God's Own Country..the context is Green Kerala Express(Written by my father)

While we have all the time whining about the state of affairs in Kerala, you have shown some refreshingly welcome hues of our home state.

For more than 4 months I have been viewing an entirely different reality show (?) in the DD Malayalam channel called ‘Green Kerala Express”.  From this I can definitely say that a silent revolution is taking place across the state, a revolution of total and true development without the so called high tech roads and high rise buildings.

Instead of the conventional talent hunts in the other reality shows, in this first-of-a-kind reality show, it is the local self-government institutions – panchayats from across Kerala that vie for the top spot.  The Panchayats are judged on the basis of the sustainability of the models that they have created for local self-government in areas such as energy, water and land management, women’s empowerment, social security, sanitation, education and so on.

“As a society, we in Kerala have achieved a lot – 100 per cent sanitation, electrification, literacy, health, availability of water, zero dropouts and the like.  Grassroot-level intervention is a major factor in this success and there are a lot of unsung heroes in Kerala’s socio-economic development.  ‘Green Kerala Express’ highlights the collective efforts of the people in utilizing the grass-root level talent in the community,” Says G. Sajan, assistant director of DDK.  “This is not a fault-finding mission.  Rather it is important for us to introspect and find out the good things about ourselves,” he says.

After extensive preliminary evaluations, out of the 1000 or so panchayats, 150 were selected for the next round in the studio, where representatives from the selected panchayats present a short video of and argue for their models in front of an eminent panel of jury members (Mrs. Vineetha Menon, HOD of anthropology, Kannur U’ty, Sri K.P. Kannan, former director of Centre for Development Studies, Dr. R.V.G. Menon and Sri M.K. Prasad, Agricultural Expert Sri R. Heli and another celebrity judge.  The first celebrity judge was Ms. Padmapriya, who apart from being an actress is a Research Scholar in Sociology.  There were others like Sugathakumari¸Madhupal etc.

From this, 15 Panchayats were short-listed for the next, which is now going on. This round delves deep into the activities in each development sector.

In the end one panchayat will be selected as the winner. And the winning panchayat gets the prize money of Rs. 1 crore.

I have been witnessing for the last several weeks dozens of such fascinating tales of grassroot-level efforts of sustainable development from across the length and breadth of Kerala like a litigation-free panchayat, a fallow-free panchayat, one that has labour bank, one with resource pool of teachers, one that has a people’s initiative for protection of women etc.

I wonder how some panchayats have developed their government schools to such attractive levels and I long very dearly to return to a second boyhood and study there.  I was quite amused to hear one 8 year old girl in one of such schools wanting to become a ‘Vanitha Police’.

It is also quite refreshing to hear people speak spontaneously and frankly resisting the tendency to talk in platitudes.

Some of the panchayats claim to be models for best practices in farming,(One panchayat, Adat in Trichur is aiming to make it an “organic destination”  for “Adat rise” and “Kerashree coconut oil”), water shed management, dairy development etc.

“Only in Kerala with its impressive track record of grassroots level development can such a show happen.  Not only is the show an opportunity for socio-development initiatives to get noticed but it also serves as a platform for healthy competition among the local self-government institutions to perform better.” Says Padmapriya in one of her interviews.

“Execution of vision and working strategy play a major part in the judging criteria.  As does sustainability of the venture,” says the jury.

If ever there is a reality show with a difference, then it is the ‘GREEN KERALA EXPRESS’