The workers of the tea plantations of Munnar cannot bank on a future based on rising wages. A critical discussion of the history of settlement, plantations and accumulation in the region suggests that they need to acquire a share in the income from ecologically-sensitive tourism and from a tea that has a brand and therefore higher value, as also from better education in institutions established under corporate social responsibility activities.
The persistence of colonial patterns of ownership of plantations in Kerala remains one of the enduring weaknesses of the land reforms programme of the 1970s in the state. The case of Chengara's landless dalits underlines the necessity to address the issue of land reforms once again.
The factional conflict within the Kerala CPI(M) cannot be dismissed as an inner-party affair of no concern to others. Now when the party is in power, it has crucial implications for governance and it directly affects the people. It is also necessary to recognise that several aspects of the conflict that are specific to Kerala's economy and society and are influential in turning democratic dissent into a factional war are the rapid spread of consumerism and a high media density.
Economic activity is a human activity; its history concerns the lived economy. Therefore, we need to know more closely how people organised their economic lives. Economic theory requires opening conversations with disciplines like anthropology, sociology and feminist, cultural and literary studies. It has to relocate itself at the confluence of these varied disciplinary streams. A continuation of the debate on economic history initiated by Tirthankar Roy in this journal.
A series of scholarly inquiries initiated from the mid-1980s questioning Kerala's deficient economic, industrial development are increasingly exposing the failings of the 'Kerala Model' of social development. But the new social anthropology of Kerala's development merely combines the colonial view with neoliberalism, and fails to fulfil its promise.
Kerala CPI(M): All That Is Solid Melts into Air K T Rammohan With party unity reaching breaking point and the fact becoming increasingly transparent to the public eye, the polit bureau of the CPI(M) has finally conceded that the Kerala party is plagued by 'groupism'. The polit bureau would, however, prefer to project the development as the result of a 'clash of egos'. Yet egos do not clash in a vacuum; the clashes are possibly manifestations of certain tendencies and expressions of specific interests and sections. What are these tendencies and which are these interests and sections?
of Colonialism C P Vinod Kumar P G Revathi K T Rammohan The article traces the decline of the once vibrant Kolar gold mines as a profit-making venture and as a site of organised trade union activity. The apathy of the Karnataka state government and regional identity politics have rendered Kolar gold fields a virtual backwater in the political economy of the state.
