THIRUVANANATHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Information Commissioner and former chief secretary Vishwas Mehta said that the state has performed exceptionally well in education and health sectors, but it has been the economy that remained its Achilles heel. Speaking to TNIE in the run-up to the release of his much-anticipated autobiography ‘Athijeevanam’, Mehta said Kerala could have been an island of prosperity before the rest of the country had it been able to deliver better in the secondary sector.
Terming the education and health sectors as on a par with Europe, he said Kerala’s economy could have registered a more robust growth had the manufacturing sector too could have found better traction.
“From agriculture, we have leapt to the service sector, which is the tertiary sector. We missed the secondary sector- industries- which is of utmost importance. We have the resources and infrastructure to usher in growth of industries, but have not been able to use it. That’s the paradox,” he said.
Having been the Chief Information Commissioner for the past three years since his retirement as the chief secretary, Mehta is set to retire later this month. Born in Dungarpur in southern Rajasthan, Mehta first entered civil service as an IPS officer in 1985 alongside Loknath Behera and Rishiraj Singh. However, he wanted to be in the administrative service and cracked IAS in 1986. The brief stint in IPS helped him forge a good camaraderie with Behera and Singh and that special relation forms a part of ‘Athijeevanam’, which spans 300 pages. “Behera is like a brother to me. I applied to the post of the Chief Information Commissioner after getting to know that he had not applied for it. He was keen to move to Kochi,” Mehta said. Mehta said he learned a lot of positive traits from Kerala politicians and had dedicated a few pages about that in his book.
The autobiography also mentions his interactions with various politicians, including K Karunakaran, V S Achuthanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan. The relation with late minister K K Ramachandran Master got a special mention. Mehta encountered the veteran politician when the latter was leading a protest against him while he was working in Wayanad.
“He was raising the slogan that he had no faith in me. “Vishwas Mehtayil viswasamilla”. I got angry hearing that. In hindsight I felt I should not have reacted that way. But we got along really well later,” Mehta said.
The book also deals with the suspension of M Sivasankar, who was the former principal secretary to CM Pinarayi Vijayan, in connection with the gold smuggling case. “He was a man of great calibre. When you are close to politicians, there will always be allegations,” Mehta said. “The book portrays the struggles of my ancestors and me. But there is no self-glorification in it. The book offers the perspective of an outsider, who made the state as his ‘Karmabhoomi.’ In the book I have documented some interesting episodes that I had encountered in my career,” he said.