Hope 23

Hope 23

I know we can all say things write things, talk about things, but it’s people who make the difference and those are people with a great attitude. So fundamentally whatever I say has to be done by people with a great attitude and keep improving them as you go.

Do not allow every Jim, Jack and Jill to start industries of their choice, what we need is discipline in our planning, we need to be focused. Proper planning and vision is the key to make Kerala a successful, sustainable industrial hub. Definitely do not start any industry or factory, like back in the old days. So many Government facilities are shut down or are inefficient for obvious reasons. However there is an array of critical factors to be considered and planned before we start rebuilding our homeland

Governments role is to make sure community progresses by smart regulation that keeps people safe, environment protected, and no one is exploited. Government should regulate for environmental protection, collusion, human rights. Every regulation can nudge people to start service industries. Opportunities are limitless wherever industries with regulations are created.

Through smartly written regulations, people themselves will find opportunities to do business that are sustainable.  Government should establish regulations which can be continuously improved. It should not be to facilitate relatives and friends of political party members, the rich, powerful and influential and to collect bribe. WE HAVE TO CHANGE OUR ATTITUDE: Remember there can more COVID in the series, so let’s get better and progressive in our thinking to rebuild.

For example: There should be laws on carbon emissions capping for buildings based on size, it should be mandatory for each building to publish their CO2/sqft, then a number of support business will pop up as a result that help building owners achieve this, like controls, green building materials, energy monitoring, etc.

We should look at the proven philosophy of other countries that have succeeded. Our labor is not cheap; we need to choose a few industries after checking the skill sets of the labor and availability of raw materials. Identify the industry based on the skill sets we have regionally, specific geographies have specific skills, for example:

Look into less labor intensive industries, hi-tech industries, information technology, biotechnology, services, knowledge based industry, health and tourism based industry, agro products industry etc.

Cashew : Kollam

Choir based industry: Alleppey

Gemstone setting: Kunnumkulam

Tapestry and textile: Calicut, Cannanore,  Tellichery so on and so forth.

Certain attributes for the infrastructure,  which  is the key are:

1. Green Building Certification appropriate to Kerala norms, to regulate environmental protection.
2. Buildings should use automation to integrate mechanical, electrical and all building services with air quality sensors, security sensors and smoke and fire sensors connected to monitoring panels
3. Rainwater harvesting
4. Vertical and horizontal farming
5. Recycling, reusing, reducing to be a tag line
6. Proper scheme for waste management
7. Quality Control
8. Modular design with prefabricated and insulated building panels
9. Limit the height of the floors to 8 ft. or 2.4 mts. Instead of 10 ft. and keep the windows right under the roof slab, and limit to 1 mt. high modular windows, which brings in light permanently to the floor and this avoids lintel in all construction and avoids additional and unnecessary cost and this reduce the area to be air-conditioned or controlled.

Kerala has to optimize the concept of centralized infrastructure.

Highly expensive amenities, which are of high cost, can be created and owned by the Government of Kerala, like a central quality control and testing lab.

Job oriented training centers can be established by the Government. Training centers to develop skill sets has to be established:  People will come motivated with their entrepreneurial energy to take advantage of a business opportunity and the results will be stronger.

Computer skills, coding, accounting, languages must be taught to all kids and youth.

Social ethics and civic sense to be taught without fail: with focus on behavior, first aid, cleanliness, waste management, environment protection, healthy life style, good entertainment etc.

Empowering our youth is the key, Do not try to change the seniors in parties and media …….

A responsibility matrix has to be defined based on what will be provided by the state and what will be the responsibilities of the business owner.