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Although the waters have ebbed and a sense of normalcy has returned to Kerala, memories of the devastating floods in late-August persist in public imagination. The deluge, caused by a combination of incessant rains, low reservoir capacity, poor dam management and gradual environmental degradation, is reportedly the worst Kerala has seen since 1924. Yet, amidst the doom and gloom, many people have noticed a perceptible difference in the way rescue and rehabilitation were conducted  demonstrably egalitarian and more importantly, humane and inclusive way.

What was exceptional about the ethical involvement and informed response of civil society to the flood rescue.  Unlike in many parts of India, these operations were not as beset with fractious considerations of religion, caste and class. How can we attempt to explain this thoughtful humanitarian effort at a juncture where religious bigotry and divisive politics seem to have corrupted our understanding of a common good?

Part of this puzzle can be attributed to the oft-quoted, debated and critiqued ‘Kerala model of development.’ It is by now a cliché among development economists and social scientists that Kerala reached parameters of human development by the 1950s, which would place the state among development frontrunners like Scandinavian or European countries. What is doubly remarkable about this achievement is the slower-than-average economic growth and a lower-than-average NSDP that has accompanied this human development. Even in the beginning of the 1900s, Kerala’s life expectancy at birth was 73.3 years. Likewise, Kerala has marched ahead of other states in women’s health and nutritional status—in the 1950s, women were expected to live only a year longer than men, whereas, come the 1990s, women were projected to live close to 5.5 years more than men[1].

This investment in developing human capital without falling into the myopic pit of focussing solely on industry-led economic development has put in place a functioning-yet-rudimentary disaster management system that could mitigate the obstacles faced by mechanisms of formal disaster management response. The development of local institutions, both formal and home-grown, has enabled individuals in Kerala to be sufficiently empowered to take decisions based on an overall social consensus during times of crisis. The development indicators of Kerala were consolidated with the long tradition of mass mobilizations in the state, that include important movements led by progressive social groups, including but not restricted to the Communists. This trend of mass mobilization has facilitated the percolation of a broad, left-leaning social policy at the grassroots level. Several mass mobilizations ensured that holistic development and the triumph of the community over the individual’s requirements was never peripheral to Kerala’s social fabric—a significant part of which was revealed during the flood rehabilitation.

However, the above explanation still fails to explain why advances in human development are likely to make people act in more considerate, humane and equitable ways. To decode the remaining half of the puzzle one needs to look at the actions and contributions of a few other individuals and groups in Kerala. One of the most heart-warming instances of intense public engagement came from the fisher-folk of Kerala who volunteered to help stranded residents in villages and cities. Based on their intricate knowledge of water currents and water bodies, they deployed their boats and risked their own lives to rescue citizens, almost selflessly. At a different level, the Malayalam news media played the role of a facilitator and watchdog, never creating a false alarm or sensationalizing what is veritably a human tragedy, putting public service at the core of their agenda.

This  dimension  of the narrative eludes explanation  in terms of  numbers or statistics but nonetheless needs to be highlighted for its role in building cohesive societies. A long history of mass mobilizations connected to issues of land reforms, caste discrimination and social inequity has engendered a degree of social cohesion and inclusion in ‘God’s Own Country.’ This model of inclusive politics has allowed individuals and groups in Kerala to form a critical consciousness of collective empowerment.  These self-sustaining non-state institutions cannot be evaluated on  their short-term efficacies, their role is in catalysing a communitarian psyche in people, gradually worn out in an insular hardcore economically driven society.

Furthermore, the social investment made by successive governments as well as non-government bodies also resulted in creating a degree of social cohesion among different sets of people who have separate ideologies, religious beliefs, and communal ties[2]. Instances of different religious communities helping each other brings to our attention the immersive, everyday experience of syncretism through which people conduct their social lives in Kerala.  People in Kerala have shown that it is possible to be sanguine about crafting a society that is willing to work with those differences rather than subsume them under the garb of a homogeneous formation.

One is not arguing that there have been no problems with the disaster response management in Kerala or that a welcome investment in social cohesion and social infrastructure can iron out what are genuine questions about the inequitable distribution of rescue and rehabilitation efforts.

However, the gains made by an investment in social cohesion and local institution-building need to be constantly reiterated because, unlike gains in physical infrastructure or nutritional indicators, it cannot be measured. Its value tends to recede in public memory the moment a tragedy subsides. That need not be the case if facilitating a genuine concern for social cohesion is made an active part of political mobilization and social engineering. That is, the way we imagine our future societies and cultures need to be more intersectional than ever before, where we constantly stem our tendencies to focus exclusively on immediate metrics to tell us the health of a society. The first step to do that is to invest in building a vigilant and tolerant society, which nurtures, critiques and guides even as formal political, social and economic institutions falter.

 

 

[1] This piece has benefitted from a series of articles published on the development trajectory of Kerala in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2005. Of particular interest, are KGR Nairs ‘Kerala’s Development Experience’, Achin Chakraborty’s ‘Kerala’s Changing Development Narratives’, and KP Kannan’s ‘Kerala’s Turnaround in Growth.’

[2] Social cohesion is a broad term that can be defined as the willingness and understanding of individuals in a society to work with each other to realise their potential in a just, fair and equitable ways without necessarily indulging in putting individual fulfilment over public good. For more, please see Stanley, D., 2003. What do we know about social cohesion: The research perspective of the federal government's social cohesion research network. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, pp.5-17.

 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Anurag Mazumdar at anurag@cbgaindia.org.