 Welcome all of you to the Vikasarth Conversations. This is jointly presented by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Center for Public Policy Research. We are very fortunate to have two great panelists with us. We are very fortunate to have all of you participate today before I introduce them for the conversation. Just a couple of words to this topic that we are going to be dealing with in the coming hour and a half. The broad theme is Kerala's response to economic reforms. Within that, of course, there is a focus on development broadly and within that economic growth as well of Kerala. So when we think about that clearly, the immediate issues of managing the fiscal balances, the social side, the environmental side, all of that are very much on our minds, especially as the budget discussions will be taking place. At the same time, Kerala has always drawn the attention of observers, development practitioners, other countries as a state that has stood out in a number of ways, especially it's off the charts when it comes to the usually measured indicators of social progress. So that always gets attention and to the extent which economic reforms are also prompting economic and socioeconomic progress remains a question. So those issues clearly will catch the attention of our speakers today and will have a healthy time to discuss them as well. The game plan, quite flexible, but the game plan is that the speakers will come in first and I will pass the discussion on amongst the three of us in the initial stages and then we'll open up for a broader discussion amongst all of us. So let me introduce Dr. Pulapri Balakrishnan, who probably doesn't need a lot of introduction to this group. He is a renowned economist and policy person who has written on a whole host of issues on India's economy, Kerala's economy, and issues of global interest as well. There are so many things I could mention. His details are in our folders. But let me just mention a few that are close to my heart. One is early on his PhD from Cambridge University. That has a special meaning for me. Then country director for Ukraine, if our country lead economist for Ukraine, yes. That obviously is a very special thing to recollect today at this time. And I wonder if you'll make some remark about what he carries over from that time as well. The Center for Development Studies, which he led, I think in the first few years of the 2010s, that has also a special interest. And we all thank him for the work he did then. And subsequently, several books that are of great interest to everyone, this group might have looked at some of them, Pricing and Inflation in India, Economic Growth in India, et cetera. So we couldn't be luckier in having a speaker of his caliber. So thank you, Dr. Balakrishnan, for joining us today. Thank you, Dr. Thomas, for the very generous introduction. Thank you. Thank you. And then we are very, very lucky that Dr. Burnali Pandari has been able to join us. And she's joining us from Delhi. She's a senior fellow at the NCAER, the renowned institution. And she has a background in international economics and macroeconomics, specifically focusing on the impact of globalization on development. Current interest, especially in terms of working at NCAER, is in assessing the progress and prospects of implementing direct-benefit transfers in states and human territories. You can imagine how critically important this is in improving the social outcomes in the country. And experiment to some extent, this is of great, great value indeed. And she holds a PhD in economics from the University of Oregon. So the two speakers introduced, perhaps I can go in that order and invite first Dr. Balakrishnan to talk to us. And then we'll take it from there. Thank you, Dr. Balakrishnan. Thank you very much, Dr. Thomas, for the introduction. And let me start with what I have to say. Now, I want to say that a little bit party to be argumentative so that we have something to discuss. From a legal point of view, in a sense, it may not be entirely appropriate to frame this conference in terms of Canada's response to the economic reforms of 1991 or 30 years of economic reforms. Because the reforms were really in areas which are constitutionally outside the purview of the states. Reforms were largely. And what am I referring to? Foreign trade, the reduction of the tariff rate, which was the most important thing, the ending before controls, on all of which states had very little to say or had no constitutional authority whatsoever. The other was, of course, also industrial licensing. So in some ways, Kerala is not particularly obliged to have shown any particular response to the reforms of 1991 or steered its economy within the framework of the reforms of 1991. Instead, I think it would be entirely appropriate to ask about Kerala's growth and development. In terms of the challenges Kerala faces today, which are very, very substantial. And I think we all have a responsibility as economists to be contributing to discussion on how those challenges can be met, including what those challenges are. Though I have said what I have said about the framework within which this conversation has been situated, I still still believe that the reforms of 1991 have raised issues which are of great relevance to Kerala today. And let me tell you what those two issues are. Those issues really have to do with the public finances and fiscal policy and also the role of the public sector. Now in 1991, though it was less in the forefront than the liberalization of the policy regime in terms of lowering the carriage barrier and abolishing licensing, there was also concern about the fiscal deficit, et cetera. Now, even if one doesn't necessarily recommend a very narrow fiscal deficit fixated reports of fiscal policy, I would still say that some of the questions raised by the government of India or the reforms of 1991 are hugely relevant for Kerala. And what are they? This mainly has to do with the nature of public expenditures and public revenue. And also their fairness, which is something that one doesn't normally talk about when we talk about the finances, but which is very relevant. And you also see is very relevant in Kerala, interestingly enough, though we tend to think of Kerala as a society where policies are entirely fair, we might actually find that there are other policies are not very fair in the way they have been perceived and implemented. Now, what is the question here? Let me start with expenditures. And this is really relevant to one of the challenges Kerala faces today, which is have we in Kerala moved a little too fast in targeting our expenditure towards private welfare or private incomes in relation to spending on public goods. And I define public goods a little broadly to include health and education. And what is the essential question here? The essential question is here is, should we have moved away from spending on health and education to a tingly spread pension scheme before we really have an economy which contributes sufficiently to the maintenance of good health and education in Kerala? This is a question that's really, I think what I'm asking and I think it's an important one. Now, the other is a question about revenue and there is a question interestingly enough of fairness here. Now, the public finance terrorist or economist is an applied economist really, Joe Sebastian has for some time been talking about the fact that the tax revenues in Kerala are unduly focused on three areas. One is taxation of lotteries, state-run lotteries, that is. The other is on liquor and the last is on petrol. And he thinks of this as being a very regressive arrangement. Maybe he pushes the argument a little too much in the context of petrol. But there he shall say that petrol is also used by people who are trying to eke out a living such as auto rickshaw drivers, et cetera. But the general point that some of the taxation may be regressive or the main source of taxation may be regressive because they're focused on goods of consumption of people with lower incomes in Kerala. I think it's correct in Sebastian's right to mention that. He's also right and actually, and he has also gone to actually propose an area where taxation could be increased, which is property. And we find that Kerala has a large amount of unoccupied luxury housing. Clearly people have high incomes and it's absolutely essential. Many people have more than one house. These are people with a reasonable economic, with reasonable economic heft and they should be taxed. The state government cannot tax incomes under the constitutional arrangements in Kerala, but they could tax property. Of course, technically property taxes come under local governments. And we come back to that and talk about it maybe in the next round and there is an issue here what property taxes need to be thought about very seriously and could be one small way in which the unfairness of the present regime of taxation in Kerala can be addressed. So these are two points about fiscal policy and public finances, where the reforms of 1990 do have a bearing on Kerala, at least in terms of ideas rather than necessarily specific policy reforms that took place at that time. Now the other area is with respect to the role of the public sector. Now, again, rather like the idea of being overly fixated on fiscal deficit, which I'm not, equally recommending a large scale privatization of the public sector is not something that I recommend for its own sake. It can be either logical in its conception and could have devastating effects as in the creation of the oligarchs in Russia where at the fall of the Soviet Union privatization in 1990 or after 1991 was conducted in a way that didn't take care of the possibility of monopoly race, et cetera, et cetera. We just converted or they just converted public monopolies to private monopolies. So we should be aware of blanket privatization. Having said that, we really, Kerala really means to scrutinize very carefully what is public sector in terms of the public enterprises that's really happening. In the last budget, the government actually made a provision for the modernization of Kerala's public enterprises. It's not entirely clear to me that after 60 years, the public enterprises should be dependent on the budget to actually undertake modernization. They should generate these services themselves. And I must say that in the 1950s when the public sector was set up in India, the public sector enterprises did spectacularly. It's not so well known that the savings in the public sector in India, the public sector enterprises grew at a faster rate in the first 15 years after 1950, then the savings of the private sector, to what extent did the public sector in India contribute to the budget in Kerala? I don't know. And I think it's seriously something, or it's something that seriously deserves a scrutiny. Dr. Thomas, do I have about five minutes more in this round? Dr. Thomas, no? Yeah, please go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, please stop me. I don't think I need more than five minutes at this round. All right, now let me go on to the second of the points which is directly up that I want to make, which is directly related to what the organizers wanted us to speak about, the growth of Kerala after 1991. Yes, it's kind of interesting that the rate of growth of the Kerala economy accelerated after 1991. But interestingly, I personally don't think it is due to the economic reforms at the center. I think it had a lot to do with the revival of the Middle East after the so-called Gulf War where the invasion of Kuwait was reversed. And there was a rebuilding boom in Kuwait in particular and the Middle East in general. And Kerala certainly benefited from that, benefited from that, and there has been very high economic growth in Kerala. However, it's very important to say, not just in this period, but more or less in this same period, growth in Kerala has been extremely uneven. The agricultural sector has not just not done very well. Over the past two decades, work done at the center for development studies at Tirumalandu Pulum shows that in terms of the rate of growth of area output and yields, Kerala agriculture has actually contracted. In terms of yield, it is the rate of growth is zero, in terms of area and output, it is negative. Firstly, I would worry about this extremely, I think this is deeply worrying and I don't find it having any space in the discourse on the economy of Kerala. And Dr. Thomas had said that he hoped I would say something about Ukraine. I'll let me just say something briefly here. We are already talking about the consequences of the war in Ukraine, in terms of the likely spike in global commodity prices. This is certainly going to impact Kerala because Kerala is a deficit state when it comes to its food consumption sector. And I believe very, very seriously that Kerala should pay attention to the same growth. Yes, in answer to the question, there has been faster growth since 1991. I'm not so sure it's due to the reforms, it's really old for probably the more so in terms of remittances because the industrial sector in Kerala hasn't done particularly well, well after 1991, so neither has agriculture. So and services can't really grow on its own. So it's very likely due to resistance. Now at the very same time I would say while the question has been asked, how has Kerala fared in terms of growth of 1991? We shouldn't only focus on the positive sides of growth, it is becoming apparent that in recent years growth has also had negative consequences on Kerala. This could of course, one could say this has to do with the nature of growth rather than growth per se, but the fact is that we have reason to believe that the kind of growth that we have has probably threatened our ecological security. We have been seeing a flooding, landslides, clearly growth has contributed to some extent, it's of course extreme weather events or extreme climate events in terms of a high rainfall, but it's also clear that unbridled building on a very fragile earth surface in Kerala has probably contributed to a loosening of the soil and actually endangered our prospects very seriously. So I think we should worry about this here and once again, let me tell you, property taxes and land use policies are ways in which we can actually adjust this issue or in my view, gathering ecological insecurity. And the last point that I want to end with that, I spoke about Kerala's challenges and let me talk about that. Talk about it, I try and reduce it to just one issue at this point. And then we come back to that and discuss it more broadly. I personally believe that Kerala's challenge really has to do with the fact that almost no line of production in Kerala is competitive anymore. Kerala's an open economy in terms of, it is facing 29 other states in India. And if it is not competitive in any line of production, the only way it can actually supply itself with goods that it needs, if those goods are not produced domestically, food is one of them, high quality industrial goods are the other, the only way Kerala can generate the income to make this possible is by the export of labor. We want to think carefully whether we want to remain an economy to export labor. There are many instances and here too, Dr. Thomas himself, Sunanda, so many other Malayalis who've gone abroad and done spectacularly well, we wish them well, we're very proud of them, but not all migration in Kerala is happily done. Many Malayalis work in many parts of the world, especially the Middle East, under very high conditions where there's no political rights, no economic rights, and they have to face tremendous insecurity for the people and the economy. So we need to think about providing gender employment. The only way we can provide employment is if we have production here locally. I mean, the only way we can have production locally is if our production goods are competitive. The final point that I want to make and I'll stop. And now in all of this, in generating competitive lines of production in a country, the state or the government has a very, very major role. State cannot create competitive advantage, but the state has or the government has a major role in contributing to it or catalyzing it. It does so by provision of infrastructure, health and education, that's classic, but it can also do this by nudging production in countries to attain global standards. And I just want to say that here also, the central government in my view does very little to actually nudge Indian producers to produce global quality goods in a sense. And we read about East Asia, especially Korea and Japan, the state having a major role in ensuring high quality production. Remember in the 1940s, we're told by our parents, but by the way that Japan was a byword for low quality. Anything that came from Japan was low quality. I'll compare to what came from Germany and to an extent from England possibly, but today Japanese goods, especially electronics, motor vehicles, whatever you talk about is the highest global class. And I'm sure Miti and the Japanese government has had something to do with it. And of course, Michael Porter, and his diamond model, et cetera, talks about the usual economic factors, but we do have a factor which is peculiar to India, which we are challenged by, and that is regulation. And I think there is a very serious reason to say that a regulation must achieve its ends. It must show, see that the public interest is maintained, but it must not excessively stifle entrepreneurship or production. And I have reason to believe with which I will talk about it later on, that the government of Canada has not paid enough attention to regulations, probably left the lower bureaucracy of the state to take decisions on matters which are probably, not probably, which in my view, certainly should not be left to it and may contribute to a less than healthy investment climate in this state. Thank you, I'll stop here for now. Wow, thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Balakrishnan. I actually want to congratulate Dhanuraj and Sunanda for securing you for this opening comments. It was a tour of the force covering really the spectrum of issues that we should be all concerned about. I wouldn't take up time now, but just to reinforce maybe three or four things that you said and come back to a couple of them in the form of questions later, I think the point about revenue and the narrow focus of taxation that has to strike us as something to think about. The expenditure also, I think you linked it even to the aging and pensions. That has to be a matter of great concern. So, you know, how are we spending the government expenditures and how does that relate to the well-being of the aging population as well? The point on agriculture wouldn't be more important at this time, productivity of agriculture. And then a point that stares us in our phase, but the connections or connecting the dots remains extraordinarily weak. That is ecological damages are causing floods and storms, at least exacerbating them in a way that we haven't seen in 100 years. And so if the frequency and intensity of those issues only increase, and according to one or two studies, Kerala is among the most vulnerable and exposed to these events. Then all bets are off, all the discussions we have on all other matters will not hold if those turn out to be our Achilles heels. And then finally, not least the sheer competitiveness picture that would dictate manufacturing, agriculture, as well as services, which is the biggest share of Kerala's GDP, state product. So with that, I guess I will hold off in posing a question to Dr. Balakrishnan right now. Let's come back to that unless you want anything at this stage. I can wait, Dr. Thomas, I'll leave it to you to use your judgment. I can answer you now, but maybe we should listen to Balani and you can ask both of us basically. How about that together? That's fine. So it's then my pleasure again to invite Dr. Vandari to please give us your comments. Thank you, Dr. Thomas. And thank you to INET and CBPR for inviting me here. So if you're wondering what my connection to Kerala is, my connection to Kerala is that I was part of this team that was led by Dr. Professor Adna Agarwal and actually that time Dr. Balakrishnan was a director of CDS. So we were in 13 and 14, we were invited by the Kerala State Planning Board to work on a Kerala perspective plan 2013. Was this plan to be an eight months process turned out to be a two year process? And we were traveling to Kerala almost once every alternate month. And not only it wasn't just a secondary data exercise, it was actually a very detailed exercise where the government encouraged us and organized interactions, including with students. We have just one whole session with students. And so we interacted with all the stakeholders and to get their perspectives in. So that was the learning experience and very interesting experience for me. And that explains the Kerala Connect for me. So from that Kerala perspective plan 2013, even though it's been five years since it's been released, it still holds very important lessons for us as well as a lesson to Dr. Balakrishnan. And I just want to just point out some of the key messages that we are, some of the key analysis. And I want to focus on the macro side first and then probably talk about other issues as we go on. My other specialties also have worked on skilling and direct benefit transfers, where skilling is another very important issue that I'll come back to and review at a second point. Right now I just want to focus on the macro bit. So our analysis from the Kerala perspective plan show that Kerala's economic growth has had three phases. One of economic stagnation between 56 to 87 and one of moderated growth phase between 87, 88 to 2012 and one of accelerated growth phase between 45 to 10, 11. So essentially the growth rate between 2001 and 2011 was 7.4% per annum. That's a very high significant growth rate. The challenge is that it reached what we call as a middle income, but the challenge that we found that and why the Kerala government that had that time approach or requested us that there's a very high risk that at least the perception was that there was a very high risk that Kerala would fall into a lower middle income trap because the data shows that in 2010, 30 out of the 38 lower middle income countries had been in this group for over 28 years and they could not even acquire the required average growth rate of per capita income of 4.7% to reach the upper middle income threshold. That was the challenge and to overcome that kind of challenge we were invited in. So as I said, between 2001 and 2011, Kerala grew at 7.4% per annum and maybe analyze what were the growth drivers. 77% of the total growth between 2001 and 2011 came from five sectors. Construction, trade hotels and restaurants, transport and communication, community services and real estate and ownership. All the points if you think about what Dr. Balakrishnan said related to that, owning of houses, several houses, sometimes empty, service the large share of the services sector and not even in the best score and not even the highest productivity ones. And so these were all correlated with each other. And when we understand within the sectors, what were the drivers of growth? The drivers of growth were remittances, which formed about 15 to 20% of JSTP. Tourism, which was again, 9% of cross-state domestic product and expenditures on welfare and social sectors by both governments and social organizations. So again, I'm sorry I'm referring to Dr. Balakrishnan but his message is important. We never, Kerala was spending far more than its productive capacity allowed it and Kerala productive capacity had not expanded as much. So the idea was to focus on productive capacity and how do we ensure that? Again, the key growth challenges that were identified in this Kerala perspective plan where it was that the Kerala growth was a very consumption driven growth. At that point of time, it was the power deficit state. Prior to transport, especially road network was relatively small and scarce and expensive land with land acquisition was a major problem. It was strategized at that point of time, suggested that the probably health and education could become a key growth driving sectors of the economy as they would take advantage of Kerala's competitive advantage of health and education. Now, the question is that, and I repeat my point here again, that when between 2001 to 2011, Kerala grew at 7.4% per annum, Kerala was that to reach a high middle income or high income state, they would have to grow at 7.5% per annum. However, and there's always a but, when we actually look at the statistics between 2011 and 2019-20, the average growth rate of Kerala has been 5.1% per annum. So substantially lower than what was in the, and the search in 2011. So if the challenge of the Kerala being caught in a low middle income trap is very much real for the state. And not only that, where of course 68% is driven by the services sector, 10% is agriculture and the rest is manufacturing. So the state of affairs and the macro sense is extremely, is quite weak in the state. So the, another thing what we found is NCR does a lot of all India national studies. And in the national studies, one of them we was looked at state investment potential index. It was found that Kerala was one of the top six states for business investment. This work was done in 2018. And not only that, what are the key results were found that 80% of the respondents at his firms said that industrial policies was not a challenge. And Kerala had actually improved itself on its land acquisition bids and land pillars. However, they also did not face 80% of respondents also did not face any problems of road or rail connectivity. They did not face any challenge of scale labor, but quality of labor was a problem. But labor relations continued to be a problem in the state. And so what we find is that there has been substantial improvement in the state, but despite all this, despite that, despite a very focus in many sectors, what we find is that Kerala has not been able to, there's growth rate has substantially below, below its potential and not only below its potential, below what we've been research to pull it out to a higher million income trajectory. It was as low as 2.6% at 2.6% or 2.9% in 1920. This is the pre-pandemic phase. So I can imagine that during the pandemic, Kerala's growth would have come down even further. Of course, as I said, mentioned that one of the key drivers of economic growth in Kerala would have been tourism, which drove 9%. Again, one can think through that, given that the COVID pandemic, given the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism would have, and we know the tourism have suffered some of my colleagues have done analysis for the all India economy and they find the tourism sector has suffered a lot and it's going to take them some time back to get back to the normal. So it is presumed, it is almost assumed that Kerala, one of the major drivers, what was affected, therefore Kerala's economic growth would also be affected on a negative basis. So remittances also would have been affected because a lot of the Gulf economies were affected. So that also one of the major drivers would have been affected. So overall, even pre-pandemic, while there was a slowdown, Kerala grew at a slower rate than the all India growth rate, all India growth rate around this time was around 6.6% or slightly more and during the pandemic, all its major growth drivers were affected. So given that it would have suffered much more, deeper contraction or deeper negative impact than other states, so than other states in the country. So the challenges, given these challenges and given these issues, even though Kerala had been working towards improving its investment potential, it's not showing up in the numbers and as Dr. Balakrishnan has already pointed out, growth has been quite uneven. So the question really is that despite the, how do we actually make that Kerala, or how would we ensure what do we need to do to ensure that Kerala goes to the next level of higher income or next income category so it doesn't get caught in the low middle income graph. So that's where we need to think about and those were my introductory comments. Dr. Thomas is up to you. Great, thank you. Thank you very much Dr. Sundari. So I mean, again, you've raised a lot of fascinating points. I think the discussion of Kerala as you presented is very much revolving around the growth story I think and the potential to go well above the low middle income status, but the real constraints in achieving that, I think partly you're saying it is the structure itself that agriculture, services, and industry seems to lock the state into a very high reliance on service and not enough on manufacturing or industry, but also the pattern of investments and spending, the consumption driven type of growth as opposed to something that really raises productivity of the key sectors and so the natural question would be, and again, we can come back to this in a few minutes, what might be the levers of raising that productivity that you are looking at to lifting Kerala above the level as rapidly as possible. Okay, so I think if I could raise a couple of questions at this time to each of the speakers and we also have questions from the chat box. So let me mention that so as you respond, you can also wrap them in. One is something perhaps the speakers have not, because it's so widely talked about, talked that much about is the performance of Kerala in the SDG sense, social development and the multidimensional poverty. I mean, it stands out in the country so sharply, Kothayam is the only district in the entire country which has no person defined as poor. And that's an extraordinary feat. And so Pradeep asks, what are the lessons for the others? And a question for Dr. Balakrishnan, what production activities should be provided by the state to give the double-edged sword impacting growth on the one side and competitiveness on the other? At the same time, the delicate ecological balance for the state that needs to be addressed. So if I may pose a question to Dr. Balakrishnan, that would be mine as well. The second one I just mentioned, the ecological and growth axis. Are they confrontational? Can they be managed together? Or do you need to give up some aspiration of the growth as we measure it, not the real growth, but as we measure it. GDP, by the way, is an awful measure of performance. Have you ever heard of a measure where you use the growth, not net of damages in measuring improvement? But we are all stuck with that because that's the one thing that is comparable. But that said, let's say some good measure of progress in terms of income, would that need to be managed by the Pasu, the ecological Achilles heel of Kerala? So that would be a question to Dr. Balakrishnan, which also picks up a question from Anisha Chitgupi. May I turn to you, Dr. Balakrishnan? Thank you very much for your comments and what I spoke about and this question. Yes. The sad thing is that there are natural limits to growth. I don't think we can get away from that. I mean, but the fact is that we need to, as a people, I say people, because it also needs individual contributions by citizens and by corporations, we need to ensure that the growth we have is distributed in such a way that those at the bottom of the pyramid do not have to sacrifice as much or adore in relation to the dose at the top of the pyramid. Now, why shouldn't some growth in the form of very expensive luxury housing be sacrificed? For ecological security? I don't think that would be such a big sacrifice to have. On the other hand, let me just, let me mention to you a lot of ecological degradation and ecological decline, even when it's not degradation, actually goes against the economic activity and growth. As we overuse the water supply, there's less available for paddy cultivation. As there is less paddy cultivation in the state, there is less employment generated in the form of task to be performed. So there are many areas in which, where if we pursue ecologically mindful practices, not allowing for ecological decline, even when it's not ecological degradation, we can actually take care of both growth of incomes and preservation of the environment to actually improvement in our ecological position. Let me tell you, on the other hand, there are, I mean, ecological degradation can also lower employment and therefore well-being of the population. Let me give you a small example. There's a sample of a member of a global travel and tourism body having been invited to Kerala to actually experience a scenic duty and ride back to a lovely place it is. I believe that he decided midway on the taxi journey from Trivandrum airport to Trivandrum's town that he had had enough of it as he was going back because he saw so much of garbage actually piled up on the roadside. So the point is that ecological degradation can also affect our income earning capacity. So it is not as a mindfulness of the environment is necessarily anti-growth. It does not have to be. But having said that, I do believe that there are ecological limits to the scale of economic activity. And we may all have to think a little more carefully about expanding roads everywhere. We just may have to, like as in Singapore, tax road use much more stringently, tax the ownership of vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. Because what we're seeing today, the expansion of road networks in Kerala is actually destroying our paddy field. Once again, I'm coming back to this of food security and therefore our well-being. So I've spoken for a while. I'm not sure if I should carry on with this. I just wanted to mention something about poverty. The point that was raised from the floor about Kerala and IO's index of poverty showing Kerala has almost zero poverty for the state as a whole. I mean, a quarter of the state has zero of the state as a whole at 0.7 or something, which is really quite remarkable. But I just want to point out to you also, Kerala has very high unemployment. And the only way unemployment can be tackled is by having more economic activity and more production here. So the competitiveness issue is fundamental. And we need to worry about that. There's a point from Bernali's presentation, which is very well made. And I want to emphasize that I'm going to say, with this point and something which comes up as a result of that, I will stop. The point is that labor relations are an issue. It is important for the state government to see itself as an agent or bringing about smooth and cordial labor relations in the state. Otherwise, you just will not have the kind of work practices or capital investment necessary to raise labor productivity. And therefore our material standards of living in the long run, Thomas had raised the special order with the raised productivity. And the government has a major role in that by bringing about more congenial labor relations. I just, I did mention about regulatory apparatus, which is nothing to do with either unions, labor unions as we understand them or cooperation with companies. I'm sorry, I must bring up a controversial issue, but I think it's relevant for me to make the point. We all read about a Kerala industrialist taking out investment of over a thousand crores, which he had pledged to invest in Kerala because he made a public statement, which is very brave of him, that he has been harassed by the regulatory machinery. And I think that is something we should worry about seriously. In Kerala, the importance or the seriousness with which we treat political rights does not seem to extend to creators of jobs and creators of wealth, but we must realize that so long as we live in a market economy, the creation of wealth is very important and the private sector is important. The private sector should not be left unregulated, but the regulation by the bureaucracy must also be accountable. You cannot have an ungoverned bureaucracy. So with these comments, I will stop here. And yeah, who do you know? Okay, thank you for those remarks. I wanted to come back to you in a very short order to some follow-ups to what you have talked about, both in terms of the questions from the audience and my own thinking. But let me take a minute to go back to Burnali. There are questions as well to you, which I can wrap into my question as well. I think it's very interesting that you have a vision or a projection of what the state could be in a steady state growth path from which it's diverging for a number of reasons. And that's a nice framework. Within that, I don't know if your report or your own current research points to one or two critical pieces in the type of growth Kerala is pursuing. That's not allowing it to snap out of the low-middle income trap. Now, relating to that, one of the questions is from Anand, whether the examples of other countries sheds any light on how they have avoided that trap. We hear a lot about the middle income trap, but the low-middle income trap wasn't as prominent because you do get through to the middle income stage and then you could get stuck. But nevertheless, and if they have avoided it, how have they and who is stuck in that situation? So let me just leave it kind of open for you to come back to. Thank you, Dr. Tharnak. I think the important thing, what we sort of, at least in that Kerala perspective on 30, what we had mentioned was that we need to, what we did a very detailed analysis and try to identify what are our comparative advantage or what Kerala could produce at a lower cost than compared to other states. And what we found is that we were not just looking at just pure growth, but in a green growth kind of phenomena. And what we found is that you could have the health and education sectors where Kerala actually has a comparative advantage and where it tends to perform at both in terms of development outcomes could be turned into an engine of growth. So what we tried to say was our strategy was that every sector, like whether it be in health sector, the medical tourism could be connected to the tourism sector and health tourism could be an engine of growth. Then even education tourism where we students study and therefore they stay in university towns, could that self be translated into an avenue of growth. So we thought of, and of course every, you have to, one of the challenges that we realized in terms of ecology was that Kerala didn't have any air pollution, but its water pollution was quite high. So how to preserve the water and how to grow in a green sustainable way was very important. But I think in our focus in Kerala, we sometimes we forget, and I hear on the emphasize that Kerala is not just, it's a part of India. And the fact of the matter is when you look, and I wanted to mention in the beginning actually, I just want to mention here again, that even though the Kerala has grown at a slower rate than all India average, but even if you look at the Indian trend, even the India trend had been slowing down from 16, 17 to 2021. It fell down significantly in those years. And I'm not talking about the pandemic, even pre-pandemic, there was a major slowdown between 16, 17 and 19, 20. And this is well-captured now and well-analyzed. So if the all India was slowing down, it is but natural that Kerala would be slowing down too. It's, but the concern is that it is slowing down even at a lower rate than the rest, than the all India average. Yes, we talked, we get to find about confining competitive advantages, that is one another story. We have, I think where the challenge for me in the work, in the follow-up work that we find is that Kerala is not able to find an engine of economic growth every, like when I was trying to forecast or understand the impact of the pandemic on all over India. And you're trying to find out which sector, which states will be the most affected. And we could simply look at it in a Gujarat and Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu contribute a significant lot to the manufacturing sector. So if COVID pandemic hit those states in a more significant manner for all India and they would be closed down in a more significant manner. Therefore, all India would also be heard. But in case of Kerala, it just did not come up anywhere as contributing a significant share economic growth in any sub-sector. At least it didn't stand out. I'm not saying it does not contribute, of course it does, but it's not a significant share. So what needs to be done is that we need to find, and not one, but a couple of engines of economic growth, green growth, I'm not talking about non-green growth, which takes care of its advantages of Kerala and turns that around into a growth pressure. And I think the COVID pandemic, per se, is a huge opportunity and a huge challenge for us, that huge opportunity for us, because it really forces you to think through that what did survive the pandemic and what were we, despite the pandemic, what sectors we were able to overcome. The one of the things I remember was in Tiruvanta Puram, that there is near the software part of things, if there was a entrepreneurship hub, and Kerala is doing very well on entrepreneurship. So I think if entrepreneurship is the way out, that's one aspect we could do. And again, where investment potential becomes very important that we could create an environment of where there are more entrepreneurship abilities and entrepreneurship opportunities are built in. Given Kerala's very high education and high attainment of education and health, and very highly presence of very highly skilled people, I think it becomes very imperative that we could create growth potential. The idea is not that you cater in today's world, it's not what you cater to Kerala. You're catering to pretty much the rest of the world. The idea is to, okay, what are the growth engines that Kerala can leverage on or uses comparative advantage to create that capacity because more productive capacity means more employment. And Kerala has a higher, higher relatively high share of unemployment. But I think when I was looking at the statistics, again, for 1920, the periodic labor for statistics, what we find is that the youth unemployment rate is also very high in Kerala, especially among the educated. So educated unemployment is very high. And this is the question is why are educated, what are the aspirations of the educated youth or educated people that they are not able to find jobs in Kerala? Either you're not, so there's a mismatch. If there's a mismatch, that means you're producing jobs in the lower end, that means there's, and we know that that is met by migration from other parts of the country. So then, so therefore, and what, so India, so Kerala, in a way, is caught in a very low equilibrium trap where for the jobs that you're producing, you're attracting migration, a lower-skill labor force to meet your current labor needs, and you're out migrating the higher-skill labor force to meet whether internally or externally or the country or within the country. So the point is that we have invested so much in our education and health. How do we leverage them, or how do we create jobs for those highly-skilled or educated people, how do we do that? And so how do we leverage that those comparative advantages that Kerala has created? And I think that's where the challenge for Kerala is to think about. And I think private sector, in this case, the role of private sector becomes very, very important. The role of the government is to enable, create a framework, create the enabling factors so that this private sector can take off, but just purely using the government to create jobs may not be the answer that we are looking at. But again, the pandemic just, and just to put things in perspective, we have, I also do the macro forecasting for the Indian economy, or I used to. And last year when I was doing this exercise, we found that if there had been, if India had grown without, if India, if it would take India almost 10 years to catch up with what India would have been growing at if there was no pandemic. So even with all growth rates, better 9.2%, 8.9%, it does not matter. It's which still take India 10 years to catch up with the counterfactual that is the growth India had not been growing if the COVID-19 pandemic had not happened. So the severity of the pandemic cannot be undermined. And again, so the, what we need to think is that these, what are the opportunities that have been thrown to us? And how can we think of a, how can we leverage a comparative advantage for a green sustainable growth? And I end my Dr. Thomas off onto you again. Okay, thank you very much for that detailed explanation which has generated follow-up questions, but I'll come back to that. Let me, let me mention a couple of things that either Dr. Balakrishnan or Dr. Pandari could pick up kind of connecting what also some of the commentators from the audience have mentioned. The poverty numbers of Canada are extraordinary. Outside observers are fascinated by that, but how real are they? Are they in line with the research in Kerala does what Nithya Yog does as well? Or is it different, especially when unemployment rate is some 9% plus, which compares contrast with India's 6% average. So that's one kind of family of questions. I mean, that's a whole whole issue, but either of you might pick that up. But related to that also the dilemma or the puzzle of the COVID story, standout performance of the state. And then it looks like the sky started falling. How do you reconcile that? Life expectancy is very high, which is the goal of a lot of development literature. So how could you argue with that? But the aged population are also very vulnerable. Is that going on? And what about the numbers? Is this testing? But I guess related to today's discussion, it should be more about the nature of growth and stability in Kerala relating to human development and poverty. So maybe I can wrap that into that as well. The poverty numbers, the COVID numbers, and the related to that Nithya has a question. And I think some of the people are also thinking the same about the comparison or contrast of Kerala with Maharashtra and Gujarat. On growth rates, the latter affairs strongly in relative comparison. How about social, human development? No. And so, I mean, so is there a trade-off there or do you see something that can be more complimentary like Dr. Bailagrishnan mentioned in the case of ecology? And that was a heartwarming message that you could do the two together, but it's not automatic. And then back to Dr. Bhandari's last set of comments. There is a question whether the high share of services in Kerala, is that per se a problem? Is there a set recipe that manufacturing and industry has to be a certain percentage? If you look around East Asia and others, probably not, but in fact, your comments also say that you need to, invest wisely in health education, et cetera as well. So I don't see that as a contradiction. I don't know if you want to say anything more, but I would say investing in those well is part of the productivity raising story. So it's not so much what's the share and therefore it's a problem, but it's more what does it represent in terms of productivity? And I think Dr. Bhandari would probably agree with that too, that I don't see a necessary contradiction, but nevertheless, it's good to point out. I mean, if we think services showing a very high share, how come you're still recommending more investments in services? It's not quite that it's about doing it better going forward. But anyway, may I just leave it to your judgment on how to take up something, Dr. Bhalla Krishnan? Thank you so much, Dr. Thomas. When you put out so many questions, I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer them or even engage with them in a very effective way, but I just thought I should first try and engage with, ask on the floor, would you raise yourself about Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat? I want to say first and here, Dr. Kiburnali can actually help me. Am I not right that during some phase, some relatively recent phase, of course before 2011 or certainly before the pandemic, Kerala, I don't look at these numbers, so I don't know about this carefully, but this was actually made by saying as a vindication of his observation about Kerala made about 30 years ago, wasn't there some phase when Kerala was one of the fastest growing economies in the state in the country? Am I not right? Yes, yes. Between 2001 and 2011, Kerala was growing at 7.4%. Yeah, 2002 and 2011, is it? Yeah, right, right. Yeah, so that's the first thing. I mean, I don't want to term the whole discussion about any economy, in this case, the economy of Kerala completely on rates of growth, but in answer to the question, which was actually sent to me in the chat box, yes. There could be phases when Maharashtra and Gujarat grew faster than Kerala, but there was a longish period of almost a decade when Kerala grew, was one of the fastest growing economies in the states in the country. Not that it affects me one way or the other, but I just want to place that as a perspective. And I just also want to say something since Dr. Bernali has told us about the phase of acceleration of the rate of growth of Kerala and linked it up with the overall theme of the conversation. It's kind of interesting, if you think about it carefully, the economy itself began to grow faster only from 2003, right? Bernali, but I've been from the NCR, you know this. Things didn't happen automatically after 1991, let me tell you very clearly. It took more than a decade for India to accelerate and at that point of time, of course, it grew in a very fast rate, 2003 to 2008. It was the fastest growing phase of India ever. And just to teach politicians a lesson, the rate of growth actually, what we would say equally distributed but the acceleration occurred in the last phase of the Vajray government continued during the UPA once, it was not exclusively to preserve any particular political party. I just want to say, so Kerala's growth is actually not so bad. That's all that I want to say. I don't want to comment on this, I don't look at these numbers very carefully, but that's my response with Q&A. As Dr. Thomas, he of course raised it as a query, I can confirm this because I'm working on this on every major social indicator and also per capita GDP, which surprised me, I must say, not per capita consumption, per capita GDP, numbers from ETIO's SDG indicators, which is just released, 2022, if I'm not mistaken. Kerala is higher per capita GDP than Gujarat. Please, one of these bright spots who's sending in these versus please check that. I'm too old to do that now, so please help me by checking that out for me. So I just want to say on growth, it's not as if Kerala is doing very badly relative to the country. But I would focus on how much of the rate of growth of this state and the other state, I want to ask this question, could there be potential downside to the kind of growth that we're having in Kerala? Is there some unevenness of growth that we should be concerned with? And is there something in this growth pattern which is inequality in general rate? Kerala's consumption inequality, we don't have any income inequality to take that forward. Yes, it's consumption inequality for NSS, excuse me, shows Kerala to be the state with the highest consumption inequality in India. So in general, we should be asking questions about the growth beyond the growth rate. And I just want to say, yeah, I don't know Gujarat and Maharashtra in particular, I mentioned about Gujarat as a per capita GDP. Maharashtra, about Dr. Thomas said correctly, early days Kerala was being written about from everywhere from the Guardian, the Washington Post, et cetera, et cetera. And then the roof seems to have fallen off about a year ago or six to nine months ago when the debt rate was very high in Kerala. I just want to point out to one thing though, the measure of debt rate in Kerala is probably a little closer to the actual, than the measure of debt rate in other states of India, Dr. Thomas is based on poverty numbers. I'm not in a position to answer that. And he's also raised a very important question, does unemployment figure in the multi-dimensional poverty index? I don't know, I'm not sure. So that's a little task for me. I'm going to be going out and checking that. And if unemployment figures maybe Kerala will not do all that. Well, I suspect it does not figure. So that's the kind of by way of some responses to, now there's a response, there's a question from Ms. Anisha Chidrupi, which I didn't reply to, where she asks about specific lines of production where Kerala could grow faster. Before coming to lines production, I just want to say two things. There is no magic bullet. It's clear that the state must act on several fronts at the same time. But I want to make a general point and it's more in the nature of the query. Has Kerala privileged distribution over production? I don't know, it's a question we should say this to us. And in the long run, it cannot be a vice policy to ignore production while actually emphasizing so much of the economic policy being focused on distribution. I use a word distribution consciously. I'm not certain whether I would agree with the CPPR's concept note using the expression redistribute to welfare state. Where is the redistribution of Kerala? Are the rich being taxed at all? Should I be given a subsidy on my electricity consumption? I'm standardised. There's no way I can pay my bills and pay the subsidy which is mentioned in my money. Which is mentioned. It's something quite embarrassing that it should be mentioned purely because I live in a rural area. Anyway, the distinction between rural and urban in Kerala is very narrow. I mean, the former Finance Minister Thomas Isaac who I was privileged to count as my colleague at some time, coined the expression glagaram as in gramam and nagar. That is the kind of pattern of settlement in Kerala. You cannot make a distinction in urban and rural settlements. So why should I be given a subsidy because it's in a rural area? And why should I be given a subsidy when the Kerala state electricity port cannot generate electricity of a steady voltage throughout the day? And this is not just some aesthetic concern. The capacitor on my pump burns out. My equipment is ruined. And would industry be careful about, I mean, would be casual about setting up production when these services which can only be provided by the state are unreliable? So this is a point about the magic bullet. I'll conclude very soon. I've made several points, but both. There were phases when Kerala grew up as fast as any other state in India. So don't overdo these comparisons. In any case, these comparisons are not necessarily good. The scenes that we saw from Bombay during the height of the pandemic are just disturbing. And I would say that nothing possible has happened in Kerala. And that is certainly some testimony to the government system. And in particular, where the government system has worked very well is in the rollout of the vaccination. It's actually extremely impressive how this was done in Kerala. You didn't have to jockey for position of jostle. You got your jab and dive, et cetera, et cetera. So with this, I will finish. And I just want to say, yeah. Now there's a question in chat box in which countries should Kerala learn lessons from? Sure, we should learn lessons from many countries. The many years ago, Jeff Sachs visited Kerala and he said, you should compare yourself with Malaysia. It's a country on the same latitude. It's a country which has a higher presence with the agricultural sector. You should compare your per capita income with what Malaysia says. So then we could learn a little bit from the rest of the world, there's no doubt. But we can also learn from other states in India. And there is no doubt it may have higher property and lower social indicators than Kerala. But Tamil Nadu has done one thing right. Tamil Nadu has a given production in this state. The due recognition that it deserves, which is why people from Tamil Nadu probably have to migrate to a lesser extent than people in Kerala. And I think therefore we have a lot to learn from the rest of the country too. So other countries, yes, but we have a lot to learn from the other states of India. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Burnali, would you like to pick up that last thread on the investments in services or social sectors, et cetera? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I just want to add two points here. I'll add to the thread. I just want to emphasize what Dr. Balakrishnan said. I don't think I think these comparisons are good to learn from, but I think we have to understand, look at the individual economic history of the state and how it has developed. Look at its own individual resources and look at it that carefully. Even while we go into a state, it's not a copy and paste. Let's do what Maharashtra has done and paste it into Kerala and Kerala will grow. It doesn't work like that. You have to understand the context. You have to understand the resources. You have to understand the history. And then recommend or suggest a growth path and see if there's a buy-in also. So it's an interactive process and sensible process. If you just impose something, it's not going to work. So that's something. And the second point I do want to add here is that Kerala is a part of India. Like any state is a part of India. Yes, at a particular point of time, some of its growth may be higher or lower. That's true. But the thing is, you have to follow the trend. And that's why I mentioned the all India trend. The all India trend, since I do macro, I sleep and read these numbers. But between 4, 5, and 11, 12, we were growing at a very fast rate. Since 11, 12, that is a great financial recession. India has seen very high business uncertainty. Growth has varied. It has gone up and down. And then, as I said, from 1670 to 1920, we have seen a very significant trending downwards of GDP growth. Kerala has followed this pattern until 2001 to 11. So he's very high rate of growth. And then post-11, 12, we see a slowdown. So it's not that Kerala is not part of Indian story. I think in a way, we are asking ourselves how do we push the Indian story? Because Kerala's stories interwind with that story. And I think that's that. And also in a way, the third point, I want to say Kerala is ahead of all of us or for other states, both demographically, both SDGs wise in terms of health and education. It's a leader for the rest of the remaining states of India. And any state would like to replicate that at any point of time. I think that's one thing we have to understand that and respect that. The challenge is about a mismatch. We have skilled people. We have educated people. But are we creating jobs for them? I think that is where the challenge is. This mismatch between our resources. And that actually brings me down to the point that the last thread as Dr. Thomas was pointing out. And he answered the question. But services sector is not just one homogeneous sector. As I mentioned in my first point, that services sector, 77% of total growth between 2001 and 2011 was driven by construction, trade hotels and restaurants, transport and communication, community services, and real estate ownership. Now, trade hotels and restaurants typically don't always hire. I'm not talking about the five-star hotels. But trade hotels and restaurants don't typically always hire the most highly skilled people. You don't even need to be classed to cook in your local dhaba. I'm using, sorry, I'm using a Hindi word here. But the local store. So you don't need fancy schooling to work in a local food place. So yes, trade and hotels and restaurants contributes. But when you look at the productivity in that sub-sector, it is very low. And due to the nature of the pandemic, contact-intensive services like trade hotels and hotels and ownership suffered a lot. So it's not just about which sub-sector. It is about the productivity in that sub-sector. And we have shown that. And it's implemented for all India also. That these are, we are, this sector is important. Even it employs a lot of people, but it's not employing the highly skilled people that are still characterised producing. The which sectors do employ the highly skilled people? It's the IT, the finance, the health, the education sectors where you need professors. We need trained personnel. You need a care economy. You need good nurses. You need good trained. So what can we do to create jobs for the highly skilled people that Kerala is producing is the challenge. How do we match that better is the challenge here. We need to Kerala for the rest of India also. And we all know, we all go where the job is, right? So in that particular case, I think this mismatch. So when I'm talking about service sector, I'm not necessarily contradicting myself. I'm just saying we need to move from low value-added activities to higher value-added activities. And how do we find those value-added activities? Within the services sector, we need to move away from transport, hotel and communication. It is important, let it be there. But we need to move to higher value-added activities like health and education, which are, again, these are, we have identified based on analysis. This may have changed also in the last couple of years. But based on the analysis at that point of time, it's suggested that India, that Kerala has a, is resourced and more has more resources on these areas. It is, of course, the heart of Ayurveda. So Ayurveda tourism, Ayurveda tourism, if they could be linked, could be made more sustainable. Education students could be made more sustainable. There's a lot of thought process that's going on. Even in the whole India basis now, any of the government of India is encouraging that private, that international colleges and universities open up in campuses within India. So there are just, I mean, all these small private universities which open up in a smaller place have a multiplier impact on the local economy of the city. And these people are not just flying at operations, right? Because you will stay there. You will spend at least three years of your graduation, maybe five years of your PhD in that place. You will be staying between rents co-op, if you will be spending money, which means it creates a multiplier impact in the local economy and creates a much more sustainable environment. So that's the kind of things, I'm not saying, I'm just giving you an example here, but of course there are many more examples can be built in. But it has a multi, the idea is that it has a multiplier impact on the economy and increases the productive capacity of the economy. Obviously these places would be urban, right? So that all the urban environment would have been created. That was the idea with which we went in, which we thought would make sense for this thing. One of the things that I remember looking at it, because it was my idea, was that like Kerala has a lot of Bethelins and we were one of the things at that point of time, Kerala had not thought of using that as a tourism spot. I mean, you can have green tourism, eco-tourism, where you encourage support, sustainable tourism, at the same time using that to create again a productive capacity. So I think one another thing was, we looked at even traditional sectors of Kerala, like Coir and Bamboo and everything else. And Bamboo is something I've done other work during my skilling work, I've visited Tripura, and it was fantastic to see the effort that is going on both in Kerala and Tripura in terms of Bamboo. But are we close to even what China is? No, we aren't. We are not even capturing the market that China has created, both in terms of the share of the market, in terms of designs, in terms of anything else. We're just not there. We have to, again, we think of Bamboo as a local resource and how can we leverage that art resource and really then aim for the stars and get there? I think that's, we really have to bring about a change in the way we are thinking. Sorry, if I'm going away, I'm not a little passionate about it, so. I'm not sorry. Oh, thank you, it's fascinating. We could have continued this for another hour easily. So, Dhanuraj and Sunanda, we are getting close to our appointed time, but there's still some important questions that I haven't been able to put on the table. But we can stop in seven minutes if I could just take a second to thank for the tremendous organization and the panel now, because I think I'll run out of time to express my thanks at the end. But quickly going back, on the poverty there are questions raised rightly. And equally, I think Dr. Balakrishnan had flagged the inequality or the income differences and Kerala does rank poorly, very poorly on that. You should surprise everyone with all the social investments. How come the Gini coefficient is on the wrong side of the ledger? So that's kind of one question. Maybe I just leave it at that. But then specifically, Arun had asked about, this is to Dr. Balakrishnan, can the state with such fiscal difficulties afford the silver line that is one? And I think, Bonali, it was very good that you flagged the productivity of high value-adding services as a direction which is consistent with increasing good growth. Then there was a question also, these are different buckets. So I hope at the end, it's okay to see different areas covered. One is, what happened in Keltron? Number one, early in the game, Cochin containers, EPZ, processing zone early in the game. Since then, what happened? Why didn't Kerala keep the lead in those areas? Murali Tharan was asking that. And then, yeah, back to Dr. Balakrishnan, Shivarani asks, well, given the fragility, which I think we all take to heart as a reality, are there some industries that are better suited for Kerala? And then finally, Juan, yeah, land sales and purchases left, right and center. Is it part of why lower producer incomes and the agony of the agricultural sector persists? So I'm sorry, it's highly organized, but maybe you could kindly take a couple of minutes each to say whatever you like on those or any other questions you want. Thank you very much, Dr. Thomas. I'm trying to answer all of these very, very briefly because Juan, I just want to say it is not correct to say that agricultural land is, except maybe in the estates are owned by companies. Agriculture land in Kerala is owned by small producers and that is the problem. They're too small for the family to actually earn enough even if they're highly productive. But here, the state of Kerala has not been imaginative at all in a line for leasing of agricultural land. The leasing of agricultural land, especially if baddie is extremely complicated, nobody knows the rules and it's absolutely essential that we should allow it and the state should back the leasing of land. So let me move on to the point about Shibirani. There are certainly industries, industries in which Kerala was actually ahead. The industries would be textiles. In fact, the word calico is a kind of pigeon malealam for charlion. Charlion being people who actually produce the cotton which the Portuguese converted to calico and the name calico is believed to come from there which was, so that was textile industries in the area for which Kerala was known. And the other of course is my Perennial favorite, I mean, well before the Portuguese came to Kerala but 15 centuries ago in pre-Christian Rome, the Roman emperor was ruined the fact that so much of Roman silver was flowing out because they had to pay for Kerala pepper. So the fact is that we were world leaders in production. We seem to forget that. And we seem to be re-work painting ourselves into a corner by trying to emphasize too much welfare. Welfare is absolutely important. Any civilized society must have it but you cannot have a society or an economy which predominantly sees itself in terms of the welfare that it provides. Very often by borrowing from future generations. So that was a German point that I want to also make to Vice Admiral Murli Dharan who's raised this very important question. You're absolutely right. Kerala was not just the, well Kerala was a pioneer and very few people know that the Trivandrum Software Park was the first software park in India. Will anybody believe it? And Malayali is about two out of the four founders of Infosys are from Kerala. I'm not sure we have done enough to actually woo these people back. The governments in Kerala are a little arrogant in their treatment of industry. So I think basically we must come back to seeing production as important not just from the point of view of employment but also from the point of view of what makes us a flourishing people. Final question, Dr. Thomas, I know I'm over time possibly to Arun, the question about the silver line I've written about it extensively Arun. You just have to go, I would say extensively I've looked at a couple of articles. You just have to go on the net and type in my name and type silver line. But I just want to say my objection to the silver line is not in financial grounds about the physical deficit but the fact that it is in my view it will actually heighten the ecological insecurity of Kerala without adding at all at this point that I'm here without adding at all it seems to me to increasing the competitiveness of production in Kerala. Thank you very much Dr. Thomas. I've taken more time than I should have but I'll try to answer all the questions. Thank you. Burnali, would you like to have the last word? So I think there's something that I just wanted to say that it's the, Kerala actually had a first movers advantage there's no doubt about it. The point that we, but what happens after the first movers advantage you have to then you can't things can not be static it has to be dynamic in nature and I think that's where Kerala needs to think through is what are the factors that need to change to be the maker economy more dynamic and adaptive times change or as other countries, other states maybe copy Kerala and do a much, much better job about it. I think that's where the challenge is. And then slightly again, the Kerala agriculture work we keep on referring back to it about how low productivity is and it's something that we also heard a lot of comments from a lot of stakeholders when we were doing the work and I happened to be again doing some work on farmers mechanization and you know, while the land is a very emotive issue for us and we get caught up in it and but when I just looked at this this is based on Indian must be survey data and we found that how many farmers own you know, farming equipment and Kerala is one of the lowest in the country it is the lowest in the country. This is just, this is not my data this is all India data based on a survey of national survey. So it's clearly it's you know, maybe it's a type of crops that they're producing horticulture crops don't lend to mechanization but I don't want to spend too much time. The idea is while you want to produce organic crops and that adds a value and brand value and get some market value there's a market value premium to organic products and local products, branded products that's understood very nice but I think at the end of the day and I'm just using the example of Kerala that it's not just about land it's also about again what, what can we do to you know, upgrade the quality or up use better technology to leverage better technology to actually improve the productivity whether it's in agriculture or industry or services how can we, how, what are the what can we do to improve the productivity and the quality of the products so that Kerala, so that Kerala is producing some of the best in India and not only in India but also the world. I think that's where we, that's the that's the critical way to think about it and again, we go back to is what are Kerala's comparative advantages and we do need to leverage them that again, the comparative advantages may have changed since 11, 12 and that's fine but let's identify them and work on them and let's do an anticipation of what what potential changes can come over the next 15 years and then work on them accordingly to take the state forward in a, in a sustainable green sustainable fashion I think that's, that's what we need to think about that and any economy needs to be adaptive in nature dynamic and adaptive nature saying that resting on our laurels is not an option anymore on that note, thank you and a very good evening. That's a very nice note to end the session today just an opportunity to thank Dr. Balakrishnan Dr. Pandari and the organizers of this great event and wish everybody who was here participating all the best in all that you're doing thank you for your interest and all good wishes to everyone. Thank you very much.