It is always inspiring to be involved with the government of Kerala and Dr. Thomas Isaac, in particular, because of that combination of vision, ambition, energy and commitment. I hope Kerala continues to be an example for the world. In  the spirit of your excellent budget speech, which has outlined so many different things that I think at some point, you mentioned this list is not exhaustive. One that I really want to emphasize is the translation services. You know this is something that has always amazed me that in India we do not do more. If you look in Europe, they have translation even for 300,000 people.They will have complete translations of everything.
There is so much scope for translation from Malayalam to English and from Malayalam to Hindi and back, which is very important for inclusion, because it allows every citizen of Kerala every resident to have access; It allows your migrants to have access to your work; It allows people outside Kerala to know of what is happening in Kerala. It allows people in Kerala access to all kinds of knowledge. It is  very undeveloped and one of those things that happens only when you provide it because people don’t know what they’re missing otherwise. Once you generate it people realize what they’re missing and that becomes a demand which is the answer  and you get a market for it. But there is a real need to establish a translation mission which would translate everything, not just literature but scientific work, economic and political weekly. I mean, all kinds of things and work done in Malayalam to be made available to a wider audience. So, my first plea would be to put translation. It’s also very employment generating, particularly of skilled labour.
My second point is about the recognition, dissemination and promotion of traditional knowledge. You already have a very excellent IPR policies, I think in 2008 you did that for traditional knowledge. But I don’t think there’s been enough follow up in terms of actively looking for codifying writing up and disseminating the traditional knowledge. So I would again put the emphasis on recognizing and disseminating traditional knowledge as a very major area of activity.  Related to that, in a way, agricultural extension has really lost out in India. There was some attempt to revive it in the late 2000s. But since then, whether it is agriculture or other primary activities, fisheries such attempts have been sadly missing. We don’t have enough relevant research. Relevant for the problems that producers are facing today and relevant extension, especially when people have to face climate challenges, newpests, new kinds of things etc you really need much more emphasis on knowledge pertaining to agriculture, fisheries. forests and dissemination and extension services related to that.
Then there is Kerala’s huge advantage in care services. You already have tremendous skill and experience in a whole range of services. I think, you’re ideally placed to develop new kinds of things in care; geriatric care, alzheimer’s or dementia or palliative care. Kerala is now in a position to go beyond the basic health care to new kinds of care. These are globally much more significant because of demographic change and greater incidence of various kinds of trauma and various kinds of disorder that need active intervention. Once again, I don’t have to emphasize this is very employment generating.
Finally, I just want to mention, you talked about how each of these things are going to be decentralized and the local governments will have an important role to play. I really think you should be looking not only at the mission mode that Mariana Mazucato has been talking about, but also look at the doughnut approach that was popularized by Kate Raworth, which is being used today by the city of Amsterdam, by Barcelona and others. And that is looking at creating sustainable cities in which you can actually bring together various forces of knowledge to make sustainable cities that are also human creative cooperative democratic. I think there’s a huge potential in Kerala, because you’re beginning on a much better place. You’re beginning on a base in which you have a highly educated population, relatively speaking, not higher education, but in general, everyone is educated and you have a much greater civic awareness. So, the potential for doing that kind of doughnut economics to create sustainable cities that are also fun to be with and good to live in.