Ben Day wrote: > Well, Kerala was also the only Indian state, to a great extent, to > successfully implement land reform.
Land reforms have taken place in West Bengal (Pop. 75 million), where the CPs are in power for last 25 years without a break. Land reforms have taken in other parts of India, though they have not been as thorough as Kerala (Pop. 35 million) and Bengal. >This seems to me a basic prerequisite > of industrialization of any sort, but almost impossible elsewhere in India > since the Congress Party - like the parties that drove independence and > dominate the political landscape in so many developing countries - is > inextricably bound up with landed elites. The share of agriculture in India's GDP has declined from 55% in 1950 to 26% in 2000. The growth of industry and particularly services is reducing the importance of agriculture in relative terms. The Congress Party's programme was a programme of Indian industrial capital, though the mass base of Congress Party was to be found in all classes and strata of Indian society. Though services have grown at a faster rate, it is not correct to say that industrialisation has not taken place. >Kerala was able to carry out land > reform due to the strength of its two Communist Parties (but particularly > the Communist Party--Marxist, which split from the CP during independence > when Stalin backed Nehru, and the rest of the CP followed the Moscow line > by taking an accomodationist tack with the Congress Party), The Indian CP split in 1964 long after Stalin's death. >So, although we usually single out > Kerala's welfare policies, and the debate over the "Kerala model" in > developmental economics hinges on whether a welfare state is a viable (or > more importantly, a sustainable) road to development - I think we tend to > miss Kerala's real accomplishments, which involve the successful > commodification of land and labor. Kerala's achievements are admirable, but other states moving in the same direction with some time lag. But then uneven and combined development is the norm everywhere. You take all India data, literacy has gone up from 18% to 65% (against 90% in Kerala) in 50 years. Male literacy is 75% on all India basis. It's due to lower female literacy (55%) that the average comes down. The lower female literacy is due to gender inequality. > There is also the issue of time, suggested by Ulhas What was the population of say, Germany, when Germany began to develop industrially in later half 19 the Century? Compare that with the population of China, India and Indonesia at the corresponding stage economic development. Elimination of poverty of 2.5 billion people and of 25 million people are not comparable challenges. Ulhas
