields -- which the widened pathways would make possi-
ble. A survey revealed that 70% of houses do not have water-
sealed toilets. Suggestions for installation of high-efficiency cook
stoves and solar-powered street lights (available in India for a
few years) indicate a high level of knowledge among panchayat
activists and the success of the statewide training programs.
Because of Panjal's cultural and historical significance, local
activists have also proposed the construction of a museum with
adiyatram and other artifacts to attract tourists.26 Across India,
religious pilgrimages are a major component of the tourist indus-
try -- a visit to Panjal with its 500-year-old temple and a museum
to the great local singers of the Sama Veda might well be popu-
lar.
Why Kerala?
Why is democratic decentralization taking place in Kerala? One
reason is the achievements of the progressive movements that
have held sway in the state for most of the past 50 years.
Several elected Communist Party and Left Front governments have
carried out the demands of large-scale popular movements leading
to high material quality of life indicators that some development
experts refer to collectively as "The Kerala Model." With an
official per capita income of $180 in 1993 (all-India was $300),
Kerala had an adult literacy rate of 91% (versus an all-India rate
of 48%), life expectancy of 69 for men and 73 for women (all-India
average of 61), an infant mortality of 13 per 1,000 (better than
Washington D.C.; and versus the all-India rate of 80) and a birth
rate of 17 (all-India 29).27 Virtually all additional statistical
indicators such as vaccination rates, maternal mortality, child
labor, nutritional status, access to medical care, and availability
of roads, schools, and other public facilities, show Kerala with a
substantial lead over the rest of India and all similar-income third
world countries. The statistical indicators of the Kerala Model
are the outcome of decades of careful organizing by left wing
activists, enormous sacrifices and dedication by ordinary people,
and the rise of an unusually talented and thoughtful group of
cadre in the unions, peasant associations, women's groups, and
left parties. The state's ecology and general historical back-
ground may also have played a role.28 Kerala's people are edu-
cated, motivated, and aware of their rights and talents. They
have participated in victorious struggles; they are optimistic and
thus potentially mobilizable in a popular campaign. But they are
also worried.
Why This Campaign?
The positive energy and creativity spreading across Kerala's
communities could blind the outside observer to some harsh reali-
ties. Despite its many achievements, the Kerala Model is in trou-
ble. Lagging industrial growth has combined with stagnant
agricultural output to produce low incomes and high unemploy-
ment. Low economic growth has resulted in a series of fiscal
crises for the state government forcing it to reduce public spend-
ing in some of the most cherished areas of the Kerala model:
education, school lunches, subsidized food prices for the poor,
access to medical care. And perhaps 15% of the state's people
have been left out of the model. On top of all these problems,
Kerala faces a major environmental crisis from severe deforestation
in the Western Ghat mountains, leading to soil erosion there and
water logging in lowland areas. Polluted rivers and foreign hi-
tech offshore fishing operations are reducing the fish catch.
And, like every place on earth at present, Kerala faces the
menace of the New World Order with its third world avatar:
structural adjustment.
Capitalism, State Planning, or People's Planning? Kerala in the
Current National and International Context
The New World Order threatens what Kerala intellectual M. A.
Oommen has called "euthanasia for the Kerala Model."29 The one-
power world remaining in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet
Union has hit India particularly hard. As a state friendly to the
Soviet Union, India built its economy partly on Soviet industrial
and scientific aid and on public sector investment. In the 1990s,
World Bank and IMF structural adjustment policies have come to
New Delhi with their typical emphasis on privatization, lowering of
wages and benefits, abolition of protectionist tariffs (that are
essential to many Indian industries at least in the short run),
and general emphasis on production of wealth without regard to
its distribution.30 Kerala's left wing activists recognize that
inevitably they will have to make some compromises with structur-
al adjustment, but they cannot accept its overall terms -- their
right wing political opponents do that already. Furthermore,
they apparently have no intention of handing over most of the
economy to the largest private capitalists whose profit-making
desires are inconsistent with the needs of most of the state's
people. Even now they are struggling with private bankers who
are moving capital out of the state rather than invest in Kerala's
future: the bottom line is that profits and local development do
not automatically mesh.31
What about national and state-level planning? Since indepen-
dence in 1947, India has engaged in vaguely Soviet-style 5-year
plans and Indian states have followed suit. Even before the
collapse of European socialism, however, many Kerala leftists
realized that overemphasis on centralized planning entailed inher-
ent weaknesses. As identified in one 9th plan document, central-
ized planning:32
Degenerated into uncoordinated, mutually exclusive schemes
by various government departments...that did not provide
optimal utilization of resources...
Was bureaucratic and gave people no say in its formulation
or execution...
Led to overlapping programs, duplication and waste of
resources, and laxness in monitoring.
Kerala's Ninth Plan emphasizes coordinated village-level plans
with individual government departments playing subsidiary roles.
Bureaucrats are to become assistants of the people's plan rather
than order-giving officials. Laxness in monitoring is to be re-
placed by what Indians call "transparency," a use of the English
word meaning that all the accounts are visible to everyone who
wants to see them. Transparency makes it possible to use local
community pressure to reduce corruption.
Other reasons for local planning: Kerala's complex geographi-
cal and social diversity means that officials in the capital city
might not know what is best for particular panchayats. And
Kerala's rich history of mass movements and its high level of
education mean that local participation could overcome the bane of
much international participation-oriented development where
democratic structures on paper just become new mechanisms for
elite dominance and exploitation of the poor.
Decentralized planning does not mean complete abrogation of
higher level responsibilities. We see in the extensive training
programs that State Planning Board decentralizers have pretty
clear ideas about how they want decentralization to proceed. But
the ultimate goal is a substantial relaxation of central control and
substantial community empowerment. Ninth Plan theorists T. M.
Thomas Isaac and K. N. Harilal describe the campaign as leading
to:
a system of multi-level planning, where the lowest
unit is allowed to plan and implement everything that
can be performed most effectively at that level and
only the residual is left to the higher levels.33
Fine-sounding words, a fine alternative to over-bureaucratic,
over-centralized, big-government planning of the past -- but
grama sabhas, development seminars, over-55 volunteers, mini
power stations, and people's bridges -- can they really compete
with an unchecked, aggressive new world order of capitalist
bankers and industrialists whose financial and political powers
seem unlimited?
Kalliasseri
Ravan worked for years in a soap factory in Kerala's largest
city of Ernakulam. Now retired, he works on, sharing his tech-
nical knowledge with the 10 women worker-owners of the Tushara
Soap Cooperative. Tushara means "dew," and plenty of it is on
the ground in the early morning when the women start their
soap-making on the stage of the outdoor community theater lent
them by Kalliasseri Panchayat free of cost. Some days they make
soap; other days they go through the community house-to-house
to sell their product. "Our product is not that bad, and neither
is the sympathy from our neighbors who often buy it," said one
of the women, who looked exhausted when we arrived at their
workshop at 3 p.m. Stirring chemicals in vats, carrying drums
of materials, packaging soap flakes, and selling door-to-door make
up a hard 6-day work week, but at least in Kalliasseri a fair
amount of inexpensive day care is available: costs run from
nothing to 15 rupees per day. The panchayat, a leftist
stronghold for decades, has some of the most extensive social
services in Kerala, including a health center with 12 beds and 2
doctors, 36 reading rooms and libraries, and several child care
centers, nurseries, and schools.
Kalliasseri is the inspiration for much of Kerala's decentralized
planning effort. Starting in the early 1990s, activists there
created a voluntary organization to promote local development.
Much of the energy came from T. Gangadharan, a 2nd grade
teacher, KSSP activist, CPM member, and panchayat ward dele-
gate, who helped organize the Kalliasseri Development Society.
"TG," as he is now known throughout Kerala, tapped into Kallias-
seri's strong tradition of volunteerism, mutual aid, and mass
organizing to produce several achievements that now inspire part
of the 9th plan campaign. Kalliasseri development volunteers
built an 825 meter (half mile) long canal in one day, draining a
previously waterlogged area of rice fields. They mapped the
resources of their village, reorganized their schools, installed
high-efficiency cook stoves and solar street lights, set up a
shrimp farm in a swamp area, and created dry-season vegetable
cooperatives that generated employment and brought down the
cost of food.34 They are still fighting the Southern Indian
Railways for a road crossing to improve traffic flow near the
village center.
Despite Kalliasseri's many successes, TG thinks they have not
made meaningful progress with women's employment. "We [men]
have to stand with them at first," to bring them out of the home
and into the workplace, he told us.35 Women's work participation
rate in Kerala is one of the lowest in India, but 20% of panchayat
board members are women, probably a high figure for the coun-
try.36 Kalliasseri's Panchayat President since 1995 is Srimati
Janaky Teacher (titles are commonly part of Kerala names), a
woman activist and leader whose dynamism and dedication has
furthered the experiment begun in 1992. Three other women sit
on the 11-member panchayat board. Tushara Soap Cooperative
combines male activism with women's energy and skills. Srimati
and the men pushed for a grant from an Indian national program
called "Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas
(DWCRA)." DWCRA provides low-interest loans for cooperatives
of 10 or more women. Subsidies are available for technical train-
ing. Amounts vary by the project. The Tushara Soap Coopera-
tive got enough to start up, but the going is rough and in
January 1997, the women were earning a salary of only 15 rupees
($.43) a day, one-fourth of the wages of an agricultural laborer
and just enough to cover day care above the nursery level. But
they get work all year -- agricultural laborers get work only 100
days or less -- and when their set-up loan and their investments
in some machinery are paid off, they will be able to increase what
they pay themselves.37
At Samatha Printers, a similar story can be told. We watched
them printing bus tickets. The "electric" press must be hand fed
one sheet at a time and the wages are only 10 rupees per day,
but again it is permanent work, it is their company, and when
their loans are repaid they can raise their wages. Six of the
original women founders married and left the workshop, but their
investment still brings a small return on the shares. A more
established nearby printing cooperative provided their training;
they say they have no shortage of orders.
At the farthest northern edge of Kalliasseri 10 women bake
spicy dipped peanuts, spiral cookies, and sugar dipped wheat
flour chips. Their high-efficiency "oven" was developed by
KSSP; more like a wok than an oven pan, they fry as much as
they bake. Like Tushara Soap, they go house-to-house with
their DWCRA-financed snacks. They average 25 rupees per day
from the bakery.
But these 10 women also run a cooperative jasmine, coconut,
and pepper farm from which they generate additional income.
Theirs is the original women's cooperative, founded in Kalliasseri
in 1992. They would like to upgrade the farm, but the land is
owned by the State Department of Industries which could develop
or sell the land at any time, destroying their hard-won fields.
Rumors have it that the new branch of Kerala University will
build dormitories or a library here. Whether the 9th plan cam-
paign can protect them remains to be seen.
Several other cooperatives exist in Kalliasseri. Among the
most important are hand loom centers which export exquisite
draperies to Germany; the women fashion them at foot-pumped
sewing machines for 30 rupees a day. As their skills increase,
wages rise and benefits develop. Because the businesses are
worker-owned, only workers reap the benefits.
Worker-owned and managed cooperatives are the most democrat-
ic form of production and delivery of goods and services.38 If
the 9th plan is about democratic development, Kalliasseri's coop-
erative network suggests a long-term direction. In a recent
development, some of Kalliasseri's cooperatives have begun to sell
each others' products. They already sell to each other. Can a
village-based network of worker-owned cooperatives be built up in
Kalliasseri? Could it happen in other Kerala villages? Could
economies built on worker-owned businesses and democratic plan-
ning of infrastructure and public services become an alternative
to today's exploitative, non egalitarian, bureaucratic, elite-
dominated "New World Order?" Kerala's planners do not dare
think so far ahead, but we who observe their thought-provoking,
courageous efforts from afar should watch for what they can
teach us.
Notes
1. Statistical and historical data on Chapparapadavu come from
the Chapparapadavu Panchayat Development Report, 1996, espe-
cially pages 10, 12, 15-16, and 61-62. Thanks to Mr. G. K.
Thampy of Thiruvananthapuram for the English translation of the
Report.
2. Our research itinerary included the capital city of Thiruva-
nanthapuram and the cities of Thrissur, Kozhikode (Calicut), and
Kannur. We conducted observation and interview research in the
village panchayats of: Pallichal, Balaramapuram, Methala, Kodun-
gallur, Panjal, Chapparapadavu, and Kalliasseri.
3. One Indian rupee was worth about $30 in 1996. The Kannur
District per capita income in 1995-96 -- the latest year for which
a figure is available -- was Rs 7,940 at current prices. The
figure is from GOK 1997:15.
4. George, 1972. See Franke 1996:83-84 for quotes from Asan on
the evils of the caste system and from his teacher, Sri Narayana
Guru, another of Kerala's famous caste reformers.
5. Interview with Panchayat President P. P. Balan, New Delhi 9
December 1996.
6. Kumaram and Govindan's system and the description of the
construction are taken from an account of the Chapparapadavu
bridge prepared for the fourth stage training --Calicut, etc. as
translated by G. K. Thampy and interview notes from our visit to
Chapparapadavu on 7 January 1997.
7. Kerala State Planning Board 1997a:3
8. Interview with Dr. T. M. Thomas Isaac, New Delhi, [ISS
Notes]
9. Oommen 1995.
10.Shaji, 1996:4.
11.Observations and interview notes from our visit to Methala, 4
and 5 January 1997.
12."C-DIT [Centre for the Development of Imaging Technology]
urged to set up resource information sytems," and "Informatics
system to strengthen people's planning." Indian Express, 23 July
1997. Kerala benefits in this endeavor by having a substantial
amount of fiber optic cable already in place and modern telephone
hook-ups in every village. One one-third of Indian villages
generally have at least one direct-dial phone.
13.For overviews of the plan in its five stages, see Krishnaku-
mar. 1996. The campaign schedule. Frontline, August 23,
1996, page 104, and Thomas Isaac and Harilal, 1997.
14.Thomas Isaac and Harilal 1997:55.
15.Interview with P. P. Balan, President of Chapparapadavu
Panchayat, in New Delhi, 9 December, 1996.
16.Parameswaran, M. P. 1990. Kerala's power predicament:
issues and solutions. Economic and Political Weekly 25(37):2089
and 2090.
17.Krishnakumar, 1997:41.
18.For an overview of the history of the KSSP, see Thomas
Isaac, T. M., Richard W. Franke, and M. P. Parameswaran,
1997.
19.Krishnakumar, 1997:42.
20.Specifics on the Karimba-Meevallam project from Kerala State
Planning Board, 1997.
21.Observations at the session and interview with Srikumar
Chattopadhyay, 10 January 1997.
22.Kerala State Planning Board 1997b:67.
23.Panjal is the site of our major research into Kerala's earlier
radical reforms and their impact on the level of village inequality.
See Franke 1996.
24.The video is titled "Altar of Fire." 1977. A 1975 perfor-
mance of an ancient Hindu Vedic ritual. Robert Gardner and
Frits Staal. Berkeley. University of California Extension Media
Center. 45 minutes.
25.Interviews in Panjal, December 29 and 30, 1996.
26.Panjal Development Report and interviews with panchayat
activists on December 29 and 30, 1996.
27.For a summary of the details and qualifications concerning
these statistics, see Franke and Chasin 1994:ii-vii and 11-14; and
Franke and Chasin 1996:3. Washington D. C.'s infant mortality
rate for 1993 was 17.4, and the national US rate for African
Americans that year was 20.6. See U. S. Department of Com-
merce. Economics and Statistics Administration. Bureau of the
Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1996. Table
127, page 93.
28.A brief history of Kerala's achievements and the possible
reasons for them appears in Franke and Chasin 1994. Jeffrey
(1993) gives a more detailed account with a different explanation.
29.Oommen 1994:13.
30.World Bank pronouncements often differ from the effective
policies the Bank promotes. In its most recent India report, for
example, a Bank spokesperson calls for more investment in health
and education, ironically praising Kerala for its progress --
exactly the opposite as the effects of structural adjustment pro-
grams in Africa and Latin America. See The Hindu, 26 August,
1997 for coverage of the World Bank report on India and Franke
and Chasin, 1996 for examples of structural adjustment's conse-
quences in other countries.
31.See Indian Express, 24 July, 1997, for example, for a story
on bankers' resistance to government attempts to get them to
provide more credit to Kerala development projects. An ongoing
dispute centers around the apparent use by banks of Kerala
savings deposits to fund loans in other parts of India where the
returns are higher for the banks.
32.Kerala State Planning Board, 1997b:6.
33.Thomas Isaac and Harilal 1997:53.
34.For more details on Kalliasseri's innovative programs, see
Franke and Chasin, 1994:xvii-xviii, Thomas Isaac et al 1995, and
Thomas Isaac, Franke, and Parameswaran, 1997.
35.Interview with T. Gangadharan, 17 December 1996, Thiruva-
nanthapuram.
36.Computed by us from Bhaskar 1997:WS-14. Bhaskar
(1997:WS-16) found that 54% of female panchayat representatives
came from the left parties.
37.Kalliasseri vignettes from interview with T. Gangadharan,
Thiruvananthapuram, 17 December 1996 and our visit to Kallias-
seri, 8 January 1997. We also visited Kalliasseri in January and
October 1993.
38.For an advanced and large-scale Kerala example, see Thomas
Isaac, Franke, and Raghavan, 1998.
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