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Kerala is Different

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Polly Hill
Polly Hill
Affiliation:
Clare Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

While it is very well known that the small Indian state of Kerala has many extraordinary anthropological, demographic, ecological, economic, educational, historical, political, religious, etc. features (which are reflected in a vast and to some extent learned literature), so that it is quite unlike what Stokes denotes as ‘the great agricultural plains areas, which for centuries before the British had experienced large-scale political organization’, it is yet possible that certain of its peculiarities are still insufficiently appreciated. So I here note some of the ‘surprises’ (as well as the uncertainties) which I experienced as a result of spending nearly three months in 1981–82 doing fieldwork in the lowlands of rural Trivandrum District, in the extreme south of Kerala, while also consulting the excellent library of the Centre for Development Studies near Trivandrum city. Whether Kerala bears comparison with Java, as some have claimed, I cannot say; but, of course, it provided an extraordinary contrast to the villages in southeastern Karnataka where I had worked in 1977–78.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 779 - 792
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for effectively financing my visit to Kerala while I was a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow.

1 Stokes, E., The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This District, within which Kerala's capital, Trivandrum city, is situated, comprises 4 taluka and 81 panchayats; it was formerly part of the princely state of Travancore which was joined together with Cochin and Malabar in 1956 to form the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. I am extremely grateful to Sri Sarachandran Nair for acting as my guide, interpreter and friend while we explored the countryside.

3 I am grateful for hospitality received from that Centre. I also want to remember my friend the late Prof. Joan Robinson whose last visit to the Centre, which she greatly loved, happened to coincide with my own. Both of us greatly appreciated the friendship of Smt Leela Gulati in Trivandrum.

4 See Hill, Polly, Dry Grain Farming Families: Hausaland (Nigeria) and Karnataka (India) Compared (Cambridge University Press, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Unfortunately, much of the recent work on these taravads relates to northern and central Kerala and not to the south; this is true of Gough's two chapters in Matrilineal Kinship, eds Schneider, D. M. and Gough, Kathleen (University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar, of Fuller's, C. J.The Nayars Today (Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar and of the latest article on the subject—Melinda Moore, A., ‘A New Look at the Nayar Taravad’ (Man, September 1985), in which it is provocatively argued that ‘the taravad is not just the corporately-owned property of a descent group, but a ritually significant and holistic territorial unit modelled after the indigenous conception of a kingdom.’ (p. 539)Google Scholar

6 And by later legislation elsewhere. (A similar Travancore Act of 1925 related to the Ezhavas or Iravas.)

7 Presumably for security reasons, no Indian maps covering areas within fifty miles of the sea are published.

8 In Kerala the elected village panchayats (which in 1963 were, on average, nearly seven times as populous as those in India generally) are divided into wards (desam); the so-called ‘villages’ (pakuthi), which are authorities dealing with land revenue matters only, are subdivided into units known as kara—the boundaries of which cut across panchayat areas. Such is the confusion that in the 1971 Kerala population census report the statistics relating to the so-called panchayat areas literally replicated those for the so-called village areas in the same volume.

9 See Hill, Polly, Population, Prosperity and Poverty: Rural Kano 1900 and 1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

10 Cassen, R. H., India: Population, Economy, Society (Macmillan, 1978), p. 62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See Panikar, P. G. K. et al. , Population Growth and Agricultural Development: A Case Study of Kerala (Centre for Development studies, Trivandrum, 1977, mimeographed), p. 7. ‘Arable area’ was defined as the sum of net area sown, land under miscellaneous trees, cultivable waste land and fallow land.Google Scholar

12 Gulati, Leela, Fisherwomen on the Kerala Coast (International Labour Office, Geneva, 1984), p. 15.Google Scholar

13 It is no wonder that, according to Cassen, , India, p. 95, the All-India National Sample Survey, in one of its reports, underestimated per capita calorie intake for Kerala by more than 40%.Google Scholar

14 See Report of the Sub-Committee of the Tapioca Market Expansion Board, 1972 (Government of Kerala, n.d.).Google Scholar

15 Economic Review, 1979 (State Planning Board, Trivandrum, 1981), p. 22.Google Scholar

16 See Raj, K. N., ‘Demand for Total Ban on Cow Slaughter in Kerala and West Bengal: Some Observations’ (Economic and Political Weekly, 5 05 1979).Google Scholar

17 See Nair, K. Narayanan, ‘Milk Production in Kerala: Trends and Prospects’ (Economic and Political Weekly, 03 1979).Google Scholar

18 So far as I know, Harijans in Kerala were never ‘village servants’, who were remunerated with farmland, as in Karnataka and elsewhere—see Hill, , Dry-Grain Farming Families; nor did ‘zamindar-type’ hereditary estate-holders allow them cultivation rights.Google Scholar

19 See Saradamoni, K., Emergence of a Slave Caste: Pulayas of Kerala (People's Publishing House, Delhi, 1980) for an excellent justification of this statement.Google Scholar

20 I am not clear whether a house-site which is surrounded by virtually no land is in the land revenue statistics?

21 Considering that in 1971, according to the Kerala census, there were only about one million male ‘cultivators’ in a male population of over 10 million, and that in Kerala (though not elsewhere) most agricultural labourers are probably landless, the incidence of household landlessness is likely to have been more than one-third.

22 Is this unique in India? (In Karnataka the smallest unit in the land revenue records was one-fortieth of an acre.)

23 Cited in Nair, K. Sukumaran, Rural Politics and Government in Kerala (Kerala Academy of Political Science, Trivandrum, 1976).Google Scholar

24 Raj, K. N. and Tharakan, M., ‘Agrarian Reform in Kerala and its Impact on the Rural Economy—A Preliminary Assessment’ in Ghose, A. K. (ed.), Agrarian Reform in Contemporary Developing Countries (Croom Helm, London, 1983).Google Scholar

25 Oommen, M. A., Land Reforms and Socio-Economic Change in Kerala (The Christian Literature Society, Madras, 1971), p. 104.Google Scholar

26 The sample was obtained by copying down the figures relating to the sizes of plots and holdings owned by named persons in the official list (thandapur register); straight runs of figures were taken. Recent lists were used in each village, the material being supplemented by statistics relating to 1968 (or thenabouts) for Village B. Naturally, there is no means of assessing the representativeness of such samples for these villages, nor the typicality of the villages themselves.

27 In Travancore selling seems to have been uncommon until the passage of the 1925 legislation relating to the Nayar and Ezhava—p. 780 above. See Varghese, T. C., Agrarian Change and Economic Consequences: Land Tenure in Kerala in 1850–1960 (Allied Publishers, Bombay, 1970), pp. 99et seq.Google Scholar

28 See Hill, , Dry Grain Farming Families, p. 271, n. 22.Google Scholar A more recent source on the land market is Baker, C. J., An Indian Rural Economy 1880–1955: The Tamilnad Countryside (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

29 Hill, , Dry Grain Farming Families, p. 161.Google Scholar

30 Another consideration in this locality is the relative profitability of coconut and paddy cultivation; in 1982 it seemed that a fair number of paddy fields were in process of being converted into coconut plantations.

31 The initial move had been made (unsuccessfully) in 1957 by the first communist administration. See Saradamoni, , Emergence of a Slave Caste, pp. 224–6.Google Scholar

32 There were various conditions—e.g. if the landowner owned less than one acre he had a right to apply for land to which the hutment-dweller could be shifted.

33 In fact, owing to a political ‘enclosure movement’—see Saradamoni, , Emergence of a Slave Caste, p. 226—many kudikidappukar paid nothing for their land; and where they agreed to shift their hutment they might have had free land and money to construct a new hut.Google Scholar

34 Radhakrishnan, P., ‘Land Reforms in Theory and Practice: The Kerala Experience”, Economic and Political Weekly (26 12 1981), p. A130.Google Scholar

35 As I hold—see Dry Grain Farming Families—that there is no proper evidence for the general belief in a declining incidence of joint households in rural south India generally, I was originally sceptical about similar beliefs relating to Kerala. But as a result of my fieldwork I am now convinced that rural Trivandrum District (if not Kerala) is again ‘different’ and that joint households seldom exist there.

36 Moore, Melinda A., ‘A New Look at the Nayar Taravad’.Google Scholar

37 The green coconut husks have to be soaked in brackish water for some six to ten months before the fibre is ready to be beaten; the work of transporting, netting and submerging, and later reclaiming, the husks is very arduous.

38 See Gulati, Leela, Profiles in Female Poverty: A Study of Five Poor Working Women in Kerala (Hindustan Publishing Corporation, Delhi, 1981) for a detailed account of the work routine involved in both coir-beating (which is revoltingly arduous, dirty and ill-remunerated work) and coir-spinning. My own findings, during a week or more spent in the coconut groves, were similar. The enterprise, energy and prominence of women in this work is very striking.Google Scholar

39 In the lowlands the number of small shops, tea-houses, etc. is apt to be very large.

40 See Gulati, Profiles in Female Poverty, for the case of an ill-paid woman construction worker, mainly engaged in such arduous tasks as carrying earth, rocks, mortar, bricks, etc. or in stone breaking.

41 See Emigration, Inward Remittances and Economic Growth of Kerala: Report of a Survey (Commerce Research Bureau, Bombay, n.d., but later than 1977).Google Scholar

42 Profiles in Female Poverty, pp. 151–2.Google Scholar

43 The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has started, very recently, to take some interest in the virtually insoluble statistical problems presented by this peculiar crop, which is ‘stored’ in the ground for varying periods, since it rots very soon after being harvested.

44 Only 1,898 members of the Scheduled Castes were classified as ‘cultivators’ in Trivandrum District in 1981, according to the population census, against 59,302 agricultural labourers.

45 The Kerala population censuses show that many men are unable to state that they have any remunerative occupation.

46 See Richards, P., Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology and Food Production in West Africa (Hutchinson, London, 1985).Google Scholar