Chief Minister Shri. V.S. Achuthanandan's press conference in
New Delhi on May 28, 2008

 
A bold new experiment is going on in Kerala, an experiment that should be of interest to not only the whole nation, but also the entire Third World. In our State down south, we are silently evolving an alternate mode of development in this era of globalization and liberalisation.

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in the State has just completed two years in office. During these two years, we have laid the foundation for a new Kerala, a bold and emergent Kerala, where growth leaves out no section of the society and the people's happiness index is very high.

The poor becoming poorer and getting more marginalized is one of the features of development driven by the neo-liberal policies of the present era. We have witnessed this in our country, with thousands of farmers in Vidarbha, Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere committing suicide because of debt. We had this problem in our State too. Hundreds of farmers ended their lives in Kerala during the five-year tenure of the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government.

The first thing we did on taking office was to set up of a Farmers' Debt Relief Commission, besides providing compensation to the families of all the suicide victims. We went all out to instil confidence in the minds of the farmers. The government announced unprecedented increases in the procurement prices of farm commodities and intervened strongly in the market to protect the farmers from market fluctuations. The government stepped in with a liberal helping hand whenever crop damage occurred in bad weather.

The farmers got the message: the government has changed; a Leftist government is now in control, a government that cares for the suffering poor. The farmer suicides stopped, almost as though someone had switched on a light to remove the gloom. I am happy that, nearly two years down the line, the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre too has come out with a loan waiver scheme for the debt-ridden farmers, taking the cue from the Kerala initiative.

I would claim this as a development showing the relevance of the Kerala experiment. Our initiative has made the Centre aware of the cataract clouding its vision. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre should now start seeing the sufferings of the ordinary people of the country affected by its neo-liberal policies.

Sensitivity to the sufferings of the large marginalized sections of the people is the basic character of the LDF government in Kerala. The traditional fishermen, one of the poorest sections of the society, too are being freed from the shackles of debt with the recent formation of the Kerala Fishermen's Debt Relief Commission. All debts incurred by poor fishermen from banks and cooperatives have already been placed under moratorium.

We increased all welfare pensions, benefiting lakhs of poor people, to Rs.200 a month and cleared a backlog of 31 months' of pension payment left behind by the previous government. Large sections of workers in the unorganized sector, including those working in small plantations and shops and business establishments, have been newly brought under social security net. The government distributed one acre of extremely fertile land each to 1,717 landless tribal families at Aralam Farm in Kannur district alone. Steps are underway to give land to all tribal people with no land of their own.

Thousands of acres of ecologically sensitive public land in Munnar and nearby areas were freed of encroachers by this government. We thus sent a strong message to those who had cornered for themselves the State's precious public resources with political patronage in the past. We launched a greening drive across the State last year, with school children planting nearly 25 lakhs saplings of rain trees in the backyard of their homes, in school compounds and open public lands. This programme is into its second phase this year. Our vision is to make the State an evergreen one, nourishing its ecological wealth. It is a well-documented fact that when rivers dry up and forests disappear, the worst hit will be the poor people.

Water is another major focus area for us. Kerala is blessed with good rainfall, but our rivers are small and run fast to join the seas. This government is giving utmost importance not only to protect the rivers from all forms of threats, including pollution and unsustainable sand mining, but also to measures that need to be taken to assert Kerala's right in issues relating to water with neighbouring States such as Tamil Nadu. In the case of the more-than-a-century-old Mullapperiyar Dam, Kerala has succeeded in winning wide acceptance for its stand that the dam should be rebuilt.

Kerala's educated manpower has been and still is its biggest strength. More than 15 lakhs Keralites work abroad sending home foreign exchange worth thousands of crores of rupees. In the education sector, our effort is to improve the quality of coaching at all levels, ensuring social justice and opportunity for even the most backward sections. This government had inherited from its predecessor a large number of self-financing professional colleges, some of them run by people with the sole motive of making profits. This government has been partially successful in checking such tendencies through the enactment of a model legislation to prohibit the practice of demanding capitation fee from the students and stipulating norms for admitting students.

Another problem we had inherited from the previous government was an extremely weakened health sector. Kerala’s health sector used to be the best in the country, with a large network of government hospitals and primary health centres even in the remotest village. The State had also the record of having eradicated diseases such as Malaria and leprosy years before any other State in the country. But the previous government whittled down spending in the sector and due to lack of attention to the needs of public hygiene many old diseases and new ones started to rear their heads in the State. This government has taken decisive steps to restore the States public health sector to its erstwhile excellent position. We have filled hundreds of doctors' vacancies in government hospitals and primary health centres and increased spending in the sector. Garbage disposal plants are being installed in all towns and panchayats. We have launched a State-wide campaign, 'Malinya Muktha Keralam' (Garbage-free Kerala), to tackle the problems confronting public hygiene with the full involvement of the local self government institutions.  

Kerala's famed public distribution system, which lay in a shambles when the United Democratic Front (UDF) stepped down from power in 2006, has been strengthened. The government is giving unlimited budgetary support to a network of more than 24,000 fair price shops functioning under its various agencies to hold down the prices of essential commodities.

We have launched an ambitious scheme called EMS Housing Scheme, which will, within the next three years, make Kerala the first State in the country to achieve the goal of 'shelter for all.' We gave nine lakhs new electricity connections during the last two years. Before this government's term ends in another three years, Kerala will have yet another 'first' to its credit: it will become the first State in the country to achieve cent per cent electrification of houses. A complete list of what we have already done and what we are in the process of doing is too long to be given here.

The LDF government has been equally proactive in the development sphere. Work on the Smart City project, with the promoters under contractual obligation to generate 90,000 jobs, has begun in Kochi. With 41 more IT companies flocking to the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram and Infopark in Kochi, the number of jobs in the IT sector has doubled in the State during the last two years. Over 500 acres of land is under acquisition in Thiruvananthapuram for building a Techno City. A string of other IT parks are also being set up in the other districts. Kerala is suddenly on the Indian IT map in a big way as more companies in the country and outside have started realizing the advantages of the State's manpower talent and peaceful and beautiful environment.

The government's plan is to develop infrastructure for IT industry in a hub-and-spoke model across the State, with Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi as the hubs and other centres easily accessible from the airports as the spokes. The idea is to take the trickle down impact of prosperity to as many corners of the State as possible, unlike in the other States, where investments in this sector had tended to remain restricted to major cities. The way matters are proceeding, we are confident of creating at least 2 lakhs more jobs in the IT sector in the next three years.

Unprecedented things are happening in the sphere of infrastructure development. Tender process has just been completed for setting up a Deepwater Container Transhipment Terminal at Vizhinjam, near the capital city. This Rs.5,348-crore project will make Vizhinjam the hub of container transhipment business not only in the country, but also the whole of the South Asia, because of the proximity of the place to the international shipping route. Work on the Container Transhipment Project at Vallarpadam in Kochi is due to begin in a month's time. The government also removed all obstacles in the path of setting up an LNG terminal in Kochi, which will provide cheaper fuel for accelerated industrial growth across the State.

A national waterway, virtually running along the entire length of the State from Neeleswaram in Kasargode district to Kovalam in Thiruvananthapuram district, facilitating inexpensive movement of cargo and boosting tourism, will become a reality within three years. The middle stretch of the waterway, running to nearly 200 km from Kollam to Kottappuram has already been commissioned. This government removed the bottlenecks in the remaining stretches so that the works, which were held up earlier, could proceed.

Applying persistent pressure on the Centre, the LDF government has also succeeded in getting a number of Central projects for the State, the biggest one being a railway coach factory requiring an estimated investment of Rs.4,000 crore at Kanjikode in Palakkad district. No major Central investment like this one has happened in Kerala for five decades. The State also won a host of Central institutions in the higher education sector, including an IIST and a prestigious space science institute of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Firm offers for private investment in the industries sector in the State now come up to nearly Rs.20,000 crore. While the previous government was trying to disinvest even some of the profit-making (PSUs), in line with the anti-PSU sentiments of the Centre's neo-liberal policies, the LDF government, virtually taking the bull by the horns, succeeded in turning round the fortunes of even many of the loss-making units by giving them a sense of direction. The number of profit-making PSUs increased from 12 to 27 during the last two years. KELTEC, a State PSU with unique expertise in the production of components for aerospace industry, but with doubtful prospects as an independent unit, has been taken over by the BrahMos Aerospace Limited, the Indo-Russian missile manufacturing company. The country is expecting this development to make Thiruvananthapuram, where the new BrahMos unit is located, a major centre of aerospace industry.

All sectors of production are alive with expectation in the State now. Agriculture production increased by 30 per cent last year, most of the sprawling plantations that had remained closed during the time of the previous government have started working again, traditional industries such as handloom, coir and cashew employing lakhs of workers are once again buzzing with activity. To help the ailing handloom sector, we launched a new version of 'Swadeshi Movement' by calling upon the government employees and school children to wear cotton handloom cloths at least one day a week. This initiative provided the much-needed market support for this ailing sector.

Looking back on we have done for the people during the two years in office so far, it seems spectacular that it has been possible for a cash-strapped State such as ours to find the funds and resources to undertake so many initiatives to give the marginalized sections a sense of security without jeopardizing the urgent needs of development. Efficient and imaginative management of the State finances has been a key feature of this government. Revenue collection increased by 75 per cent in two years. The government found money to respond to all distress calls.

The State has reached a stage when higher levels of investment are required from the government for developing infrastructure, so as to fully exploit the emerging growth opportunities. The mood is upbeat in Kerala. The government is confident of doubling its capital investment during the current financial year to take up a number of key initiatives, including land acquisition for the proposed Kannur airport, expansion of Thiruvananthapuram airport and IT parks.

Kerala's Gross Domestic Product in real terms increased by more than eight per cent in 2006-07, despite its production sector being dominated by plantation crops, the prices of which had fluctuated violently under the nation's liberalized import policies. With the tourism sector growing remarkably fast and the production sector as a whole recovering from the bad phase of the recent years, the State is all set to record a higher level of economic growth than the country as a whole.

But our philosophy is not to measure our success on the basis of economic growth alone. Economic growth bypassing large sections of the poor is meaningless. The greatest thing about the Kerala phenomenon is that the growth here is an inclusive one, the government vigilantly watchful of taking the fruits of development to every section of the society. Politically we are very clear in our minds about how to deal with tendencies that cause discord in the society. A strong and unfettered police force under a political dispensation rooted in secularism has ensured for the State total peace and harmony last two years, unlike during the time of the previous Government when communal violence occurred at places such as Marad in Kozhikode district.

We still have many challenges, the biggest one being the need to increase food production after several decades of focus on just cash crops. With the problem of food scarcity looming over the country and the entire world, Kerala urgently needs to reverse the diminishing trend in food production during the last few decades. A Bill to check the conversion of paddy fields for other purposes is to be presented in the Assembly soon. Steps are underway to mobilise all our energies to increase food production, especially since the Centre had abdicated its responsibility of ensuring the poor man's food security by destroying the ration system. The Centre reduced Kerala's rice allocation by 80 per cent over the last few years, because the poor man's food security is totally out of the scope of its neo-liberal policies and attitudes.