Emerging Kerala will submerge Kerala: P Parameswaran

Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram director P Parameswaran has said that it is

feared that ‘Emerging Kerala’ would end up by turning out to be a case of

‘Submerging Kerala’. “Kerala might lose its cultural identity by becoming an

amorphous conglomeration of mega projects by vested interests. It might lose

its ecological and cultural characteristics which had made it ‘God’s Own

Country’,” he said in a statement.

There

are many well-meaning people other than those belonging to the Left who have

genuine suspicions about the motives behind ‘Emerging Kerala’. Kochi which is

going to be the hub of activities like large-scale industrialisation is being

planned to be developed as a large metropolitan city like Mumbai. It is already

reported that large land mafias have started acquiring huge tracts of land in

various parts of the sprawling city. Huge investment from the oil-rich Gulf

countries is on the cards.

The

result will be marginalisation, if not total annihilation of the traditional

business communities of Cochin who have built up the city’s business

enterprises and also given it a cosmopolitan harmonious cultural tradition. It

will be a tragedy if those communities disappear in the mindless process of

Emerging Kerala, he warned.

Kochi

has a great potential to develop but it should be on the basis of its own

organic and well-designed manner. It should not be a cancerous growth nor

should it try to ape other mega cities.

Kerala Government, which had utterly failed in tackling even simple problems

like waste management and water and power supply, will find complicated

problems of large-scale urbanisation impossible to manage.

The

sufferers will be the public and the mafia the gainers.

According

to Parameswaran, the role model for development is Gujarat with its long

coastline, a chain of small harbours, goods transportation through sea,

scientific management of river systems ensuring regular electric supply and

irrigation.

“The

Gujarat model can be successfully emulated by Kerala with its long coastline

and more than 40 rivers. Instead of venturing into dangerous experiments, the

Kerala’s political leadership should make an earnest effort to study how

Gujarat has become an internationally acknowledged development paradigm,” he

said.

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