Kerala
- Loss Of All Hope
By Saji P. George
01 August, 2004
Countercurrents.org
In
the South Indian state of Kerala, news channels are now keeping a count,
like the one maintained by the global media for the US causalities in
Iraq. A count of the dead. Whenever a farmer, hopeless at the mounting
financial debts, commits suicide the report that flashes will most usually
end up with the following words. "Now the total count reached."
The count is moving up almost every day for the last two months. The
extreme rightist provincial regime, which has left the task of financial
engineering to the Asian Development Bank, first tried to deny the truth
of the corpses, then it invented the truth of the whole matter that
the reason for these mounting suicides is a phenomenon called loss-of-all-hope.
In Kerala, which until very recently maintained a human development
index comparable to many developed nations, this is unprecedented. Corporate
Globalization process aggressively followed by the Union Government
in New Delhi is now bringing its results for our masses. Suicides! It
was the Plantation workers whose intense protests did yield virtually
no result, turned first to this kind of a final solution. The farmers
are following suit. But now alarmingly a new category is joining the
line. The students and youths!
Following the dictums
of the non-interventionist era, the Govt in Kerala privatized its education
sector. Soon private entrepreneurs came in flock and there was a boom
of institutions mostly Engineering colleges and Medical colleges. The
entire funds for running the institutions including the mark-up for
the owners are to be generated from Course fee. Hence the poor, who
are unfortunately the majority has no stake. To facilitate the unfolding
scenario the Reserve Bank of India issued a generous circular to all
the Banks in the country. It directed the Banks to grant educational
loans for poor students at an interest rate between 11-15%! It did not
forget to give the usual smartness tip also, not to be lazy in recovering
the amount from defaulters!! The bank officer's organizations are pointing
out that this will lead many of the poor youngsters only to huge Debts
and Suicides!
The issue sparked
up again when the leftist Student unions violently agitated and virtually
rocked the State on the issue following the suicide of a dalit girl
student Rajani.
Rajani was a bright
Computer Engineering student who is supposed to belong to the category
of the most aspiring people. But destiny joined her only to the most
desperate ones. She has not taken a loan. Being expelled from her hostel
for not paying the fee she approached many quarters including the local
bank for a loan but in vain. Finally she went up to the office of the
Entrance Examination Controller at the State capital in Trivandrum,
the office of the authority who conducted the competitive examination
for selecting engineering students and thus made her an eligible engineering
student. She reached up to the 8th floor and jumped her last journey
down. Devoid of choices for a desired destiny she chose her death magnificently.
Her choice had made her a martyr, a martyr in the rank of the Korean
farmer who stabbed himself to death in protest of the WTO. In the mythology
of the Indian left the martyr is an untainted. Knowing this all too
well the rightist regime had done every thing at their
disposal to malign her, they had even instructed to conduct a virginity
test on
the dead body!
Higher Education
system in Kerala is a remnant of the colonial period created by the
British to prepare Clerks. Functionally worthy knowledge, vocational
skills, expertise or language skills of the students graduating from
these colleges are dismal. These institutions are an utter failure in
catering to the
societies needs in knowledge and skills. But there have been little
efforts to revamp the system than to write off the whole to ultra right
commercial interests.
The traditional
leftist parties in Kerala have also failed to imagine an alternative
for the decadent vestiges of colonial education and hence have to cooperate
with the rightists while offering a show of resistance to slow down
their pace. When the present kind of Self Financing of education was
systematized, they compromised at every juncture and finally during
the last spark of violent agitations their ire was mostly turned to
the Banks reluctant to issue loans. The crashed ATM counters across
the towns stood as the most eloquent _expression of leftist endorsement
of a bank financed education system in place of the public funded education
system.
Now, recently students
at a government run medical college stalled an effort by an agent of
a private medical college to take a dead body from their mortuary.The
dead body was sold to the private college illegally for using in specimen
studies. When students questioned the concerned head of department,
it was revealed that the corpse was sold at the rate of Rs.15000/-.
The Govt. had instructed each departments of the college to generate
funds themselves and sale of corpse was the one means invented by that
department. INR15000/- is enough to bye a thousand meals! In a region
where people dispossessed of the means of living by neo-liberal policies
turn often to rackets trading on human organs, offering a Kidney for
money, this may not invite much attention. But it silently reminds that
here life diminishes a human beings worth. Ratings will go up as breathing
go down. The current market rate for a corpse is INR 15000/-!
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