I recently got back from a cycling trip in Kerala, India. I went there because I had never been to southern India, and this state, stretched out along the west coast almost at the tip of the subcontinent, had achieved remarkable successes: the highest (95%) literacy rate, highest life expectancy (77, as the official retirement age in India is about to go up to 58 from 56), the lowest homicide rate and the least corruption in the country. All this in the first jurisdiction in the world to elect a communist government, which has been in and out of office since 1957.
For tourists, Kerala’s big attractions are its vast inland waterways, its animal-rich forests, spice-trading history, rich cultural and religious traditions, its safety, fantastic vegetarian food and tea plantations. It’s also headquarters to India’s space program.
Not on that list are shopping malls, so I felt compelled to visit the biggest and only shopping mall in Ernakulam. The Lulu mall is an air-conditioned sanctuary of spending, comparable in its contrast with the horn-infested, jammed, careening streets outside to the clean, airy, high-ceilinged temples, cathedrals and mosques that still attract more people – for now. Lulu’s religion is consumerism spiced with cleaning solvent and strains of Country Roads. Its mall experience, even with the top-floor skating rink out of operation, is catching on fast, bringing a familiar passion for brand names coupled with a garbage tsunami that is overwhelming the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram. It’s all in sync with a barrage of outdoor advertising for loans to buy gold, scooters and fancy eyewear.
WalMart, too, is on the way, along with seaplanes to access the backwater houseboats, even though they’ll eliminate traditional fishing on the flight paths. The big boxes will erode thousands of marginal, unimaginative and inefficient tiny shops and storefronts that keep crucial bits of money flowing through local hands. Their demise is as tragic as it is inevitable.
As the Lulu Hypermarket (owned in Dubai by a Kerala native) introduces aisles of obesity-inducing packaged candy bars, the fish along the coast get fewer and smaller, and fishermen’s children join the rush to get engineering degrees and work for companies like tech giant Infosys. It’s expanding its LEED platinum campus in Thiruvananthapuram to add 3,500 more jobs.
No one wants to climb coconut trees for a living any more.
While Canadians were preoccupied with a housing expense scandal in the senate, India is going into next month’s federal elections with fully 30% of its MPs facing criminal charges. Parties like these candidates because the worst criminals are also the richest, and rich politicians have 20 times the chance of winning an election than poor ones. Voters like these rich criminal politicians better because they will do whatever it takes – “by hook or by crook” – to protect the interests of their supporters.
Back down at street level, corruption and consumption fade into the ever-present acrid smoke of burning plastic bags, the mesmerizing Hindu temple chants pumping through lamppost loudspeakers, and the honking and hustle of traffic mayhem.
There, in the small moments of daily life, passersby throw out a ready joy, reaching out with enthusiastic smiles and greetings such as we rarely see. No one sweats the small stuff, which in India includes most of what we worry about. Students in uniforms, multi-generational families at the zoo, auto-rickshaw drivers offering directions, so many are alive, reverent and respectful in ways that constantly reminded me how much we have to learn from people who still have very different views of what’s important in life. •
