Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

State's poverty alleviation programmes impress them

G. Mahadevan

U.K. students on a visit to study how Kerala tackled poverty

ONE FOR THE ALBUM: Students from the University of Manchester during their visit to the city. - Photo: S. Mahinsha

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Poverty was very much on the minds of 44 students from the United Kingdom who completed a week-long visit to Thiruvananthapuram on January 28. These students of Development Finance and Public Policy Management at the Institute of Development Policy and Management (IDPM) of the University of Manchester were here to study how Kerala tackled chronic poverty over the years.

The packed schedule of the group led by IDPM faculty member Arun Thankom included a visit to the Karakulam grama panchayat, a visit to tsunami-hit areas, the Poovathur Mahilasanghom Weaving Society and to a Kudumbashree unit at Venganoor. The students also held discussions with Thomas Isaac, MLA; Local Self-Government Principal Secretary S.M. Vijayanand and officials of the IIITMK at Technopark. One such session was entirely devoted to discuss ways of tackling chronic poverty.

"The students were basically told about the system of governance in place here and about the social welfare programmes undertaken. They were told about Kerala's experiment with decentralised planning and saw first hand the level of empowerment of the people at the panchayat. They also paid particular attention to the working of micro-enterprises and the problems faced by them," Dr. Arun Thankom told The Hindu .

The data and experiential lessons gathered by these students will go as intellectual inputs to the Brooks World Poverty Institute that has been set up at the University of Manchester. The University has also roped in Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz to work part-time for the institute.

At the interaction that the group had with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on January 25, one topic that came up for discussion was about how the level of public funds available or backing development and welfare programme.

David Hulme, Professor in Development Studies and Director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre at the IDPM, who was with the group told The Hindu that the various discussion sessions revealed a narrowing down of differences between the Congress and the Left in Kerala on the matter of finding funds for developmental activities. "There seemed to be an agreement even on the role of the private sector in this matter," he said.

For the students, the visit was also an opportunity to "bridge the gap between theory and practise" in the matter of poverty alleviation, one major area of study for them. Bala Yusuf Yunusa, a Nigerian banker studying Development Finance at the IDPM, said he was impressed by the level of empowerment of the people at the grassroots level in Kerala. He said he also studied keenly how Kerala utilised the vast amount of money deposited by NRIs. "All this data can help us figure out how to fight poverty which is really a disease in all its manifestations," he explained.

For Aamer Taj, who studies public policy and management at the IDPM, Kerala did not seem all that different from his hometown Peshawar in Pakistan. For him fighting poverty means reducing the gap between the `absolute poor' and the lower middle class in a society.

On January 27, the group also interacted with prospective students from Kerala who had shown interest for studying in the University of Manchester.

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