Thiruvananthapuram: The coronavirus outbreak has once more put Kerala’s competence into the limelight but the reasons why it has been effective in dealing with the crisis — and the special stature thus attained — stretch many centuries back.
And that does not mean the state is an epitome of virtues, considering that it matches many other states on issues as diverse as corruption, environmental pollution, red-tape, and crime.
Kerala’s competence in multiple fields is owed to a bouquet of reasons, ranging from its early exposure to the world, to its openness to new-found ideas and concepts.
Exposure to the world
Even before the time of Jesus Christ, most of the world had trade relations with Kerala, thanks purely to the Malabar Coast offering the widest variety of spices, ranging from pepper and cardamom to cinnamon and nutmeg.
The spices brought nations as far flung as Rome, Iran, Arabia and China to the Kerala coast, prospecting for spices. Those trade relations continued until the Portuguese became a game-changer in 1498, led by Vasco da Gama, followed by European powers landing on the state’s coast.
The exposure helped Kerala benchmark itself against global standards. Thus, last year the Facebook page of Kerala police gathered over a million likes, surpassing that of the New York Police Department. In other fields, too, like movies, Kerala has excelled. Only last week, Kerala lost a gifted theatre and movie actor, Kalinga Shashi, who recently acted in a Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Cruise.
Sustained educational progress
A good three decades back, Kerala stunned India in the matter of literacy when Kottayam became the first fully literate town, Ernakulam became the first fully literate district and Kerala itself then turned the first 100 per cent literate state.
The foundations for those achievements were laid over two centuries back when British missionaries laid the foundation for the Church Mission Society (CMS) College in Kottayam, the same time that the British were establishing the Presidency College in Kolkata (then Calcutta).
To appreciate the importance of a college in Kottayam two centuries ago, one must know that Delhi’s oldest college, Zakir Hussain College, or Mumbai’s Elphinstone College and Wilson College did not exist when the CMS College began functioning.
German and British missionaries, as well as benevolent local kings too had given an early impetus to education in Kerala by starting schools. Kerala could also think of schools for girl children well ahead of much of India considering women’s education.
Focus on good health
An efficient public health system has been at the heart of Kerala’s effective fight — so far — against the coronavirus pandemic. Good health consciousness has been a natural extension of good education.
Kerala has consistently led India on health parameters like life expectancy, infant mortality and maternal mortality. In fact, a girl child born in Pathanamthitta district can expect to live well beyond 70 years, about the same as a girl child born in Washington DC. This despite a massive variance in their respective countries’ per capita incomes.
Globe trotting and risk taking
In a reversal of history, Keralites are now based across the world in various professions as against numerous nationalities coming to the state in search of spices for so many centuries. Some Keralites have also been so adventurous as to take dhows from Kozhikode to the Gulf and set up businesses. Some of those enterprises have become multi-billion dollar ventures.
The travel and risk-taking trait has been in Keralites’ blood for a long time, considering that the 8th century philosopher Adi Shankara travelled from Kerala’s Kalady to Kedarnath in Uttar Pradesh.
A critical outlook
Keralites have always harboured a critical outlook to everything and have no qualms in criticising any individual, organisation or idea. The chief minister and opposition leader are lampooned on television channels almost every day.
And no one is beyond criticism, from Coca Cola to the Catholic Church.
Creative skills
Keralites seem to have a natural faculty for creativity, and for the same reason populate areas such as advertising and media. The creative skills have also been used in advertising the state through tag lines like ‘God’s own country’ and ‘Apply Kerala’ to attract more than one million tourists each year to the state.
This, despite the state not having any major monument like the Taj Mahal or the Qutub Minar. What it lacks in monuments, it has made up with its unique story-telling abilities.
Openness to everything
Most importantly, the state has been open to all kinds of ideas, warming up to Christianity in the first century AD and to Communism some 1,900 years later.
The openness helped the state get some of the best talents on earth to work for the benefit of the state — like the German missionary Hermann Gundert producing the first Malayalam dictionary, British man Benjamin Bailey helping set up the state’s first college, Irishman J.J. Murphy planting the first rubber plantation in the state, and defeated Dutch captain De Lannoy being utilised to train Travancore’s military.
In short, the seemingly exemplary work Kerala has been doing over the past weeks in containing the coronavirus outbreak has much to do with what the state has absorbed over more than 2,000 years.
