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Coir
Village in Kerala Backwater
Coir
making is a communal activity.
In
this village they
 tend
to the trees, harvest the coconuts, soak and
pound the husks, and spin the fiber into twine. From there it is
delivered to a processing
plant where the twine is processed. Kerala’s
version of
“communism” looked to me more like a farm
coöperative than any kind of “dictatorship of the
proletariat.”
Perhaps
the coöperation between the villages and the state, which
functions like an oversized village,
helps contribute to the unabashed boosterism one finds among
Kerala’s citizens for their Land of Green Magic.
When
I asked my guide, Suresh,
about this egalitarian sense of community, he confidently said that it
was due to the maharajas of the old days. “The maharajas in
Kerala were different from those in other parts of India, especially
those up north. They didn't build opulent palaces for themselves or
wear gaudy finery while their people were in rags... There never has
been much class struggle here, so there was no need for a
revolution.”
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Coir
Village
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