I have read a book, "HOPE, HUMAN AND WILD". This book gives us ideas how to satisfy human lives with less damaging way, and gives evidence that our infatuation with accumulation and expansion.
I will introduce an example, Kerala, which is one of states in India. Kerala is poor with a per capita income about 1/7 the American average. However, this area is totally different from others. First, the life expectancy rate is 70 years old even though the rate in North America is 72 years old. Second, Kerala has 100 percent literacy rate, according to U.N. Third, Kerala's birth rate is eighteen per thousand, compared with sixteen per thousand in United State.
In Nadur, one of the villages in Kerala, many people do not even have own beds. Only 42 percent have cooking utensils, a wooden bench, and a few stools. 36 percent have some chairs and cots, and 19 percent have a table. In five households possess cushioned seats, dressers, etc. There is one VCR, one refrigerator, and one television. Even in that situation, why Kerala have such high rates?
I will explain the reason from two perspectives:
social history, and
public policy.
-Social History-
The traditional caste system was strong when it was 18 to 19 century in India. However, Kerala was less caste-ridden than any place in the Hindu world. This situation brought in different economic condition there. For example, the need for literacy rate grew because the British and the rajahs pushed cash crops instead of farming, and more and more tenant farmers became involved with that market. Therefore, people spent their lives without social strong restriction.
In developing countries, people think man is much more important than woman. Therefore, it is usual for them to kill baby daughters. For instance, in Muslim Pakistan there are only ninety-two women for every hundred men, and boys are twice as likely to be taken to the hospital as girls are. However, in Kerala, there are more women than men; there are 1,040 women per 1,000 men even though 929 women oer 1,000 men in other states. As a result, there are actually more female than male college students.
-Public Policy-
In the morning, there are a lot of boys and girls who go to schools with their eyes bright. Education has been both cause and effect of Kerala's development, breeding new demands for progress and offering the example of other parts of the world. After Christian missionaries and the British started the progress, leftists spread education, and the first great boom was in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1981 the general literacy in Kerala was 70 percent-twice as high as all-India rate of 36 percent. Moreover, female literacy was 66 percent.
The government, the leftists who governed for much of the late 1980s, focused on "total literacy", defined by the United Nation as a population in which about 95 percent can read and write. The leftist Peoples Science Movement (KSSP) recruited twenty thousand volunteers tutors and sent them to teach.Teachers taught not only subjects, but also some basic civics, as well as message on how to deal with the government hygiene, "the dignity of work, equality of the sexes, the need for clean drinking water, how to read a clock, and what immunizations should be given to one's children at what age."
In Kerala, the government gives children free health care. With virtually, all mothers taught to breast-feed, and a state-supported nutrition program for pregnant and new mothers, infant mortality in 1991 was 17 per thousand, compared with 91 for low-income countries basically.
-Problems-
The combination of a stagnant economy ans a strong commitment to providing health and education have left the state large budget deficits. As the world is globalized, the life in Kerala have to be changed. People could not sell coconuts as same price as years ago; the price of coconuts has plummeted 50 percent. In addition to that, we cannot see whether the system in Kerala can use in other countries.
-My opinion-
When I read this chapter, I was surprised about Kerala. Although Kerala is in developing country, it has high literacy rate, life expectancy rate, and the like. I think there are a lot of things we have to learn from Kerala, but it's hard for us to do that. We, people in developed countries, have wealth, and we do not want to lose it even if the life in Kerala is less damaging to the environment. What we have to do is to find the way to develop, while giving the environment the least damage.
