Showing posts with label Cochin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cochin. Show all posts
Thursday, September 25, 2008
I, Society and Public Policy
Centre for Civil Society is organizing it's annual seminars on public policy, now called "I, Society and Public Policy" renamed from "Liberty & Society Seminars" starting in October in Delhi, Cochin, Bangalore and Pune. If you are between 18 - 25 with an interest in Public Policy, do apply before the time runs out.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Cochin and Liberty Pt2.
Continued from Part 1..
I finally get to the place I have to be, it turns out to be a Catholic place, where they have space for conferences and stuff. In fact Cochin has a lot of Christianness , the place has been colonized by the Portuguese and the Dutch before the English, the same transition of colonial power that occurred in Sri Lanka. The more I see of Cochin, the more it reminded me of Negombo – the lagoon, the weather, churches, boats and tamed-development.
I was here for a Seminar on Liberty and Society by Centre for Civil Society (CCS), a libertarian-leaning think-tank I’ve come to associate. The seminar was excellent. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in public policy. There were a lot of interesting speakers/sessions at the seminar, I’m tempted to blog about most of them, but that seems too laborious. Maybe I’ll write about some later.
Most of the fellows attending the seminar are from Kerala itself, but there were quite a few from other cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad. The people were naturally quite curious there was a chap “all the way from Sri Lanka”. I tried explaining to them that “really, it’s not that far” and that people who flew from Delhi actually came a greater distance. But all that didn’t stick, I had come from a different country and it’s a big deal. Someone asked me whether I took the boat, since Sri Lanka is so close by. I said no and made an Eelam joke.. didn't quite work out.
But coming back to the topic, there were few local Keralites who spoke about the fate of Liberalism in “God’s own country”. One of them was Babu Joseph, a former socialist turned-classical liberal after he joined Swatantra Party from Youth Congress feeling disillusioned by Nehru’s policies and Congress’ nepotism. Joseph was an articulate guy who knew how to use humor to good effect. He went on to talk among other things, about the lack of opportunity in Kerala which drives many enterprising people out of the state.
From the outset, Kerala is an odd place to talk about Liberty. For much of its existence it has been under Communist rule and by looking at the current political alliances competing for power, Keralites have a choice between two left-leaning coalitions. But thankfully there is some liberalization that is taking place, the Cochin Airport I mentioned in the earlier post, is actually run by a Private firm with the partnership of the state. Education (including higher ed.) is provided by private colleges with state university acting as an accreditation body. Some Marxism, this. These are the days I wonder whether Sri Lanka is the more commie country.
Cochin seems to have got everything that Colombo has, except I’d say it’s a lot less vibrant. I didn’t hear of any especially intriguing night life, although I did manage to check out a few nice restaurants. They have a few shopping malls, filled with the usual suspects, the Nike's, McDonald’s, Barista’s. We hung out at this place by the Marine Drive, which is a nice place. Later a few of us hired a boat go see around the Cochin.
Cochin has nice sight-seeing spots, there’s Fort Kochi with the fish market where they do ‘Chinese Fishing’. There’s a church where Vasco da Gama is supposedly buried, there’s a synagogue, an old Palace, Interesting stuff. Going to all this places in a boat makes it more fun, but boats aren’t just for tourists here it’s used as a means of public transport. It bugs me Sri Lanka being an Island and Colombo being a port city we don’t have a ferry service to anywhere. Where ever I’ve been to port cities, the folks there seem to make use of ferries. Just beats me why we can’t. It would personally cut down my daily traveling time by at least 45 minutes. I don’t think it would be that expensive.
The seminar timings didn’t allow me to go out a lot, so there’s probably a side of Cochin I missed. But booze here is too expensive. Apparently the state of Kerala has the highest per capita consumption of Alcohol in India, so the government plays the moral card to increase taxes. This is one of the many similarities Kerala has with Sri Lanka, which includes it’s highest suicide rate, literacy, how people look and even food (if you thought Kavum was something exclusively Sri Lankan, I’ve got news for you).
Cochin was good but my journey isn’t over, so I and a friend of mine took the train in the evening – next-stop Bangalore.
I finally get to the place I have to be, it turns out to be a Catholic place, where they have space for conferences and stuff. In fact Cochin has a lot of Christianness , the place has been colonized by the Portuguese and the Dutch before the English, the same transition of colonial power that occurred in Sri Lanka. The more I see of Cochin, the more it reminded me of Negombo – the lagoon, the weather, churches, boats and tamed-development.
I was here for a Seminar on Liberty and Society by Centre for Civil Society (CCS), a libertarian-leaning think-tank I’ve come to associate. The seminar was excellent. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in public policy. There were a lot of interesting speakers/sessions at the seminar, I’m tempted to blog about most of them, but that seems too laborious. Maybe I’ll write about some later.
Most of the fellows attending the seminar are from Kerala itself, but there were quite a few from other cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad. The people were naturally quite curious there was a chap “all the way from Sri Lanka”. I tried explaining to them that “really, it’s not that far” and that people who flew from Delhi actually came a greater distance. But all that didn’t stick, I had come from a different country and it’s a big deal. Someone asked me whether I took the boat, since Sri Lanka is so close by. I said no and made an Eelam joke.. didn't quite work out.
But coming back to the topic, there were few local Keralites who spoke about the fate of Liberalism in “God’s own country”. One of them was Babu Joseph, a former socialist turned-classical liberal after he joined Swatantra Party from Youth Congress feeling disillusioned by Nehru’s policies and Congress’ nepotism. Joseph was an articulate guy who knew how to use humor to good effect. He went on to talk among other things, about the lack of opportunity in Kerala which drives many enterprising people out of the state.
From the outset, Kerala is an odd place to talk about Liberty. For much of its existence it has been under Communist rule and by looking at the current political alliances competing for power, Keralites have a choice between two left-leaning coalitions. But thankfully there is some liberalization that is taking place, the Cochin Airport I mentioned in the earlier post, is actually run by a Private firm with the partnership of the state. Education (including higher ed.) is provided by private colleges with state university acting as an accreditation body. Some Marxism, this. These are the days I wonder whether Sri Lanka is the more commie country.
Cochin seems to have got everything that Colombo has, except I’d say it’s a lot less vibrant. I didn’t hear of any especially intriguing night life, although I did manage to check out a few nice restaurants. They have a few shopping malls, filled with the usual suspects, the Nike's, McDonald’s, Barista’s. We hung out at this place by the Marine Drive, which is a nice place. Later a few of us hired a boat go see around the Cochin.
Cochin has nice sight-seeing spots, there’s Fort Kochi with the fish market where they do ‘Chinese Fishing’. There’s a church where Vasco da Gama is supposedly buried, there’s a synagogue, an old Palace, Interesting stuff. Going to all this places in a boat makes it more fun, but boats aren’t just for tourists here it’s used as a means of public transport. It bugs me Sri Lanka being an Island and Colombo being a port city we don’t have a ferry service to anywhere. Where ever I’ve been to port cities, the folks there seem to make use of ferries. Just beats me why we can’t. It would personally cut down my daily traveling time by at least 45 minutes. I don’t think it would be that expensive.
The seminar timings didn’t allow me to go out a lot, so there’s probably a side of Cochin I missed. But booze here is too expensive. Apparently the state of Kerala has the highest per capita consumption of Alcohol in India, so the government plays the moral card to increase taxes. This is one of the many similarities Kerala has with Sri Lanka, which includes it’s highest suicide rate, literacy, how people look and even food (if you thought Kavum was something exclusively Sri Lankan, I’ve got news for you).
Cochin was good but my journey isn’t over, so I and a friend of mine took the train in the evening – next-stop Bangalore.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Cochin and Liberty
It was such a sudden decision to pay a visit, one of those “F-it! I’m going” moments. So I dropped off a few emails, had a Facebook wall-to-wall conversation, picked up my bags and off I went. The b4Ur27 thing from SriLankan is still on, so you can gets a return ticket to Cochin for about 12,000 LKR including Taxes. I was planning returning from elsewhere, so my ticket was a bit more.After about an hour’s flight I arrived in Cochin sometime in the morning, The Cochin airport is quite nice, having seen the one in Bangalore, (which frankly looks like the fort railway station) I’m pleasantly surprised. They seem to have got everything in order, a nice duty free section, mobile service providers, money exchangers..the works. I approach the money exchange guys and they put on an animated show calling to their booth, it’s as if I entered the Sunday Pola (market), I grin to myself – I’ve arrived in India.
The most depressing thing about traveling to India these days is the exchange rate. The Sri Lankan Rupee is one of the few currencies in the world which is actually falling against the dollar. When I first traveled to India sometime in 2006, I could get 1 INR for about 2.2 LKR. Now I have to give 2.8 LKR to get the same rupee, so every time I spend cash I keep multiplying it by 3, India is no longer a cheap place for Sri Lankans. The cause is of course those morons at the Central Bank print too much money to finance Mahinda’s spending habits; and no, having one of his buddies as the head of the CB doesn’t help either – at least for the rest of us. I’m increasingly of the view that we should abolish the central bank (or radically reform it), more on that later.. some other day.
Anyway, after reminding myself a few impolite details about Mrs. Cabraal(snr) I made my way outside the airport building. I was late for the seminar I was here for and the taxi fare from the AirPort service didn’t sound reasonable so I was looking for an ‘Auto’ (that’s a tuk-tuk for the rest of you) There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot outside, but I manage to catch one autowallah (3-wheeler buggers) roaming around the premises. I tell him the location I want to get to and he breaks into a long monologue in what I presume to be in Malayalam, the local language. I have two options, one is to confess I’m a Sri Lankan, speak to him in English and pay the premium for foreigners.. or speak in my picked-up Hindi and make him think I’m from up north. I go for the latter and to my relief, his Hindi is not that good either. This works to my advantage as I manage negotiate a decent fare, and get in the black and yellow Tuk-tuk.
Soon we are in a slightly bumpy road with a lot of greenery either side, people were right – Kerala is a lot like Sri Lanka. The autowallah tries to pull me into a conversation on what I’m doing in Cochin and where I come from, after trying my best to keep up with the little Hindi I know, I finally confess I’m from Sri Lanka. He asks me whether I know Tamil, I tell him I don’t. He asks me how I know Hindi, I tell him “Bollywood” which is only partially true. Come to think of it, it is rather embarrassing I can understand/utter Hindi better than I can speak Tamil. In my defense, they didn’t teach us Tamil in School, and when they finally figured out they should in about grade 9, I couldn’t be bothered. Hindi on the other hand is naturally closer to Sinhalese, it’s of the same Indo-Aryan roots and we’ve got a lot of common or very similar words and phrases. Plus of course there’s Bollywood and unlike Kollywood- the south Indian version, they make good movies. So that, and the fact that I seem to visit India often and the few English words they use when speaking in Hindi, I can pretty much understand or at the very least get a general idea of what they are talking about when somebody speaks in Hindi. This doesn’t quite work for Tamil.
We approach the city and the Cochin traffic makes me talk less and look around more. The place look like a busy section in the outskirts of Colombo, lots of people, dust, tuk-tuks and at one point I see one bearded politician-bugger dressed in white in front of a picture of a modern train. I could have been home. The only difference seems to be random cut-outs of (I presume to be) Malayalam actors, kind of fat fellows in silly looking pants and sunglasses with fair women. I pass by some communist graffiti and I’m reminded that Kerala is governed CPI(M) and I’m actually in commie country.
The drive is taking about an hour now and I’m fast getting bored when I suddenly spot we are passing the place I’m supposed to get down, I yell Rukoh Rukoh!! (Stop!) .. I’ve made it.
End of Part 1... Continued in Part 2
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