Tourism Promotion: Kerala Style

Munnar is perhaps the most sought after place for a holiday in Kerala. Located at an altitude of about 6000ft from mean sea level, the climate of the mountains attracted British planters more than a century ago, who destroyed the pristine tropical forests to convert them into vast expanses of tea estates. Except for some pockets of settlement, most of Munnar is presently owned by the giant Tata Tea that occasionally changes its name to Kanan Devan Hill Produces Ltd.. Besides KDHP there are a few minor estates too. Privately owned land and Government owned (Revenue) land together is less than ten percent of the total area (??) as people say. Land is a precious commodity, saleable land is almost non existent and the only known method to acquire it is encroachment, forced and clandestine. Thus, in Munnar encroachment is the rule rather than the exception. As private parties know how to protect their holdings the Revenue land is usually the most vulnerable target of encroachment. Once in 2007 Kerala Government tried , for a change, to establish their ownership over revenue land leading to alarming revelations of high level corruption. Finally Government was forced to retreat from this noble endeavour. That it was not an honorable retreat is history now.

Munnar, with its air conditioned climate and breathtaking natural beauty makes it very hospitable for the busy city dweller to spend a weekend. Therefore, tourists in Munnar are not of the big money type, but ordinary people, professionals, middle class families, students and the like. They are not looking for expensive facilities but comfortable stay and convenient transport at affordable costs. Although there is a certain amount of exploitation in all domains, people accept it with a smile considering it as a natural price to pay for a an escape from the ennui of everyday life and a fine holiday.

This hill resort has two main arterial roads that connect the locations of tourist interest to the town. One is the State Highway, connecting Mattupetty, echo point, Kundala and Top Station. The other is NH 49 (Cochin Madurai road) passing through Devikulam, Gap Road, Anayirangal, and Pooppara. From these roads it is possible to go via estate roads to other interesting places like Golf Links, Silent Valley (not the famous one) and other lesser known places. Another main road that exits to Tamil Nadu passes through Eravikulam National Park, Marayur, the famous sandalwood forest and Chinnar wild life sanctuary. Of late the forest department of Kerala has been doing a good job, fencing up the forest neatly to prevent avoidable theft and encroachment.

The salient features of tourism in Munnar are: traveling through the narrow roads, stopping for a while at points where the road is wide enough,(these are called View Points) enjoying the wavy, emerald landscape dotted with silver oak trees against the backdrop of a blue sky and bundles of white clouds or an all-engulfing mist that clears slowly as the wind washes them aside. There were many such points for ordinary people to watch the awesome nature, be part of it and copy them to camera. One such spot was called “Echo Point” where the Mattuppetty reservoir narrows down like a river with the road on one side and a hill on the other. Children and elders used to enjoy their own voice echoing back with immense clarity at this point.

The Government , realizing the importance of this spot constructed a neat, long platform on the water’s edge with steps leading to the lake for people, including children to enjoy the thrill of this point safely. The picture shows the plight of echo point today. The water side of the road is totally blocked by shanty shops, preventing the visitors from even looking at the lake. If you force your way through the gap,(as I did, to take this photo) the scene is even more appalling (See the picture). The platform is closed on all sides with shanty shops selling trinkets, bangles, key chains and the like, besides mini hotels serving foodstuffs. Standing on the platform you cannot even watch the lake, let alone trying your echo. The well constructed tourist platform is now the verandah of the shanty shops. As can be seen in the picture the platform is empty on a busy day because the hawkers allow only genuine customers to stand there. The sundry tourist trying out his echo is quietly shown the exit. All the sides of the platform are now in the hands of illegal hawkers and vendors, apparently let out with the connivance of the local administration and political leadership. I verified with a forest guard managing a nearby check-post who believes that the entire thing is managed by politicians through criminals masquerading as poor hawkers. He does not rule out drug-peddling as one of the objectives of illegal shanty shops. They, with the tacit support of corrupt authorities, are holding the disorganized visitors to ransom .Now no new visitor would ever know there was an echo point here. Thus the Echo Point is dead. Long live the Echo Point.

If you drive a kilometre towards Munnar you reach the beautiful Mattuppetty dam full of sparkling water. There are no shops on the dam itself, but adjacent to it the trader’s town is built on either side along the entire sidewalk and parking space. Shops supply tea, coffee, snacks , fruits and tender coconuts, throwing the entire waste to their ‘backyard’ which incidentally is the dam’s Reservoir itself. The second picture shows the plight of the reservoir with all the waste and junk thrown in from the shanty shops.It is customary, nay fashionable, to blame tourists for environmental degradation. Here the tourists so far never threw any waste into the reservoir. It is now done by hawkers and vendors enjoying property rights on public places, with the patronage of corrupt officials and politicians.

The third picture is more interesting: This is a shop selling bangles, trinkets and other such essentials to sustain human life. A warning notice board of the KSEB forms the rear wall of this shop. This warning tells the public(you and me) that they would withdraw permission to pass over the dam any time without prior notice. Such an omnipotent authority has abdicated their responsibility in favour of criminals and antisocials who now rule the roost. What a shame!!!.I asked the shopkeeper how long he had been running his business in the premises. He said ten to fifteen years. These shanty shops were certainly not there during my last visit a couple of years ago. Obviously the politicians have taught these people to claim long term occupancy on the dam-site. If there is an attempt to clean up the place survival of the squatters could be upheld as the moot point. But the unanswered questions are, why KSEB, has abdicated their throne, and what the Revenue and Police departments are doing to stem the rot. Are they sharing the loot with the politicians, or, are they themselves the culprits? The citizen has a right to know.

The fourth picture is on the famous “Gap Road” on NH 49, beyond Devikulam. This place, with the frequent appearance and disappearance of mist, was a favorite place for visitors to watch the clouds. You can see the clouds down below between the valleys as from an aircraft. The view point has no more view, because the hawkers and vendors have shut off all the view. Now they ask you to move your vehicle away so that it doesn’t obstruct their “shops”. Picture shows how the genuine vehicles are pushed to the black top toad from the parking area. These vendors claim to have a right to do that as they have paid heavy bribes to politicians and officials in order to establish the business. I went to other areas in Munnar and found the same model repeating.

A silver lining in the dark scenario is the quality of maintenance and service at Rajamala. It will be unfair not to mention how neatly Eravikulam National Park is run. The forest department runs mini buses from the entrance to the deep interior, not allowing any outside vehicles to pass, after checking the bags of visitors to make sure that no edible substance is taken to the park. This is to ensure the safety of the rare Nilgiri Tahrs from frivolous and unscrupulous visitors. A few years back there was utter confusion here, due to chaotic driving and visitors claiming more than their due. Now tourists can spend as much time as they wish and return safe. Judging by the crowd and waiting lines one should presume that the project is quite viable and generates a reasonable income. This is in astonishing contrast to what is happening elsewhere in Munnar where politicians, given a chance, would establish hotels to serve mountain goat meat as a special delicacy rather than saving Nilgiri Tahr. This also shows that where there is a will there is a way even in a Government department. One wonders why KSEB has unleashed such a criminal anarchy in this place and why the Department of Tourism maintains this deafening silence.

I used to work in Munnar from 2004 to 2007, and I was a frequent visitor to these places, working closely with the revenue administration and the forest department on their Citizen’s committees. The administration had a commitment to clean up the places when illegal encroachments of this type took place. It is certain that some drastic change has taken place since then, where corrupt politicians with diabolic intentions masquerading as people’s representatives, working hand in glove with criminals and antisocial elements are torpedoing public interest and making profit out of the filth by dishonest means. They are holding you and me to ransom. It is time we woke up and called a spade a spade. Those who read this blog may please spread the news and create an awareness among the public. In God's Own Country what was once a small piece of heaven is now turning into hell. We have to eradicate this evil process of transformation.

Simple Solutions to Complex Problems

Protection of environment is a major concern of many individuals, organizations and Governments. Most of them speak and write about it, mostly blaming the government and local administrations. Governments on the other hand bring about Legislative acts, allocate budgetary provisions and support seminars and symposia. Laws, Rules and punitive actions have created some awareness among the public. Maintaining mini jungles and water bodies in the name of religious beliefs used to help in yesteryears; but on the face of growing “scientific” thinking, secularism and escalating land prices, keeping jungle abodes for snakes in the backyard(famously known as Sarpa-kavu in Malayalam) in the name of tradition is no more feasible. Scientific thinking is purported to be the basis of our decisions, which is often superseded by political reasoning. Occasional attacks of Chikungunya and swine fever keep everyone on the alert at least on personal cleanliness, although we are back to Square One once the epidemic recedes. Many Panchayats and local bodies have started installing biogas plants that achieve the goals of waste disposal and power generation besides producing some organic fertilizer. We can be happy that we are into it though somewhat late.

Uppsala is a small town eighty kilometers North of Stockholm in Sweden. It has a beautiful canal running through the length of the city, passing under several bridges connecting the two parallel roads on its banks. The canal has a small drop before entering the park. There are avenue trees on either side of the canal with seats, benches and small waste bins where all kinds of people, tourists and locals, young and old, boys and girls spend their leisure and happy times. The trees drop a lot of flowers in the canal in Spring, and leaves in Autumn. As the slow water carries them downstream the canal would look dirty and polluted. The City administration is aware of this persistent problem. I was amazed by the simplicity of the solution they adopted in this era of high technology. (See picture).

A rope carrying thin reapers is tied across the canal at forty five degrees. All surface wastes such as flowers, paper cups and plastic bottles collect to the corner which the cleaners sweep away every morning and evening, leaving the water downstream always clean. There are many simple solutions to complex problems around us. Why don’t we think of them?

A seat on the canal’s left bank

Teaching, Learning, Evaluation and Politics

The recent results of SSLC examination in Kerala did proud to everyone: Government, students, teachers and managements: a win-win situation in the modern jargon. Our children have performed an amazing forward leap in academic quality, thanks to the sincere effort of evaluators and policy makers who wielded the magic wand. It was the umpires who played this time to bring about such an incredible advancement by reducing the minimum requirements for a pass to ridiculously low levels. This act of charity enabled the lazy and dull to pass the exams and join the rest. It should now be possible to enhance the country’s prosperity overnight by bringing the “poverty-line” to similarly low levels. If the concerned agencies wake up to this task India will no longer be a poor country.

Education is concerned with acquisition of knowledge and skills. Evaluation is an essential and integral part of this process. More than anything else, evaluation should give valid feedback to the student as to whether he/she has scaled the requisite levels in the concerned subjects. At the end of the evaluation, if the teacher tells a lie the process simply becomes invalid. Somehow a sizeable population of teachers believe that they are empowered to award “marks” as a matter of gratis. Students and parents eagerly look forward to this largesse after every examination. Acceptance of this premise causes many factors other than academic to creep in and vitiate the system. We have witnessed several extremely degenerate cases where administrative bodies such as University Syndicates decide to award marks to chosen favorites for political reasons. We should realize that “mark” is a scale of measurement and not material wealth for distribution among the have-nots.

Education in India is hounded by two demons namely Degree Mania and Exam Phobia. Degree maniacs are typical cases of the society that crave the label and not the content. They want only the final gilt edged certificates, and are least bothered about what they learn, nor if they learn anything at all. Exam phobia is a quality inherited over generations: most students consider regular learning during the year/semester unnecessary and prepare for the short term target of passing the examinations. Thus all exams become fearfully difficult. This together with the basic distortion in the evaluation has relegated acquisition of knowledge as the last priority. Things have come to such a pass that learning and scholarship are hardly considered as of any value. To a large extent teachers are also responsible for such erosion in the fundamental objective of education.

It is time we realized that examination is a necessary evil, and that learning has to progress in spite of examinations, and not because of it. If the purpose of learning is to pass an examination, all that you learnt would evaporate immediately after. The residual knowledge (if any) is not usually good enough for higher studies or any profession. The student, on the other hand argues that there is no point in studying any Physics or Mathematics (except to pass the exams) if you are destined to end up as a clerk or bus conductor. The frightening element of truth in this argument traps the whole system in a vicious circle, because a majority of graduates in science, languages and literature have to take up jobs in stations totally alien to their subjects of study.

The policy makers who brought down the minimum requirement for pass in SSLC appear to endorse this line of argument as a short cut to popularity among the youth: Why should everyone know the congruence theorem of triangles and rules of grammar? Of course, it is true that in real life we are never asked to prove any theorem of geometry, nor do we have to recount the years of various dynasties and their wars. We teach all these, and compel the innocent student to learn everything, not because these bits of knowledge and information per se would assist them earn their daily bread. The children would in ten years “learn how to learn” through examples and stories, and face a test of understanding. Geometry and poetry are only training platforms to face a variety of intellectual challenges. The stories they learn may not be important, but certainly the culture of learning and scholarship are. It is in this context that there should be a reliable feedback system of telling the student how much he/she has learnt and how much more he has to. Telling them a lie at this stage is unfair.

Political and administrative authorities, in their blindness emanating from delusions of grandeur arrogate to themselves the right to donate marks as they please, blocking reliable feedback information and sending wrong signals to the student community that the days ahead are for the mediocre. Students will certainly take the cue and conclude that striving for excellence in learning is rather futile.

Countries, Rich and Poor

I am posting this from Stockholm, Sweden. This is one of the richest countries in the world. Coming from India it is difficult to fathom how people in such countries look at the mundane problems of ordinary folks. Having waited indefinitely for the city buses in Trivandrum (which never turn up on time, and sometimes do not turn up at all) and traveled by the mofussil buses in other cities where passengers are packed like sardines, and the great KSRTC buses that ask you to run back or forth from the stop, it was a wonderful sight to see the long and silent buses, often in two compartments connected by bellows, that arrives on the dot, halts exactly at the bus stop and moves on slowly when all are in, and the doors are closed. Through the large windows you can see mostly the empty seats occupied here and there by a lonely passenger. The buses are run on biogas, and release little or no poison to the atmosphere. I wondered how many generations it would be before our country achieves this level of perfectio

In my eagerness to enjoy a bus ride, I got into a bus and asked the driver for a ticket (Conductor is an extinct species in the West, and in all ‘western’ type countries like Singapore and Korea.) He smiled indulgently and pointed to the bus stop, muttering something in Swedish which of course I did not follow. Rather late it dawned on me that I should have bought the ticket before entering the bus. The driver was pointing his finger at something when I got out of the bus. I felt like Mahatma Gandhi famously ejected from a First Class compartment at Pietermaritzburg station in South Africa. When I was about to freeze into a statue at the Vasteras city bus stop two students came to my help. With what little English they could marshal to their command they revealed the technology of getting entry to the bus. Instructions are clearly written (in Swedish) on a board in the bus stop, where the diver’s finger pointed earlier. All that you do is to pull out your mobile phone and send an SMS to 72372; the content of message is just “VV”, meaning one adult. In a couple of seconds an SMS comes to you deducting the bus fare from your mobile account. Now open the message and hold the phone for the driver to read. Into the next bus I entered like a visiting Maharajah in full regalia, holding the mobile phone like a baton of authority.

There are many assumptions and imperatives in this model. If you do not have enough money in the mobile account, no journey is possible. Payment in cash (if permitted) is always costlier than electronic payment- prohibitively costly. So everybody carries a mobile phone, keeps sufficient money in the account and always abides by the law of the land. Otherwise a country with just nine million people (less than two districts’ population in Kerala) cannot maintain such an efficient public transport system and sustain a thriving industrial base. They devise such automated systems because manpower is either too costly or unavailable. This is where countries like ours have to be cautious installing automated systems. When we go for similar systems the collateral damage is the loss of jobs

The environmental awareness in this country is not limited to running buses on biogas, but in the conscious use of bicycle by all sections of the society. Cyclists have safe tracks and parking lots on the main road; and bicycle is popular even among old people. Unlike in the US, you don’t see many obese people here; the average Swede is handsome/beautiful with no fat around the girth. Womenfolk proudly display their beautiful legs of athletic shape and textbook perfection. At the first sight I got a feeling that bicycle is the secret of their health and beauty.

All of us have a tendency to compare every new situation to what we are already familiar with. I dare not imagine an SMS ticket in Calicut-Wynad route or in Trivandrum city. We should be happy that mammoth systems like the Indian Railways have established a very reliable e-ticketing and reservation system for the gigantic railway network of the country. I could withdraw local currency in Sweden from my account in India with an ATM card. Compare this with 25 years ago when you had to empty your pockets of all Indian currency and buy, twenty US dollars in the airport waiting in a long queue with the boarding card for the international flight. What did our rulers and bureaucrats think Indians would do after landing in New York? Beg in the streets, steal, or pickpocket? They knew the answer, and that answer was in the channel of smuggling. Small time smugglers of those days matured as underworld Dons, mafia chiefs and many other things we all know now.

There are certain things we could change in our style and methods. Those who wait patiently for their turn in any queue abroad make a muddle at service counters in India, claiming priority over everyone else. Where does this habit come from? The cause of most of our fatal road accidents is not the condition of the road or vehicle, it is the condition of our mind. Unless we are ready to respect the rights of the “other fellow” we cannot escape from the present quagmire. This is true even if we land a man on the moon.

After seeing all the advancements in this country I do not dream of SMS bus tickets or the beautiful people in my country; but a country where everyone has easy access to safe drinking water twenty four hours a day and 365 days a year; a country where the politician-criminal-terrorist nexus does not divide us and rule, making peace and prosperity a mirage for ever.

Forget the Past and Forsake the Future

It was the philosopher Santayana who said, “Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it". What about those who never bothered about their own history? They will do much worse than repeating or reliving it; they will tread the paths tried out and abandoned by their predecessors. India and Indians are condemned to this fate because we are an ahistorical society. India’s history was not properly recorded here; and for any worthwhile facts on our own past we depended chiefly on the writings of Arab travelers, Greek diplomats and Chinese scholars. Later of course, the Westerners hijacked Indian History and retold it the way they wanted to.

India’s past beyond the sixth century B.C. has virtually no chronology. Inextricably intertwined with popular fiction, our past is hidden in stories and folklore. Even great scholars who made remarkable contribution to human knowledge and literature are projected as jokers and imbeciles who got a sudden bolt from the blue and turned overnight to statesmen and poets. Two such cases are Chanakya and Kalidasa. Their less worthy Western counterparts are better known and celebrated all over the world not only because of the meticulous care with which the West preserves its history, but due to our own shabby ways of remembering the past. The house where Shakespeare lived in Stratford-upon-Avon is preserved as a national monument in UK. On the contrary, in Ujjain where Kalidasa lived and wrote his epic poetry there is hardly any historical relic other than rivers and temples dating back to his times.

Ujjain was the city of Vikramaditya, the wise and brave emperor whose court was full of legendary luminaries including mathematicians, astronomers, men of medicine, architects, grammarians and scholars whose intellects hovered in the rarified atmosphere at the limits of human understanding. Those days the reference line of “zero longitude” (the equivalent of Greenwich line of modern times) was set through the centre of sanctum sanctorum of Maha-Kaleshwar temple under Vikramaditya’s patronage. All the wisdom and valour of the king is lost in tales of his adventures with a vampire called “Vethalam”. A matter of great surprise is that Vikramaditya (Chandragupta II of Gupta dynasty) lived in the First century AD, more than 300 years after Alexander’s campaign, and yet he is more a folklore’s mystery than a hero of history.

Alexander’s progress through the Indian subcontinent was effectively arrested by Chanakya’s defence planning . He, the mentor of Chandragupta Maurya and the virtual founder of Maurya Dynasty was a statesman par excellence whose knowledge of defence, and original contributions in Law and Economics make him the first ever political economist in the world. Instead of learning Arthasastra as part of the curriculum we try to do a character assassination of the great scholar by focusing on some of his orchestrated idiosyncrasies and stubborn personal style. Is it not a shame that every teacher of economics pays homage to Adam Smith as the first economist in the world, blissfully ignorant about Athasastra, a timeless piece of scholarship produced many centuries ago?

Treasure of Techniques washed away from this country by the currents of “Western education” includes our ability for mental arithmetic. While fairly advanced countries in the West were struggling with Roman numbers(not good for any useful purpose other than counting) during the middle Ages India had always had the decimal system from ancient times. Vedic Mathematics (now popular everywhere) tells us that Pythagoras Theorem was well known in India and had five different proofs centuries before it was known after Pythagoras (6th century B.C- Contemporary of Buddha).

Most of us do not know that one of the most popular results in Trigonometry 〖Sin〗^2 θ+〖Cos〗^2 θ=1 was enunciated by Varahamihira in 5th Century AD. He was the one who tabulated the coefficient triangle of binomial expansions (a+b)^n for positive integer values of n, known today as Pascal’s Triangle.

In fact many of us blame the British for leaving behind a bad education system in India. We do not realize their real success lied in making us believe that we had no past worth remembering and that the West was the fountainhead of all human knowledge.

Today if our students and young people in Western Universities excel in comparison with others one reason is that they have an edge over others in Mathematics. If you wish to taste the excellence of our ancestors in mental arithmetic pull out your calculator and check the values of the “Vulgar Fractions” as your friend who knows the “Sutra” writes it effortlessly on a piece of paper. You will find your calculator is dumb beyond the 8th digit while your mind can go on and on until you recognize a pattern.

1/19=0.052631578947368421 052631..
1/59=0.01694915254237288135593220338 98305084745762711864406779661 016949…
1/79=0.0126582278481 0126582…

Those who can write computer programs may try the conventional method and Vedic Method to evaluate such fractions and look at the merits of mental arithmetic.
Our schools have discarded mental arithmetic in the name of “modernization”. They teach commutativity and associativity before the child gets any clue, presumably because that is how it is done in the West. If the present is the legacy of the past the future would hold for us, what we sow today.

Post Script:
Once I bought in a US Department Store 53 dollars worth sundry things. Reluctant to carry loose change I gave a hundred dollar bill and 3 dollars asking her to return a fifty dollar bill. The teller girl didn’t understand the process and kept insisting that I had given her more than the necessary cash. Hundred dollar bill was enough. On further talking her Supervisor entered the scene, understood my demand, took all the money and entered $103 instead of 100. Balance now gets printed out as $50. There you are!!! She pulls out a 50 dollar bill and gives me, full of smile and surprise, exclaiming, “Oh, these Indians!!! Brainy, Real brainy!!!”
Would you rather, your children advance like the Americans?