Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

However, production-centered strategies seem to be faced with insurmountable obstacles
from the beginning. How can we revive agriculture as a sustainable enterprise, when
people are moving away from agriculture, or are only prepared to take it up as a part time
activity? Forms of agro-based industries, such as coir, mat and baskets similarly do not
find market in the ‘modern’ consumerist pattern. Fishing and ocean-based industries have
provided the livelihood of a number of people, but is now facing the challenge of large
scale fishing enterprises. In a society that has very few producers whereas the entire
population is consumers, some form of consumerism seems inevitable. The advanced
education that at least a section of the people are receiving today means that they cannot
be ties down to the region as such, and hence some form ‘human capital export” (to use a
current expression), for remunerative professions seems to be inevitable. They can be
depended on to provide for the consumer needs of the population today, as the Gulf
migrants have served the contemporary scene. So a production centered strategy seems to
be at best utopian, and at least, idle phrase mongering of people with their own personal
or political motivations.
Importance of Historical Experience
It is in this kind of a debate that the historical experience of the region becomes useful.
We have seen that the region was inhabited for centuries and was primarily an agrarian
region supported by trade in agricultural or agro based products. This region never was
surplus producing enough to maintain a ‘high’ court culture, and hence mainly supported
large and medium landlords and Devaswams. There was no large temple that could
mobilize the resources in a substantial sense, and become a medieval cultural and
ideological centre. Nor could the Muslim establishments play a similar role. Once
landlordism disappeared, the region transformed into an economy of small holders and
traders, who complemented each other in meeting the needs of subsistence, but could