At least, Kerala's social indicators are healthy--from literacy to life expectancy to women's rights, etc. Imagine a society without such high social indicators and worse economic conditions in which foreign remittances play even more a significant role. Ok, you don't need to imagine it when we have the real case of Pakistan:
“This is our savior for keeping Pakistan out of the oxygen tent,” Farooq Sattar, former Minister for Overseas Pakistanis said in an interview in Karachi last month before his party quit the government alliance. “It has kept us from a complete economic collapse.”Remittances are about six percent of Pakistan's GDP. How awful will conditions in Pakistan be if the billion-plus dollars don't keep coming in every month? Pretty much bankruptcy!
Almost 10 million Pakistanis work overseas and the sum they’ve sent home has doubled in the four years through June, to a record $13 billion.
In 2008, Pakistan averted a balance of payments problem by securing an $11 billion IMF loan package, but the IMF suspended the programme in 2011 after economic and reform targets including widening the country's miniscule tax base were missed.Even the money that comes in is an underestimate because there are significant amounts that are transferred via off-the-books channels:
Some analysts have since warned about the prospect of a new balance of payments crisis.
Asked if Pakistan could avoid going back to the IMF, Liepach said: "I don't see that happening. It's a question of time. They need to do this before the end of this calendar year."
"It needs to be $6 billion to $9 billion."
Pakistan was among the world’s top 10 recipients of recorded remittances in 2012, according to the World Bank. Sattar estimates billions of rupees from abroad are unreported, transferred with the help of illegal money operators known as hawala or hundi. Pakistan’s recorded remittances would double if the illegal channels were closed, he said.Sometimes, looking at these issues from the outside, I do wonder why people simply cannot get their act together. In Pakistan, a country where power shortages are so acute that they even had a floating power plant on loan, people would rather spend money to bomb the shit out of civilians because they happen to be of a different ethnicity or Islamic sect or whatever? Maniacs would rather attempt to kill a young teenage girl than fixing up the mess the country is in? It is a mad, mad, mad, mad world!
BTW, how are things in Kerala? It is complicated. Kerala's labor force understands that almost always they can earn more if they moved out of state or the country. Meanwhile, the state's below-replacement-level fertility rates mean that the state is rapidly aging, which then draws in labor from other states in India that have even worse economic conditions. One heck of a migratory world in which we live.
a study conducted by Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT) points out that these young migrant workers are breathing life into the state’s gasping farm sector, propelling its burgeoning construction industry, toiling at small industrial units, hotels and similar places. In short, they do all the menial works in the state. Without them the wheel of Kerala economy would not move.No state or country can't live off money orders alone. At least, Kerala is a part of the Indian union. Pakistan has to fend for itself. Let us see how the elections mess up Pakistan even more!
The last count shows that about 25 lakh migrant labourers are working in Kerala having a population of 3.33 crore. And their numbers are growing at an incredible pace of 10 per cent annually.
In contrast, nearly 22.8 lakh Keralites are working abroad and nearly 10 lakh are in other states, says the study quoting a State Planning Board’s statistical reports for 2011. It shows that Kerala labour market needs at least 5 lakh workers more to maintain the balance between demand and supply.
This will further skew the native-migrant ratio in favour of the latter. Naturally, the state pays a heavy price for maintaining such a huge workforce from outside. They drain out Rs 17,000 crore annually from the state by way of wages alone which incidentally is equivalent to the plan size of the state for the next fiscal.
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| Kerala, 2006 |
4 comments:
It is a mad mad mad world indeed.
Pakistan is a sad case. Highly talented people; lots of advantages; similar political and educational systems left behind by the British as they did in India - but with one huge difference; religion was the raison d'etre for the country's formation. No wonder religion has completely blighted that country.
I personally think, democracy is very bad for that country. They need a military dictator a la Musharraf of the old. He has to ruthlessly put down militancy and bring the conditions back for stability. After 20 years, it can be handed back to a civilian democracy. Something of this sort happened during Musharraf's first term - Pakistan economically did the best under him.
Now he has no standing or hope. But another strongman has to emerge. A la Ataturk. In my book Ataturk's achievements are not given the world importance they deserve (similarly Deng Xiaoping). Along with Mandela, these two are the tallest stalwarts of the twentieth century politically.
Pakistan started derailing even before the Islamization that Zia systematically put in place. I would argue that the militarization that began in the 1950s was Pakistan's downfall. If at all, it is only democracy that can rescue the country from the doldrums. More military will only help to serve the interests of the militant factions, because the military there is not any impartial institution. Cultivating militant groups, which is what all the military rulers of the past did, helps with legitimizing the military government.
In making a case for Musharraf, you overlook how much he allegedly participated in, and perhaps systematically planned for, the nuclear technology peddler that Pakistan became. A couple of years before we (re)connected, I had blogged about AQ Khan's interview with Der Spiegel, in which she pointed to the role of Musharraf in the sale of nuke stuff to Iran and NoKo ... (http://goo.gl/k0KSn)
The Armenian community will not be all ooh-lala over Ataturk. The Kemalism and the Turkish nationality jingoism that he created also made lives terrible for that other minority--the Kurds.
There is a world of a difference between Mandela on one side, and the rest you mention. And that difference is this: Mandela recognized that a strong man "ruling" is not the way to do it. Mandela was awesome that way--he could have easily continued leading the government. But, like America's George Washington, he voluntarily stepped aside in order to help the civil society and democracy grow. People like me have never been anywhere near the centers of power, but we can easily imagine how difficult it will be to give up the immense power one has, and to give it up when one's popularity is high and when people even request them to continue to be in power. I tell students that for this reason alone, Washington is my favorite American president. And I tell them that Mandela is South Africa's Washington. If only the horrors like Mugabe had learnt a little bit about this aspect!!!
As you can tell, I am never a fan of any individual "ruling" .... to me, leaders only govern and manage. Bestowing an individual with powers to rule over a country might deliver short-term results, yes, but chances are really, really, high that those results either hide the unfolding disasters or creates problems for the long-haul, or both.
Oh sure, nobody is perfect. Not even Mandela - in his early years, he would be what we today call a terrorist. In his later years, after becoming President, he healed the nation wonderfully, but actually had a poor economic track record. Ataturk and Deng Xiaoping were no saints. They had major flaws (and who doesn't). But if we take the balanced approach and see what they have achieved against their disasters, they both are very tall men indeed (pun intended and Deng was 4 ft nothing).
Ah well, we have democracy versus strong man to debate when we meet next !!
When you write, "if we take the balanced approach and see what they have achieved against their disasters" that effectively sets up the philosophical point of departure from where you go my way and I go mine. We measure what we value to be important and we seek to maximize whatever we value. It is, therefore, important that we clearly set out what we value, otherwise we will be chasing and measuring incorrect stuff. Or, as one grad school professor put it, the question always is "what are you trying to maximize?"
Maximizing economic growth, especially at the expense of people's lives and their freedoms, appealed to me only in my teenage years when I was a commie. That commie approach clearly said that sacrificing a few for the greater betterment of all is a worthwhile approach--even now, I remember sitting on the train tracks by our college and defending the killing of people, and sending them to Gulags, because they improved the overall conditions of the many.
However, over the years, what I value has changed. I value the individual more than I value an abstract "society." Even in my grad school years, I was one of the many who laughed at Margaret Thatcher's comment that there is no society but only a collection of individuals. But, now I retract those sneering comments at Thatcher.
The importance that I give to the individual means that I cannot reconcile with the calculations that resulted in Kemalism and Dengist approaches.
Mandela's terrorism was not after he became the leader--it was when he was fighting an atrocious regime. I personally prefer non-violence. But, in any case, my point about Mandela versus others is how he, like Washington, stepped aside to allow the growth of democracy. Maximizing the individual's rights versus maximizing economic growth.
Hirschman--yes, that old favorite--remarked that India's derided Hindu rate of growth was the price that the country was paying for its democracy, however flawed it might be. I agree with him. Even now, my commentaries and critiques on India are not from the perspective of maximizing econ growth but about how the self-serving politicians are messing up the simple things that can otherwise help the individuals.
These are also some of the reasons why for years I have been a big fan of getting rid of the GDP as the measure of how well a country is doing. Because, we then pursue activities that only seek to maximize that measure. I will leave it to a Nobel laureate, who can articulate it way more powerfully:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUaJMNtW6GA
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