The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Kalady rice mills cluster exceptional, says expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

Kalady rice mills cluster exceptional, says expert

M.P. Praveen

Hails community participation in the venture

Social commitment of the people behind the cluster lauded
Delegates from the Commonwealth countries impressed

KOCHI: The rice mills cluster in Kalady has come in for praise from John Edgar, an internationally renowned expert in clustering and networking from the Danish Technological Institute.

Mr. Edgar was in the city recently to attend the 7th Commonwealth-India Small Business Competitiveness Development Programme, which ended on Monday.

He regarded the cluster as a well-thought-out process which was exceptional in many ways.

‘Unlike other clusters’

“It is unlike many other clusters found in the rest of the world. It is well put together. It has been functional for quite sometime, which means that it has sustainability. This is not the case in many other places,” he said.

He hailed the social commitment of the people leading the cluster. “They really do have a social conscience, which doesn’t happen all the time, though it is supposed to be that way,” he said.

Normally, leading clusters had a social content to it. Here, they seem to have taken it beyond that and there was no doubt that they were progressing in the right direction, Mr. Edgar said.

The mechanisation of plants they carried out recently, taking it to next generation, was also commendable. Another significant aspect of the cluster system that caught the imagination of Mr. Edgar was the community participation in the venture.

“The whole of the community is taking part in it and that is very important. Though it is supposed to be that way, it does not always happen,” he said.

He said that delegates from the 28 Commonwealth countries had been influenced by what they saw here. It was too early to predict how useful the cluster system in Kalady would prove to be for the delegates.

However, the indications from the presentations made after the visit certainly proves that they had been influenced by the experience, he said.

‘Adaptability a problem’

Though the delegates would like to implement the model in their respective countries, it was important to assess how it applied in different circumstances. According to Mr. Edgar, a successful model in one country could not be replicated as such in another country as different countries had different cultures.

Even in England, you could not always try the same thing in two different counties. Though the underlying principle was the same, adaptability was important for the successful implementation of any model, he said.

‘Building up base’

“We are basically building up a knowledge base of how different systems are working in different countries.”

He said that the visits carried out by the delegates in Kerala were great.

The people here were so social and kind to everybody and that had gone down very well with the delegates, he said.

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