The statement of the victim of the Paravoor sex scandal, a gist of which this newspaper published on Monday, is shocking, to say the least. It showed how a minor girl, studying in Class X, was taken all over Kerala and beyond by her father and other sex-peddlers to make money. Had it been an isolated case, it could have been considered an aberration and dismissed as such. In fact, it is just one of the many scandals that have hit Kerala, which is in many respects a model for the rest of India.
In the last elections, nothing seemed to matter more than the allegations of involvement in sex scandals that the leaders of the rival political fronts levelled against each other. For every P K Kunhalikutty of the UDF, there was a P Sashi of the LDF. The CPI(M), which adopted a holier-than-thou attitude, suffered a body blow when, last fortnight, it was forced to act against the secretary of its Ernakulam unit, accused of moral turpitude. Worse, even religious leaders are not exempt from the moral decay manifest in the society, as underscored by the charge of sodomy levelled against a senior Syrian Christian bishop by a member of the laity.
The decay is fundamental, not peripheral. The influx of NRI money, the rise of a consumer culture, the total neglect of farming other than cash crops like rubber, dependence on neighbouring states for everything from rice to milk and vegetables and easy availability of liquor — legal and illegal — have metamorphosed the society. With little else to do, a father watches pornographic films and his 10-year-old son is so inspired by such films that he tries to rape his four-year-old neighbour and kills her in the process. It’s in this milieu that fraudulent finance and money chain mafias find takers by the thousands and the state records the highest suicide and liquor consumption rates.