Why is Kerala always the butt of jokes, but not Gujarat?

It is a source of great interest to me that it seems like blogs of Indian emigrants to North America are always criticizing Kerala for its supposed 'backwardness', in continuing to elect communists into power, while ignoring the much more odious qualities of political life in the north, especially Gujarat.

It is almost like Keralans are the Indian version of Newfies (or Tasmanians in Australia, Azoreans in Portugal, etc.), ie. always ripe for 'sport'.

Some background:

Previously, in this space, I have mused aloud about the apparent anomalies of the Kerala Model. Meanwhile, over at Ultrabrown, Kerala is being presented as The land that time forgot.

Ah, yes, the land that time forgot. Except for literacy rate. And mortality rate. Etc.

A possible answer to this question is explained in an article in the last edition of Frontline Magazine (published by the same people that publish the Hindu), entitled "Why Gujarat?".

From the article:

“While the ideology of Hindutva [Hindu nationalism, akin to white nationalsim- PALGOLAK.] was gaining ground,” say Yagnik and Sheth, “moderate voices were getting weaker…. By the early 1990s, community leaders… no longer wielded any authority over their youth…. These youngsters… have grown up on a diet of anti-minority invective and the voices of moderation, of liberal thought and tolerance have been missing from their environment.”

A second factor is the influence of conservative ideas through the non-resident Indian (NRI) community. Gujarat has the highest representation of any Indian State among professional NRIs living in North America. Their reactionary “long-distance” nationalism feeds Hindutva. They are more orthodox and backward-looking than their resident Indian counterparts, but provide the role model for young Gujaratis.

At the same time, Keralans are mocked for their accents (Lola Kutty), their lungis (a very practical clothing choice IMHO), a tendency towards naive Christianity (implying a very strong caste system forcing dalits and the like toward conversion) and an over reliance on thick moustaches.

Still, enough is enough. Why don't these NRIs make fun of Tamils, for a change?


UPDATE
Since I accidentally published this post before it was ready, I was taken by surprise when manish from Ultrabrown instantly responded to the posting with a representative link to an Ultrabrown criticism of Gujarati politics.

I had already removed the original post from the interweeb before his comment was displayed, but I hope he will forgive my hasty action.

Elephant attacks!

I just keep on learning.

Even though I spent a couple of weeks in Kerala recently, I did not pick up on the fact that Keralites have a special veneration for elephants.

According to India Today, which I have no link to since India Today is an entirely meat-based entity (the Mcleans of India, so to speak), I am forced to summarise. In meat time!

So here it goes, the shorter version: elephants are going crazy at unprecedented levels because of the strains being placed upon them, especially when the male mating time (musht, or something like that, the mag isn't at hand) overlaps the Keralan festival cycle. New to the party bread-head owners are chemically dosing their elephants to repress their 'maleness' so that they can preform.

An example of an overly repressed bull elephant behaving badly during a Keralan religious ceremony (warning- probably too graphic for children. Time 8:17):




According to the article, traditional elephant owners treat their elephants like a member of the family and their beasts don't exhibit this sort of behaviour.

Unfortunately, there is so much money to be made during the Kerala February Festival Circuit that unscrupulous carpetbaggers have become a new force in the elephant-renting market. They don't care for the elephants they own, forcing the beasts to work, regardless of their condition (ie. horny or not).

For the people that are interested in this sort of thing, many more elephant attacks are available at youtube.

The Kerala Model

In anticipation of my upcoming vacation, I have been doing a lot of reading about India's history, politics, cultures, and the like.
One of the more interesting items I have come across is a continuing debate over the so-called "Kerala Model".

What is the Kerala Model? According to the most important information source in the universe, it is:

a set of economic practices developed in India's state of Kerala. These practices have resulted in the state attaining a high level of standards in human development, while compromising on its industrial development. This anomaly of high social development despite economic backwardness, is variously known as the Kerala model, or the Kerala phenomenon.

I think we all can agree that this description is dry, to say the least. What it all boils down to is, why does the most literate, healthy, and egalitarian state in India also have the lowest per capita income?

The modern theory is that investing in health and education for all citizens will result in a growth in production, yet Kerala is not following this pattern.

(Personally, I suspect that if the people that measure this sort of thing used the 'median', rather than the 'mean' average, Kerala would be rated substantially higher.)

Putting Economics aside for now, I intent to start my vacation in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, for two reasons:

1. There is a well known university there, and I hope to plunder their bookshop for books on pre-Raj Indian history. (Weirdly enough, all the Indian histories I have read, inevitably written by Britons, seem to devote approx. 6 pages to India before the Europeans, and the rest of the book to the Raj.)

2. 'Thiruvananthapuram'. This city used to be called Trivandrum, but relatively recently they changed it to Thiruvananthapuram which translates as, more or less, 'City of the Sacred Serpent' (whose name is Anantha, BTW).

I don't know how you, gentle reader, make your vacation choices, but for me this makes Thiruvananthapuram a must-visit place on my 'adventure holiday' itinerary, just because of the cool name.

(Addendum: For some reason 'City of the Sacred Serpent' reminds me of the "Conan the Barbarian" movie. I can't explain why this would be. Inquiring minds need to know!)

Kerala sticks it to the man,  part deux

Those CPI(M) swine in the Kerala state government are once again bolstering their Nazi bona fides, this time by pulling a "krystal nacht"-type manoeuver on Microsoft, that defender of the downtrodden.

From the New York Times (registration required):

In a new attack on multinational corporations, the Communist government in India’s southern state of Kerala is campaigning to eliminate Microsoft from use in public institutions, just weeks after it imposed a ban on Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
...
Microsoft was not being banned, he said, but the government was actively encouraging Kerala’s 12,500 schools to switch to the Linux operating system, available around the world free of charge.

P.S. Want to see another sexy photo of Bill Gates? I know I sure do, and I've got what you need! From an artistic perspective, please note that in this shot the sexy binder and foreground monitor props have been replaced by a fanned pile of 1.44 floppies, allowing Bill more space to splay himself comfortably across his desk.

Kerala sticks it to the man

The government of the Indian state of Kerala has taken a historic step in the globalisation battle (ie. the rights of local communites versus the rapacious money-lust of international corporations).

Not only have they banned Coca-Cola Co. and Pepsi Co. from operating bottling plants in Kerala, they have taken it one step further and banned even the SALE of Coke and Pepsi products in their state.

From Counterpunch:

The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada has remained shut down since March 2004 because of community opposition. Government and independent studies have confirmed the presence of toxic waste around Coca-Cola's bottling plants across India. "We will take steps to close down the Pepsi factory in Puddussery village in Palakkad district of Kerala," the chief minister added.

Last week, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a leading public interest research and advocacy group in India, released a study that found a "cocktail of between three to five different pesticides in all samples" of Coca-Cola and Pepsi products they tested in India. On an average, the CSE study said, the pesticide residues were 24 times higher than European Union (EU) standards and those proposed by the Bureau of India Standards (BIS), the government body responsible for standardization and quality control.

(snip)

Efforts are underway in India to develop regulations that will govern safety standards for soft drinks to ensure consumer safety. The Centre for Science and Environment has accused the Coca-Cola company and Pepsico, as well as "powerful interests in the government", of blocking the adoption of the standards.

"The government of India must also ensure that there are laws that protect our groundwater, and that regulations are in place to put an end to the kinds of rampant pollution that we have seen with the Coca-Cola company," said Amit Srivastava of the India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization.

The Supreme Court of India has also ordered Coca-Cola and Pepsico to reveal the ingredients in their products in six weeks, or face a potential national ban.

On a side note, one interesting statistic I read (that I have no immediate link for) is that it takes 4 litres of good, potable water to produce 1 litre of Coca-Cola.