The Gulf boom and the Kerala shock

 Worlds Apart

By Bala Menon

It was the dream of an entire population. A few coconut palms and a small house in the middle of some mango and jackfruit trees. Very simple. Like a child's drawing, in fact. 

Composite pic: Courtesy - Mohamed Humaid and Louise Day from Pixabay.

Euphoria

And in the 1970s, almost overnight, as if thousands of apsaras (celestial beings from Indian mythologies) had descended from the heavens, beautiful and low-slung houses began dotting the Kerala countryside. In Chavakkad, near Trichur (today's Thrissur), in central Kerala, also known as Kochu Dubai or Little Dubai, not a single adult male remained. And the money the men sent helped build the dwellings, including one in the shape of a Boeing 707 - wings, tail and all. More cars were sold in Kerala during the 1970s than anywhere else in the country.

Kairali (the poetic name for Kerala) was rich. Euphoria bubbled and spilled over. The shrill voice of left-wing extremism the 1960s was to soon become a whimper.

There is, however, another world. Of Chupran, the pulayan (mostly bonded farm labourers) who awakes with the sun to rush to work in his thamburan's (landlord or lord) fields. And of the calluses on his palms and feet that grow seasonally like paddy plants.

Howling

When the sun sets, he plods homewards along the dusty, winding lanes between the fences of thorn and bamboo that set him apart form the lushness of the land.

He does not hear the wind howling through the thousands of coconut trees, as it has been doing for thousands of years. He neither hears the full-throated songs of thousands of Marxist street volunteers nor the blasts of bombs and swish of swords and daggers as right and left clash in Tellicherry and other towns, He is also impervious to the sound of conch shells of thousands of the same rightists and leftists who climb the Sabarimala hills together to throng at the temple of Lord Ayyappan. And he does not hear the drip, drip of oil money from the Gulf.

Dreaming

The meaning of his life he discovers when he reaches his thatched home, uncorks his bottle of arrack and eats perhaps a little fish and rice. Then he falls asleep, dreaming of the sage Parasurama, who stood on the Gokarna Hills and threw his silver axe and made Kerala rise from the oceans.

Or of the asura (power-seeking beings) King Mahabali who comes visiting the Malayalis every year on Onam (Kerala's beloved festival) day from the nether world to which he was banished by Lord Vishnu for his arrogance (and blessed for his devotion). Nothing in the world can change this.

© Bala Menon. This piece was published as a 'middle' in the Op-Ed pages of the Times of India on Thursday, April 10, 1980. 

(Kerala has changed since the 1970s. Social justice programs have lifted people like Chupran from poverty and the days of big landowners are long gone. Today, Kerala is considered a prosperous state and labourers in Kerala are mostly from the states of Bihar and Bengal.)

A bus ride in the Western Ghats

Rain in the Western Ghats

By Bala Menon

By the time we reached Kasara, a light drizzle had started. We were afraid this would happen and when the sky darkened and the thunder sounded as if somebody was dynamiting the ghats, a devilish thrill began crawling up our necks.

Hissing Stoves

It was seven in the morning and in that massive wood and asbestos shed, looking a little like a mountaineering base camp, some ten burly Sikh truck-drivers sat eating plates of yogurt and steaming potato mash. Five huge kerosene stove hissed powerfully, driving away the cold. The rain drummed on the roof. We drank our coffee and set off by our bus to Panchavati. A Sikh shouted, “Take care. A hill might fall on you.” Our driver hurled some choice abuses - the language of the country’ highways.

Composite picture: From Pixabay

The bus climbed at about 10 km per hour and in the blinding rain, we could see at least six trucks smashed against the mountainside and abandoned along the route.  Rocks lay strewn all over. Above us, some heads of cattle were up the slippery-looking boulders like seasoned rock-climbers. There was not a human being in sight. We felt as if the wind would pluck us from the road any moment and hurl us into the valley. The headlights were ineffective.

 

Ethereal Light

At the highest point, very near the Bhatsai, the rain suddenly disappeared. The light was ethereal with a gold-and-greenish tinge. Down below, we could see big black clouds assaulting smaller peaks. It looked like a sharp pencil sketch. Far away, a bigger hill stood like a lonely sentinel, its ears cocked to the echos rumbling on the plain.

Now a zig and a zag and we were out in the rain again for two hours until the bus slid down to Igatpuri on the other side of the ghats. Then the clouds chased us all the way to Nasik.

Massive Statue

It was also raining in the brown hills of Trimbakeshwar, 28 km from Nasik, where the Godavari bursts into this world and pitter-patters provocatively into Panchavati. 

Panchavati, where the waters of the Godavari are trapped in concrete tanks called Ram Kunds, where priests are thicker that flies at a sweetmeat shop and where half-naked pilgrims abound, was bright and colourful - with a massive red statue of Hanuman benignly supervising the ritual bathing and immersions. 

This article was published earlier as a 'middle' in the Op-Ed pages of the Times of India, Mumbai, in the late 1970s.

Is there a population problem?

 Anti-View

The Population Bogey - A Malthusian Myth

By Bala Menon

A pot-bellied, prosperous businessman points an accusing finger at the swollen stomach of an emaciated, pregnant woman. And thus a myth is created, publicized and accepted. That her swollen stomach is the cause of all the known ills in the country. This myth must be shattered.

In fact, in a large country such as ours (India), there is not even a remote threat that the population will assume an uncontrollable dimension, even in the distant future. We have just about 210 persons per square mile. Compare this to the population densities of the affluent nations. The Netherlands has 990 persons, the United Kingdom 589 and Japan and Belgium about 500 per square mile. 

Where then is the population problem in India? In the minds of pot-bellied businessmen and their gargantuan representatives. So make a hullaballoo, raise a bogey and point accusing fingers. It is very convincing, especially to a gullible populace. 

Current literature on economics in underdeveloped nations is replete with theorizing on population. All the economists and the eminent acedemicians from our musty universities will reel off statistics, production and distribution figures of economic goods and then make the ridiculous statements. The pregnant woman is the criminal. Mr. Malthus must be thrilled.

There is a trick which these musty professors usually follow. Population is taken as an exogenous or autonomous variable - ie one which affects the economic system without being affected by the system. They conspire among themselves and decide that nothing should be said about the size of the population in relation to the natural resources of the country. Because that would mean the shattering of their own myths. How can they then chuckle their learned chuckles?

Our iron and coal resources are the seventh largest in the world. The problem is just that our industry works at 50 percent of its capacity. Our agricultural yield (of rice) is just 1,800 kilograms per hectare as against 5,600 of Japan or 5,000 of North Vietnam. In short, there is an underutilization of resources. And this is not because of the swollen stomach of a pregnant woman.

There is another group of prophets known as demographers. Their job is to terrify. They conjure up visions of masses of people, swarming about the world, frantically scrounging for food and clothing. This group is perhaps the most imaginative They even say that we will some day ‘hang out of windows like the day’s washing.’

Take food. Even if we follow these Neo-Malthusians into their science fiction adventure in the year 2000 A.D, (they call it a projection into the future) we find their stories incongruous. Dr. C. Taeuber, head of the statistics Branch of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), asserts:  “It is feasible to bring into production some one billion hectares of land in the tropics alone and 300 million acres outside it.” Then, there are the vast oceans to be tapped.

People are an asset to any country. The larger the working population, the larger the productive forces that can be unleashed. This is indisputable. One just has to turn to modern China. This country has harnessed its population - 800 million strong - and transformed an ancient nation into a modern industrial power.

 

There is no population problem in the world today. It is just a myth we believe in. “Already in many countries of Northern Europe, … the air is so still without the sound of young voices … no laughter of children in beautiful gardens … only grown-up men and women in top-coats, sombre, unsmiling, desperately trying to fill the void of  children with their new psychedelic clothes.” Could somebody please tell me which is better?

We have already spent Rs. 318.8 million in India to kill our unborn babies. 

This article was published earlier in the Sunday Magazine, Times of India , February  29, 1976. Pictures from Pixabay.