Five hundred and two years after a certain Vasco da Gama set foot on 'God's own country', in Calicut, another traveller, this one from relatively-close-by Mumbai, touched down in Kozhikode as the city is now called.

The traveller's name is Brijesh Shukla, he came to Kerala from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay-to acquire some sheen at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. In 2002, sheen duly acquired, he stayed back, in a new, non-student avatar, a business consultant with SunTec, just one of the many tech start-ups based at Trivandrum's verdant Technopark.

There are nine more IIM-alums at Suntec, a transaction management solutions company-shorn of jargon, it crunches code that facilitate transactions-founded in 1990, by an employee of the state-owned Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation (Keltron).

The 1990s weren't kind to SunTec; the 2000s have been. Business has boomed; revenues nudged Rs 19.7 crore last year; and clients include the likes of BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited), vsnl (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited), Motorola, and KPN Telecom.

There are 54 more companies like SunTec at Technopark, together employing over 6,000, and working in domains as diverse as embedded software-the code on chips-to animation.

A mere 6,000? That's around the same number of people that works in Infosys' Bangalore campus. New infotech policy-the State government came out with one in November 2001-or not, that isn't a number that inspires confidence.

Nor does the quantum of the state's software exports: Rs 150 crore in 2001 as compared to Karnataka's Rs 9,903 crore, noida's Rs 5,200 crore and Tamil Nadu's Rs 5,223 crore.

So, if there's a ring of truth to Kerala Chief Minister A.K. Antony's claim of making the state "the number 1 destination for it (investment)" it comes from geography.

It comes from the highest literacy rate and the fourth highest per capita income in the country.

And it comes, most of it, from Kerala's standing as, arguably, the most wired state in India.

God's Own Numbers,
And A Little Adventitious Support

Once the staple of the international lecture circuit, the now-redundant Kerala Model of Development, can stake its claim to some credit for the numbers that now make the state a great place in which to live and work: the country's best telecom infrastructure, a literacy rate of 100 per cent, the fourth highest per capita income in India, strong health indicators, and a highly-evolved local governance system.

Then, there's geography. The state's narrow vertical shape makes it simple to construct a digital optic fibre cable (OFC) backbone as BSNL, Reliance Infocom, Bharti Telecom, Asianet, and the state government are now doing. And Kerala's large coastline and its location at the tip of the subcontinent between South Asia and Africa makes it an ideal landing point for submarine cables-huge pipelines that ferry voice and data traffic between continents. Kochi is home to two. The total bandwidth: a staggering 15 GBPs.

Why, Chief Minister Antony even speaks of riding on the back of the state's unique flora and fauna-a legacy of its tropical, almost equatorial-rain-forest type climate-to become a biotech powerhouse.

If Kerala was loath to leverage these munificence, blame it on a socialist mindset that equated big business with exploitation and infotech with dehumanisation. "We were the first to jump on to the infotech bandwagon-as far back as the 1970s," rues Antony, but "somewhere down the line we lost track of things".

Six MBAs don't a success-story make, but in a state not known for employment opportunities these half-dozen (all from IIMs and all employees of Sun Tec) do herald a subtle change

It is the job of the Kerala it Mission, located in an old-world style two-storey building in Trivandrum's pensioner's paradise Sasthamangalam, to change that. The process, going purely by the credentials of its Chief Operating Officer-appointed in 2000-has begun. N.R. Mahalingam has worked with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Hewlett-Packard (HP) and can't stop talking about the just-commissioned ITES (it-enabled services) Habitat Centre (20,000 square feet) in Kochi.

The Mission has a halfway-impressive list of achievements: it-enabled services company Spectramind will have a 1,000-seater facility at Habitat Centre; the Oman-based Gulfar Group is investing in a 150-seat call centre at Kozhikode; and work is afoot on three more tech parks, one in Kochi and two in Kozhikode.

There's method in the focus on it-enabled services. The business is bandwidth-intensive, and Kerala has no shortage of the commodity. To ensure a steady supply of warm bodies, the IT Mission is instituting ITES clubs in colleges, targeting the 7,668 engineers and the 42,680 others who graduate every year.

Typical of Kerala, the government has set itself the target of "100 per cent computer literacy", something it hopes to achieve with programmes targeted at school teachers (Intel is funding one such), and students-an it@School programme targets 15 lakh students across 2,600 schools. "HR," says Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Kerala, speaking the language of business, "is a focus area for us."

Kerala's Own Numbers

Money could ruin it all. The state government plans to invest Rs 50,000 crore over the next five years in efforts to make Kerala a preferred business destination, but its finances are far from healthy.

In 2001, Kerala went through its most painful financial crisis in recent history, largely a result of the government's expenditure dwarfing its revenues. Even today, admits Antony, the state's revenues "barely suffice to pay salaries, pensions, and interest". An ambitious e-governance initiative-riding on the back of the "most-wired-state" claim-hasn't helped.

The Information Kerala Mission (IKM) may succeed in wiring up all 1,157 local bodies in the state, and that, in turn may, as P.V. Unnikrishnan, the Mission Director of IKM, claims, "help provide local solutions to local issues," but it won't be cheap.

That could explain the urgency with which Antony's government is selling Kerala; as this article went to press, it announced a Global Investor Meet scheduled for November 2002 to market the state as "the land of infinite opportunities".

Thus far, the government has found potential investors, cautious. "The risk perception of Kerala hasn't changed much," admits S. Rama Rao, General Manager, Gemini Software, a company based in Trivandrum's Technopark. "The day an Infosys or Wipro sets up shop in the state, that will change," counters Rajiv Vasudevan, CEO, Technopark.

Right now, TCS has located its Corporate Academy, one of the largest company-owned training centres in Asia, at Technopark. But a training centre is very different from a business development one.

If any of Kerala's homegrown hothouses makes it big, or if the state manages to convince a biggie- Microsoft will do, thank you; so will either Infosys or Wipro-to invest in a development centre, even if Vasudevan's strategy of positioning Kerala, which is far away from most potential warzones in the subcontinent, as a disaster recovery zone succeeds, Antony's dream of making Kerala a preferred it destination would be up and running.

That, though, isn't something God can engineer, even if it is in his own country.

''PEOPLE WANT CHANGE"

Arackaparambil Kurien Antony is impatient, and he doesn't mind telling you so himself. The man who became the Chief Minister of Kerala for the first time in 1977, finds the state in a financial mess in his third term, and claims reforms are his primary agenda. Excerpts from an exclusive interview: Financial reforms, an iron hand in dealing with the government employees' strike..., you're wielding a big stick this time. What's the reason behind the new determination? The problems Kerala faces today are quite acute. When the state was formed in 1956, we were one of the most forward ones in the country. But thanks to endless theoretical debates, we've lost the edge. Kerala's rate of unemployment is currently the highest in the country. It's time we changed. How do you plan to effect this change? People want change. They've been watching what our neighbours have achieved over the years. Their patience is running out. The Kerala Model had its time, especially in the context of the rampant exploitation during the immediate post-independence period. But that has now become redundant. Unless we change now there won't be any future for Kerala. What's your vision for the Kerala of the future? In the next five years Kerala must become the (stresses the word) destination for information technology, higher education, and tourism. Does Kerala need a face to do this? Are you willing to do a Chandrababu Naidu? Well, I am trying to lead the state in my own way. It's not essential to have a single face, as long as you build up a team, which we have already done. We have shown so far that reform is the (stresses the word) agenda of this government. I am impatient. I can't wait anymore. To help the changes happening at the top level trickle down to the grassroots, we have initiated a unique plan of e-governance. You are leading a coalition government, and some of the key portfolios, including industry are with your partners. Now, do you have the coalition's mandate to pursue reforms? As I have said, the precarious financial situation has made everybody realise the need to change. As of now, the state government's revenue barely suffices to pay salaries, pensions, and interest. So, the mandate is there.