مدل کرالا "جدید" : درسهایی برای توسعه پایدار

The “Kerala model of development” has won wide international attention for its achievements in regard to social development and, to a certain extent, environmental sustainability. The “old” Kerala model, preoccupied with redistributive policies, failed, however, to induce economic development. As a result, attention is now being given to a “new” Kerala model. The new policy explicitly seeks reconciliation of social, productive and environmental objectives at the local level, and tries to develop synergies between civil society, local governmental bodies and the state government. The new Kerala model thus holds important lessons for participatory, community-based sustainable development in India and elsewhere.

Since the late 1970s, a number of international development scholars have held up the south Indian state of Kerala as a “model of development” (cf. Ratcliffe, 1978, Morris and McAlpin, 1982, Amin, 1991 and Franke and Chasin, 1994). Indeed, Kerala's development has been remarkable during the past four decades: Public action, including both progressive state interventions and popular movements, has brought about high levels of social development and improved living conditions—particularly for lower classes—in spite of low per capita income and nearly stagnant economic growth rates (Ramachandran, 1997). Recent studies, however, have questioned the sustainability of the “Kerala model” in light of an unfolding fiscal crisis due to economic stagnation and rising social expenditure (George, 1993). Indeed, researchers as well as politicians have generally acknowledged that these economic weaknesses threaten the sustainability of Kerala's welfare policies and, in fact, the “old” Kerala model. Environmental sustainability has been held up as another characteristic of the Kerala model (Parayil, 1996). Most studies, however, have tended to overemphasize positive aspects of Kerala's environmental record such as the low level of resource consumption, low population growth rates and moderate industrial pollution. A careful appraisal of Kerala's environmental conditions indicates a mixed record (Véron, 2000). In terms of sustainable development, what is more important than the allegedly achieved environmental sustainability, are the recent policies of Kerala's state government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and popular movements. In the 1990s, a “new” Kerala model began to emerge—one that promised to better integrate sustainable-development goals into policy-making, and to go beyond mere state regulation (setting and monitoring environmental standards) to include community-based strategies for environmental protection. The new policy approach comprises decentralized administration; participatory planning combining productive and environmental objectives; and collaboration between the state, NGOs and civic movements. This far-reaching experiment holds important lessons about opportunities and limitations of community-based sustainable development. Section 2 of this paper clarifies the concept of sustainable development, and introduces policy approaches towards this objective, including the community-based strategy and the model of co-management of resources. Section 3 examines features and limitations of the old Kerala model, and discusses the current policy trend towards a new Kerala model. Section 4 analyzes old and new community-based initiatives to achieve sustainable development in Kerala, including discussion of state action, the role of environmental NGOs, grassroots action and environmental ethics. Section 5 analyzes how the recent campaign for democratic decentralization has addressed common failures of community-based strategies and “community failures” (e.g., failure to include people's participation in defining development priorities; community failure to address the needs of future generations; failure to overcome conflicts between local interest groups; failure to reduce spatial externalities and to consider broader political, economic and ecological structures), and in how far the new Kerala model has been successful in overcoming these shortcomings. In conclusion, I argue that the new Kerala model holds some important lessons for community-based sustainable development and co-management of environmental resources, in particular by utilizing synergies between government and civil society at the local level. But, failure to implement complementary regulatory and price instruments for environmental protection at the state level limits Kerala's ability to achieve sustainable development.

The old Kerala model was certainly not an example of sustainable development: The environmental record has been mixed, and economic stagnation threatened the sustainability of social progress. The new Kerala model has, however, included policies toward community-based sustainable development and addressed common “community failures.” There are individual success stories where synergies between the local government and the civil society have been utilized to build new institutions that overcome conflicting interests and more deep-rooted rifts based on class and party politics. The success of the new Kerala model will depend on whether these showcases can be replicated in other panchayats. Ecological concerns have been integrated in sectoral projects on initiative of environmentally aware development volunteers. But decentralized planning has not offered a platform for comprehensive environmental planning because the units of planning based on residency are inappropriate for building resource-user groups. Community-based sustainable development meets very conducive social conditions in Kerala. The population—in cities, towns and villages alike—is educated, informed, politically conscious and well organized to bring about necessary far-reaching social change. Apart from the availability geographically well distributed human and social capital, the ideological commitment of the state government has been crucial. The current left-coalition government has initiated and backed decentralized development planning. Although some state-level politicians of both the ruling and the opposition parties remain skeptical, financial devolution and decentralized planning are not easily reversible because they have already raised the expectations at the grassroots. In order to achieve sustainable development with a participatory strategy, environmental awareness among the population is essential. As influential NGOs are engaged in environmental education, there is scope for sustainable development to become a general value in Kerala, as did social justice and equity in the first half of this century as a result of caste-based reform movements and class-based associations. Though the state government is making a genuine effort to initiate community-based sustainable development, and to make use of synergies between civil society and the state at the local level, it fails to enforce environmental policies at the macrolevel. For example, monitoring of environmental standards and use of environmental impact assessment have remained insufficient, and the introduction of environmental taxes has not been considered. The failure to create private-public synergies at the macrolevel in regard to environmental protection counteracts the efforts of decentralized environmental planning, and may limit Kerala's prospects considerably in achieving sustainable development. Participatory initiatives at the local level have a limited reach because they take place in state and national political contexts, global markets and wider ecological systems. This implies that community-based sustainable development and co-management of resources are no substitute for environmental planning and regulation at state and international levels. It must be recognized that there is also “community failure” to protect the environment (as there is market failure and state failure). Yet community-based strategies may become an important addition to regulatory and price instruments if synergetic roles of the state, the market and civil society can be identified, defined and utilized. It would be premature to draw conclusions about the success of the new Kerala model, but this participatory development experiment may well provide more lessons for environmental planners in developing countries. Kerala's attempt to foster environmental awareness through decentralized planning and its performance in developing accountability of local bodies, NGOs and state agencies deserves further research.