Study stresses on need for reassessment of rural social condition
Pioneer News Service
Thiruvananthapuram: The high social indicators for the villages of Kerala could after all be a myth, according to a study conducted by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) recently. The startling finding of the study among the rural population of a panchayat in Kerala's hilly Wayanad district shows that the actual living conditions of the State's village people could be far below the indicators had so far claimed.
According to the findings, titled human development report, of the survey held by the CDS from 2002 at Kottathara for the State Planning Board as a joint project to develop a community-based participation monitoring system, 40 per cent of the panchayat's population was still below poverty line whereas the projected BPL percentage of rural Kerala was 13.2 per cent. Scholars at CDS said that the finding called for a rethink of the models used for development initiatives.
"This result shows that the macro-level inferences could be totally wrong when cases are taken in micro-level. Though care is always taken to avoid non-justifiable generalisations, there is a huge margin of error when drawing inferences from macro-level, as has been seen in the case of Kottathara," said a scholar at CDS.
The conclusion of the study held in Kottathara, an area where the entire population relies on agriculture for livelihood, is that the particular situation there was the result of discrepancies in land utilisation. Sociologists and economists say that rural-specific land distribution and utilisation could have been missed out during the planning process for the area.
Contrary to the belief that school drop-out rates are negligible in Kerala, this rate is above 20 per cent in Kottathara. There is only one high school in the panchayat and the positioning of it is so clumsy that children, finding it difficult to access it, opt to drop out.
"The high school is at one end of the panchayat. There is virtually no transportation means. You can't expect a child living in the agrarian setup to walk all these five kilometres to schools everyday," said a CDS scholar. He said this pointed to the wrong methods of land utilisation and lack of proper planning.
The study also says that the economic status of the women is not satisfactory, and the rampant male domination is one of the factors behind this. Though there are Kudumbasree units, this is not making the desired results. "There should be a vast change in the outlook of men on women. This imbalance could be solved through such steps," the CDS scholar said.
The survey was conducted in Kottathara identifying it as a model of rural life and the results are prophetic, said a scholar. The outcome of the study point to the need of area-specific consideration while implementing plans. The authorities could be taking care not to implement the same programmes for a remote village as those for a village in Thiruvalla in south Kerala. But in most cases, a general approach is followed, and in this there is a huge margin of error. And such errors could have serious outcomes," said the scholar.
According to available statistics, Kerala had shown steady progress in the process for poverty-eradication. The percentage of BPL families in population which was 59 per cent in 1974 had come down to a commendable 15 per cent in 2005. "But such statistics are based on Kerala as a whole. This need not be true when a specific area is taken in isolation. And there could be many such backward areas, especially in the hilly and coastal areas," said the scholar.
Researchers in CDS said several social programmes had helped the rural folk of Kerala to achieve high social life indices but several villages had missed out in this because the factor of area-specific peculiarities could not have been taken into consideration.
"The Planning Board as well as the Local Administration department should take special care while deciding on dispensation of funds for civic bodies. Also, particular care should be taken to decide the land utilisation preferences. This is the lessons being given by the Kottathara model," said a researcher.
June 20, 2008,
Source: dailypioneer.com |
