Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

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to introduce the modern system of education came slightly
later in the three regions. A royal proclamation issued in
1817 in Travancore undertook to “defray the entire cost
of education of its people in order that there might be
no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment among
them”. This was followed by an attempt to open vernacular
schools in different parts of the State.
Most of the schools initially established did not survive
long, and were abolished consequent upon the changes
in the British educational policy in India in the middle of
the third decade of the century. The Bentick Resolution,
which declared the grand object of the British Government
in India was to promote European science and knowledge,
made the local Governments tilt towards English education
and European medicine. Consequently, the provincial
Governments opened a few English schools and hospitals
in their territories.
The progress in education and health attained by
Travancore took place against the conjuncture created by
the commercialisation of agriculture and the modernisation
programmes initiated in the 1860s. The market relations
that emerged from commercial cultivation required the
peasants as well as those associated with the processing
and marketing of these crops to acquire essential skills,
not only in arithmetic but also in reading and writing.
Besides, the expansion of trade and the increase in the
area under cultivation sharply raised the Government’s
revenue, so much so that from the early 1860s till
1904-05, Travancore experienced only surplus budgets.
This, inter alia, facilitated the Travancore Government
to earmark an increasing proportion of its expenditure
on social services, especially education and health
care. In 1862-63, Travancore’s budgetary allocations for
education and health care were 0.58 and 0.39 per cent,
respectively. By 1899-1900, the figures rose to 5.34 and
4.07 per cent, respectively, and by 1947, to 15 and 4.14
per cent, respectively. Between 1871-72 and 1946-47,
State expenditure on education increased by 71 times and
that on health by 26 times.
The Government not only opened schools and hospitals of
its own, but also promoted private agencies through grantsin-aid.
The activities of the Christian missionaries decisively
influenced the expansion and development of health and
educational facilities in Kerala. 3 While State institutions did
not allow the entry of the ‘lower’ castes, by the late 19th
century, schools started by the missionaries had opened up
their doors to the underprivileged and the untouchables.
Cochin had by that time around 75 ‘aided’ schools, ‘most of
which were run by Christian missionaries and indigenous
Christians’. The operations of the Christian missionaries
were of a much lesser magnitude in Malabar. Unlike in
Travancore and Cochin, the caste rules did not have legal
protection in Malabar and the schools and hospitals there
were, at least in law, accessible to all castes. 4
By 1900-01, Travancore had over a thousand schools
under the control of its education department. Of these, a
little less than half were directly run by the State and the
rest by private management. The schools together enrolled
96,700 pupils. There were 54 allopathic medical institutions
run by the Government, visited annually by 623,643 persons.
Cochin also had made good progress in education and
health care by the turn of the 20th century, though not to the
extent as Travancore. By 1901, Travancore had 35 hospital
beds per 100,000 persons. It may be noted that in 1901,
Malabar had only 25 medical institutions and the number of
hospital beds per 100,000 persons was as low as 15. Even in
1956-57, the number of hospital beds per 100,000 persons
in Malabar was only 34, a position reached by Travancore
60 years before (1896-97). Cochin fared better than
Malabar. By 1909, Cochin had 33 hospital beds per
100,000 persons and 17 allopathic medical institutions, or
1 medical institution per 108 square miles.
The growth of modern institutions for education and health
in Travancore had not been at the cost of the indigenous
systems that had been prevailing in the Malayalam speaking
areas since time immemorial. Even after a sizeable number
of the indigenous schools were brought under inspection
and control, there were over 2,000 of them outside any
control in 1901 catering to 87,422 pupils, not very different
from the number of students enrolled in 'modern' schools.
Probably, their continuation reflected the growing demand
for education.
Similarly with respect to indigenous medicine, the
Travancore Government in 1896 extended the system
of grants-in-aid to qualified practitioners of Ayurveda,
the indigenous medical system and by 1905, there were
64 Ayurveda Vaidyasalas. It may be noted that the policy
of the Travancore Government with respect to indigenous
medicine stood in sharp contrast to the policy of antipathy
followed by the British Government in India from 1835.
3 The grant-in aid scheme came in handy for the Christian missionaries who had established schools in the region with the active
support and patronage of the State in the form of land and money as early as the second decade of the 19th century.
4 By 1908, Travancore had 3,735 schools, out of which 59 per cent were established by various Christian denominations.