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Is the Information Age passing Kerala by?

There is a famous English film called Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. When the guest of honour is Bill Gates of Microsoft, the answer is: 'Just about everybody'! The prime minister was away in the United States of course, but his colleagues stood in for him manfully. And in case their efforts were inadequate, the chief minister of every major state made it a point to be noticed.

To be honest, I am not sure that the concept of information technology is something that all of them have grasped. When Om Prakash Chautala, chief minister of Haryana, was spotted coming out of the meeting, reporters asked him what advantages his state offers. One of the things he mentioned was proximity to the international airport at Delhi. But one of the major advantages of the Internet, or so techies tell me, is that it makes distance meaningless. Electricity, education, and bandwidth might have been better selling points, but let that pass. The point is that Om Prakash Chautala recognised the fundamental points: that Bill Gates is a very rich man, and that he is in a position to offer the kind of investments which every state needs desperately.

I am sorry to say, however, that the chief ministers of two major states were not present at the Gates dinner. The first of these was Chief Minister Rabri Devi of Bihar. That is understandable enough. The spectacle of that state offering itself as an avenue for investments would have had guests and hosts alike rolling on the floor. The state is bankrupt, its education levels are truly abysmal, and it comes at the bottom of every human development survey. Finally, true to form, Laloo Prasad Yadav himself has said that he does not believe in information technology.

But which other chief minister, you might enquire, would be so silly? (Yes, I know Rabri Devi is technically chief minister, but it is her husband who rules the state.) Well, sharing the manger with Laloo Prasad Yadav was Kerala's E K Nayanar.

The chief minister did not explain why he stayed away when most of his counterparts were busy trying to attract investment. It could be old age I suppose -- Comrade Nayanar is well over eighty. (The combined age of the two Marxist dinosaurs, Jyoti Basu in Calcutta and Nayanar in Thiruvananthapuram is an impressive 168!) Mobility, whether of the mind or of the legs, is a problem when you are well past four score.

Did I mention an inertia of thought? I meant it -- the Marxists have not progressed beyond a childish anti-Americanism in many ways. When that Bill -- Clinton -- visited India, Nayanar and his friends were planning protest marches. Nobody noticed, or cared for that matter. It has escaped the old fogey, but his Chinese counterparts waged a battle to win the coveted 'Most Favoured Nation' status from the United States.

Does Nayanar know this? I am prepared to believe that he does. But he does not want his voters to be equally well informed. Kerala may have the best literacy rate of any major state, so why is it that it lags so far behind Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh in attracting investors? The reason is that the industrial climate in the state has been so vitiated by the Left Front that nobody is willing to risk their dollars by throwing them to Kerala.

Having said that, I must admit that Kerala is yet to plunge the depths of, say, Bihar. Or even, come to that, of West Bengal. Twenty-three years of Marxist rule have reduced that poor state to a virtual economic jungle. Does anyone care that the rate of female illiteracy in rural Bengal is barely higher than in rural Bihar? Everyone admits that educating women is absolutely essential to prepare for the twenty-first century. In West Bengal and Bihar, saying so is nothing more than lip service.

Kerala, as noted above, is not quite in that league. It is still enjoying the benefits of a culture that venerated education. Please note that I used the past tense. This is deliberately done -- neither teachers nor students take their roles as seriously as they used to. And while literacy rates may sound impressive, I am not sure that the quality of education is what it used to be. I am not qualified to comment on the sciences, but I must say that I have met college graduates who provoked snickers from school students in other states. And why is that the colleges in Kerala never seem to get their results out in time?

The simple fact is that the people of Kerala seem to have become apathetic over the years over the gradual erosion in standards. What we have today is what previous generations pushed us to achieve; I honestly cannot see any similar effort today.

At least part of the blame for that must fall to the two major political organisations, the Congress and the CPI-M. Both parties have fallen into something of a rut, where their reactions are entirely predictable. There is nothing new, or fresh, or exciting about them, just the same old stuff. We might be moving into an Information Age, but Kerala is not preparing for it.

Anti-Americanism is all very well, Comrade Nayanar, but as chief minister of Kerala, your first duty is to attend to the interests of your state. At all costs, you cannot allow the state to be seen as one whose chief minister is bracketed with Rabri Devi!

T V R Shenoy