97Women in the Kerala Model of Development

WOMEN IN THE KERALA MODEL OF DEVELOPMENTAparna Sivaraman

Kerala has been one Indian state which defied national trends and provided a model of development that is more open and inclusive of women. This essay aims to understand three major aspects. The first is whether the actual position of women in Kerala is reflected in the indicators that have been released. The second objective is to analyse the role women have played in the success of the Kerala model of development and the third is to understand if there has been any impact of having been a matrilineal society on the development of women in the state.

INTRODUCTION

The concept of women empowermentwithin the broader spectrumofgenderequalityhasbeentheprimaryfocusofcountriesacrosstheworld. Ithasbecomewidelyrecognizedandacceptedthateconomicand social growth and development cannot be achieved in its truesense if we do not simultaneously concentrate on ensuring that gender equalityismaintained.Ithasbeennoticedthatevenonagloballevel,there isnocountrywherewomenenjoyequal rightsasmen.This isshameful in the light of the fact that women contribute enormously in the form of unpaid or invisible economic activity. It is a widelyacceptedfactthatwomenassumeadualroleinsociety:theselflessandassumed caregiver and the independent income earning individual.Women constantly strive to maintain a balance between the two with unfortunately little or no help from the society they live in. They are in most cases denied the basic economic, social and even legalrightsthattheirmalecounterpartsenjoy.Itwasthisobservationthat made women empowerment and gender equality feature as thethirdoftheeightMillenniumDevelopmentGoals.Itfurthercametobe acknowledgedas an instrumentalprerequisite to achieving allother goals.

Animportantclarificationthathas tobemadeat this juncture is thetrue meaning of the word empowerment. Empowerment must be

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understood as providing the power of decision-making to someonewhodidnothaveitpreviously.Apersonissaidtobeempoweredinthe true sense only when they had been denied the choice before. It hasalsobeenaptlypointedoutthatwomenempowermenthasbeenassumedpossiblebyattemptingtoequaliseopportunitiesineducation,employmentandaccesstopoliticalpower.Ithasbeenarguedthatthisapproachtoensuringwomenempowermentmaynotbesuccessfulinachievingthesetobjectives(Kabeer,1994).

The relationship between women empowerment and economicdevelopmentofsocietybecomessuccessfulonlywhenaviciouscircleisformedwithonefollowingtheother.Economicdevelopmentinitselfasmentioned above cannot help raise the status of women. This isprimarilybecausetheneo-classicaldiscoursemakesafundamentalbutflawedassumptionthat industrialdevelopmentwouldautomaticallyleadtoareductioninthegenderdisparitiessinceitwillprovideequalopportunities in the spheresof education, employment andpoliticalvoicetobothmenandwomenwhicharetheprimarytoolsofensuringequality.Thisnarrowapproachdoesnotconsiderthepossibilitythattheexistingpatriarchalsystemswouldnotallowwomenequalfootingasmen.Hence,whatisneededisachangeinthesocialstigmaattachedtowomenparticipationinordertoachieveeconomicprogress.Followingthesameargument,womenempowermentisboundtofailifwomenarenotgiventheopportunitiestoparticipateandcontributetoeconomicdevelopment.Theremustbea justification for thevariousprogramscarriedout topromotewomenparticipation.Onlywhenwomenareable to contribute to economic activity, these reforms become feasible both economically and socially. Hence, economic development andwomen empowerment cannot be considered in a vacuumandmustfollowoneanother(Duflo,2012).

In thiscontext, theWomeninDevelopmentdiscourserecognises theshortcomingsof theneo-classical ideologybutmakesanassumptionthat the institutional roadblocks will weaken after a certain age ofgrowthandwouldbegintousher inmoreopportunitiesforwomen.Thisdiscoursegoesontoexplainthatoncethebottlenecksarecleared,the instruments of empowerment would automatically start beingimplemented by the government. This has called for the need foranother more comprehensive discourse which led to an altogethernewapproachcalled‘GenderandDevelopment’.TheGADapproachrealizedthattheconventionalindicatorsofemployment,educationandpoliticalpowerwouldnot fullyenable theempowermentofwomenandmay lead to a generation of further problems and obstacles in

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theprocess.Itpointedouttheneedtoalsofocusonnon-conventionalindicators that would complement the conventional indicators thatwouldhelptoeffectivelymeasurethegenderinequality(Scaria,2014).Such non-conventional indicators may include the power relationswithinthefamily,theroleofwomenindecision-makingandthepowertotranslateresourcesintoopportunities.

THE CASE OF KERALA

InacountrylikeIndia,whereseveralgoddessesareworshipped,itispitifultoseethatwomenaretreatedwithlesserstatusthanmenandevenaslewofreformspost-independencehasnotbeenabletopullwomenout of their repressed,marginalised and exploited state (Sreekumar,2001).Themajorflawinappropriatingwomentogoddessesisthatthecomparisonportraysthepictureofastrongwoman,readytofightevil.However,thisdoesnotmakesense.Itpromotesthefalsepremisethatnormal women cannot make a mark for themselves and that successful women are superwomen. It then goes on to promote only a smallcategoryofwomen,leavingthemajorityinthedark.Moreover,itfailsto recognise that even the goddesses lived within a society governed by male dominance and their powers were limited to instances ofprotectingtheirhusbandsorextremecasesofprotectingsociety.

GenderdisparitieshavebeenwidelyprevalentacrossIndiaandseveralstateshaveshownverypoormeasuresontheconventionalindicatorsdespite several initiatives by the state.While the rest of the countryhasgrappledwith skewedgenderdisparities, there is one state thathas proved to be an exception.With a favourable sex ratio of 1084as compared to the all Indiafiguresof 940 in 2011,Keralahasbeenan exception to the general trend in terms ofwomen development.Similarly,intermsofliteracy,lifeexpectancyandmeanageatmarriage,women in Kerala have had a higher score when compared withwomen in the rest of the country. Thus historically too, a favourable groundwassetforKeralawomenwhilemostoftheIndianstatesweredeplorably poor in this regard. Perhaps this paved theway for theoutstandingachievementofKeralaintermsofwomen’sdevelopment,andasaresult,theincreaseintheoverallhumandevelopment.Asperthe2010Economicreview,Kerala’sfemaleliteracyis92percentwhilethecorrespondingfigureatthenational level isonly65percent.ThefemalelifeexpectancyinKeralaasperthelatestavailablesecondarysource is 76.3 years when the same for women at the national level is only64.2years(EconomicReview,2010).

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Kerala,alsoknownasGod’sownCountry,isIndia’s13th largest economy. Kerala has had a unique development story and the revolution hasbeenrightlytermedasthe‘Keralamodelofdevelopment’.Thismodelishighlyparadoxicalbecause,whiletherehasbeenmajordevelopmentonthesocial indicatorsfront, theeconomicdevelopmentof thestatehasbeenunimpressive.Thiskindoflopsidedgrowthisthefirstofitskindwhichiswhyithasbeenofinterest(Mukhopadhyay&Sudarshan,2003).

THE COMPLICATED MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT

Authors in the 1950s termedKerala as aproblem statewhich couldbe seen as the birthplace of communism in India just asYenanwasfor Chinese Communism. The election of Kerala’s first communistgovernment in 1957 further fueled this belief which continued to linger foralmostageneration.Itwasonlyinthe‘70sthatthefocusshiftedfromtheMarxistideologytotheunusualbutverypleasingsocialindicatorssuch as the falling birth and infant mortality rates, increasing literacy, a female favourable sex ratioand increasingaverage life expectancy(Jeffery, 2016). It has been observed that these changes in Keralahave been largely possible due to the role played bywomen in thedevelopmentofthestate.Theintensityoftheroleplayedbywomeninthedifferentpartsofthestatevariedbutthecollectivecommonalitiesofchanges in landrelations, familyandkinshipandtherulesof thesocialandeconomicframeworkhelpedreinforcetheroleofwomen.Italsoaidedinthedecompositionoftherigidcastesystemwhichcameasanaddedbenefit.

TheexpansionofeducationinKeralacanbelargelyattributedtotheinitiatives of the rulers of kingdoms like Travancore and Cochin which werethemainprovincesoftheBritishEmpire.RulerslikeRaniGouriParvathiBai,whowastherulingqueenofTravancorein1817,madeitclearasearlyasthenthatthestateshouldprovideeducationtoallbydefrayingthecostofeducation.Shebelievedthateducationwouldhelpinthespreadofenlightenmentwhichwouldinturnhelptoproducebettersubjectsandpublicservants.Thiswouldultimatelyhelpintheadvancementofthereputationandprosperityofthestate.

101Women in the Kerala Model of Development

DO MATRILINEAL SYSTEMS GUARANTEE DEVELOPMENT?

AnotherfactorthatcouldexplainthesuccessofKeralawastheexistenceof a matrilineal system of property inheritance that was practisedamongcertainupper-classsectionsofthesociety(Sen,1989).TheplaceofwomenintheKeralasociety is instrumental inunderstandingtheeffectivenessoftheKeralamodelofdevelopment.Thoughmuchofthedevelopment in the state is attributed to thematrilinealmodel, it issupposedtohavebeenonthedeclinethroughoutthe20th century and hadcompletelyvanishedby1976.Thedeclineofthesystemusheredinthepatriarchalsocietyevidentfromthediminishingshareofpropertytowomenthatbecamereplacedbydowry(Chacko,2003).Inthisvein,it becomes imperative inunderstanding the role that thematrilinealsystem has played starting from its origin till its collapse and theimplicationsithashadonthelegal,structuralandsentimentalvaluesofthepeople.However,beforeanyfurtherdiscussion,itisnecessarytomakethedistinctionbetweenmatrilinyandmatriarchy.Bydefinition,‘matriarchy’ is a form of social organisation where the power liesin the hands of women; this is rarely, if ever, the case. However,matrilinealdescentisananthropologicaltermthatreferstoaspecificformofinheritance(quiteoftenfoundinAfrica)inwhichpropertyistransmittedthroughfemalelineage.

The key is acknowledging exactly which female lineage; propertyis not transferred from one woman to another but rather through a woman’smalekin.Forexample,ownershipcanbetransferredfromthemother’sbrothertothenephewbutbynomeanstowomenthemselves.It has often been amisconception thatmatrilineal societies translateintofemaleempowerment.Itisalsooftenfalselyassumedthatwomenin thesesocietieshavemore rightsandaccess toproperty. In reality,responsibility for land management vested principally with oldermen, usually brothers or maternal uncles. In decisions concerning the partitionortransferoflandedproperty,however,women’sconcurrencewasnecessary(Agarwal,1994).Whenmen(andwomen)inpowersaythatwomeninacertaincommunityareempoweredbecausethesocietyismatrilineal,itsetsusonadangerouspath.Itallowsdecisionmakersto assume that women in matrilineal societies already have the right to landownership,withoutrequiringanyadditionalattention.

Thematrilineal system inKeralaappears tohavedevelopedaroundthe eleventh century CE, as a result of the war between the Cholas and Cheras.Itthenwentontobecomefirmlyembeddedparticularlyinthe

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uppercasteNairs.Oneofthemajorbenefitsofthematrilinealsystemwas that it allowed the free movement of girls and women in the society.Girlswereencouragedtoattendschoolsinthelocalareawhichenabled even the backward areas of Malabar lead India in terms of femaleliteracy.Thiseducationfurtherledtowomenbecomingcapableoftakingupsalariedjobsbothintheerstwhilecolonialruleandinthepresentdevelopmentalmodel.Thepracticeofeducatinggirlscreatedthe need for women teachers and the cycle continued. By the mid-1980s,58percentofKerala’steacherswerewomenand94percentofprimary-agegirlswereestimatedtoattendschool.

Matriliny cemented the belief that women could be considered as salary earners. The employment of women was not confined onlyto education. Women began to find employment as midwives andnurses and by 1930s, women also began to work as doctors in several hospitalsandamajorproportionofthewomencamefrommatrilinealsocieties.WhatstartedoutasapracticebyNairfamiliesbegantobepractised by families of other communities aswellwithin the state.Inmore recent times, the fact thatwomen inKerala sought salariedworkhelpedtoraise theageofmarriageandcontributedtoa lowerbirth rate. The presence of Kerala women in salaried, ‘white-collar’workisuniqueinIndiatoday.In2000,68percentofKerala’s185,000teacherswerewomen. In1991, thecensuscalculated that24percentof working women in Kerala were employed in ‘other services’, acategory including salariedoccupations. In India as awhole, only 8percent of workingwomenwere so employed: the Kerala rate wasthreetimesgreater.Thematrilinealsystemhadsuchaneffectthatevenafteritscollapse,thepoliticalideologiescontinuedtoplacewomenonthe forefront that createddevelopmentmodels thathaveshaped theKeralamodel.

CONCLUSION

Wesuggestinthisarticlethatitisimperativetounderstandhowthematrilineal system in Kerala s system has been translated into thepresent employmentopportunities. Surveyshave shown thatKeralahas managed to consistently defy the trends that are prevalent inthe country over the years. Data clearly shows that the pattern ofemploymentinKeralaisentirelydifferentfromtherestofIndiaandthat of themajor states.Theoverall trend regarding employmentofIndiaanditsmajorstatesshowsacontinuousreductionofemploymentin the agricultural sector and a steady increase in the industrial and service sectors due to the structural transformation of the economy as

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seenintheworkparticipationtables.AsfarasemploymentinKeralaisconcerned,nearly40percentofmaleaswellasfemaleemploymentisintheservicesector.TheshareofwomenemployedinKeralaintheservice sector is verymuch higherwhen comparedwith that of allIndiaandthatofthemajorstates.Inotherwords,themajorityofmaleandfemalemainworkersinKeralaasperthe2001Censusareintheservice sector.

However,asperthe68thRoundofNSSOfortheyear2011-12,awidegapbetweenmaleandfemaleemploymenthasemergedinthestate.While the state average is 40.3 per cent, female labour participationrate(per100persons)inKeralais24.8percentandthatofmaleis57.8percent.ThesectoraldistributionofemploymentofwomeninKeralashowsthatrelativetomen,alargerproportionofwomenareengagedin the agricultural sector. The percentage share of males engagedin service sector is much higher compared to females; however inindustrytherelativeproportionsarenotverydifferent;butafurtherdisaggregation would show that this is because large numbers of womenareengaged in lowproductivity, labour intensive traditionalindustrieslikehandlooms,khadi,coir,andcashew(EconomicReview,2016).

Inconclusion,itcanbesaidthatthoughoftenunconsidered,theroleofwomenhashadamajorimpactinthewayKeralahasgrownasastate,particularlythefamousKeralamodelofdevelopment.However,therehasbeenanoticeabledeclineinfemaleparticipationinthestateinrecenttimesandquestionshavebeenraisedabouttheactualimpactofthematrilinealsysteminthehouseholds.Thereisaneedforpoliciesand indicators that will be able to measure the actual power thatwomenhaveinthestateandhowmuchofthispowercanbeactuallytranslated.While the system cannot be utterly disregarded, there isaneedtocarryforwardtheinstitutionalframeworkprovidedbythematrilinealsystemandensurethatthepowergrantedtowomenonlycontinues to grow further.

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