The new UDF government in Kerala has set the policy precedent for the next five years. The first plan of action is to establish a department for the elderly. Great. But for a state already overspending on pensions and welfare, where young people are forced to migrate for jobs, this is a disheartening signal, especially since an overwhelming majority of them voted for change.
Successive governments in Kerala fail to realize that all of its seemingly first-world problems are downstream of economic development problems. If more young people could live and work in Kerala, more of them could support the elderly, stay close to their parents, and we wouldn’t need these misguided (but well-intentioned) state interventions.
Not addressing these actual problems creates a reinforcing loop: governments make policies for old people, young people are forced to migrate, fewer young voters remain, and governments keep making policies for their old voters.
Every state intervention must be justified by a clear market failure, especially when the state has limited resources. There’s always an opportunity cost: spending money on one thing means not spending it on something else. The second policy in the announcement was to provide free bus rides for women. What failure does this address?
The policy was announced not as a means to an end, say, reducing transportation costs would encourage more women to work, but as an end in itself. Almost half the young women in Kerala are unemployed, and it should be obvious that expensive bus fares in a non-existent public transport system are not the reason.
A better alternative would be to keep the fares for women and reinvest that money to build better public transport networks. Connecting Kochi Airport, metro stations, ferries, and buses to make it easy to switch between them would be much better than giving away unsustainable freebies in a state with high incomes. I would rather live in this Kochi than endure the cold winters of Toronto.
There’s still a ray of hope, at least for me, in that the UDF government seems to be welcoming feedback and criticisms. But the window to reverse youth migration and turn back the demographic clock is small. This should be the government’s highest priority.