Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
budget, Kerala's current finance minister, K. M. Mani, reiterated the im-
portance of environmental sustainability in the state.51
The entwining of Kerala's political model with sustainability and envi-
ronmentalism produces what scholars may call a particular “imaginary”
of the state. An imaginary is an abstraction and ideal, “a way of imagining
nature [or society], including visions of those forms of practice which are
ethically proper and morally right.”52 The imaginary of Kerala depicts it
as a place not only worthy of emulation for development but also as a place
filled with fecund nature and stunning, Eden-
like landscapes. A utopian
understanding of the state's environment and environmental politics now
persists in a variety of realms, such as in the Department of Tourism's
advertising materials.
Fueling the spread of this imaginary has been environmentalists' in-
creasing atention to the world's biodiversity hotspots—including that
of the Western Ghats, which runs along Kerala's spine. The Save Silent
Valley Campaign and the formation of Silent Valley National Park have
drawn greater atention to the mountain range. Global and high-proile
conservation organizations like Conservation International now advo-
cate additional measures to preserve biodiversity in the Western Ghats,
especially given that “less than fifteen percent of the [total] Western
Ghats is protected in twenty national parks and sixty-eight sanctuaries.
. . . The protected area network is far from complete.”53 Because of these
concerns, biodiversity conservation is taking new forms in the area, in-
cluding organic farming. Kerala has begun experimenting with the later,
especially as the state's environment becomes synonymous with “bio-
diversity hotspot.”
In spite of these activities directed at improving the environment
and social development, the Kerala model—its reforms, politics, man-
agement of natural resources, and HDI—has come in for some criticism.
As in the 1980s and 1990s, economists, scholars, and politicians still worry
about the performance of the state's economy today, as well as the fact that
Kerala's per capita income remains lower than other states. The global
economic downturn and the central government's ongoing adoption of
