As unemployment soars and the appeal for jobs from the Middle-East wanes, Kerala is trying once more to discard its business-unfriendly image and catch up with the rest of the country in attracting investments. Kerala leads the country on most social indicators, but it has realised that to remain at the top, it will have to move away from traditional sources of income and embrace industry and investments.
The state hopes the three-day ‘Emerging Kerala’ investment drive, starting on Wednesday, will be successful in achieving just that.
Industrialists, politicians and economists fear the Kerala model of development, with emphasis on quality-of-life indicators, not income, is no longer sustainable without large new investments. The state is a study in contrasts. While it tops in life expectancy, sex ratio and literacy rates, industries have largely ignored it —manufacturing contributed just 9% to Kerala’s economy in 2010-11. Also, its unemployment rate of 9.9% is much higher than the national average of 3.8%, union labour ministry data show. Even Bihar fares better. Many businessmen expect this to change for the better once investments flow into the state.
A similar investment drive — the Global Investment Meet — held in 2003 was a washout. Of the 60 projects that attracted investments then, most have not even taken off. The ambitious SmartCity Kochi project, a knowledge-industry campus, is still under construction. This time the focus is not just on investments and signing MoUs, but creating a roadmap for future. The state has already received numerous proposals, mostly in the tourism, healthcare, IT, retail and infrastructure sectors.
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