The recent elections to the Kizhakkambalam panchayat in Kerala's Ernakulam district threw up a surprise. The elections were swept by Twenty20 Kizhakkambalam, a corporate social responsibility initiative of the Rs 1,500-crore Anna-Kitex group of companies.
Candidates of Twenty20 won 17 of the 19 wards and two of the three block panchayat seats they contested in.
Twenty20 was launched in May 2013 with the aim to turn Kizhakkambalam into India's first model village. Now, it hopes to turn Kizhakkambalam into a model panchayat.
It is the brainchild of Sabu M Jacob, the managing director of Kitex Garments of Anna-Kitex Group. Jacob's father was the first entrepreneur in a family of farmers. He took to converting aluminum scrap into kitchen utensils. Jacob says his father told him and his brother, Bobby (who heads Anna Aluminum), that besides the company, their village should also be their priority.
The senior Jacob died in 2011. A year later, the Jacob brothers organised a health camp in Kizhakkambalam. Around 100 doctors and 600 nurses were made available in a tie-up with around 500 hospitals. Nearly 7,000 people attended the one-day camp. But instead of talking about their health problems, most of them lamented the lack of toilets, water and food in the village.
In 2013, Jacob held a meeting with the local industrialists, politicians and social activists and sought their support for the village. A 12-point Vision 2020 was drawn up and the initiative was named "Twenty20 Kizhakkambalam", inspired by Twenty20 cricket and a Malayalam movie by the same name. Jacob became the chief coordinator of the organisation, which, besides the Anna-Kitex Group, also had Sevana Group (which manufactures electronics) as a participant.
The agenda included improving facilities for drinking water, housing, food, toilet, electricity, healthcare, education and employment besides reviving agriculture in the village.
The task ahead
Twenty20 has set an ambitious task for itself. Kizhakkambalam is not a small village. Spread over 32 sq km, it has around 8,000 houses and a population of over 23,000. While most of the villagers are engaged in farming, over the years several companies, including Anna-Kitex, Sevana and Blackcat, have sprung up here. Several villagers now work with these companies. It is a village with a high literacy rate: in 2011, Kizhakkambalam's literacy rate was 94.74 per cent, higher than the state's average of 94 per cent.
Twenty20 has around 4,800 members, including a 20-member executive board, which includes the Jacob brothers, representatives of Sevana and the newly-elected panchayat president, K V Jacob. (K V Jacob was earlier with the Communist Party of India-Marxist). Twenty20 also has an executive committee of 950 people (50 from each ward) and a working committee of 3,800 people (200 from each ward).
Besides this, it appointed 42 people who hold a master's degree in the field of social work. Their job was to survey the panchayat, collect details of the size of the houses, the source of water and other amenities. Based on the data collected, Twenty20 classified the poor and unsupported households in the red category, those below the poverty line in yellow, those above the poverty line in green and the financially well-off in the blue category. Cards were issued to the families based on this classification and social benefits were offered according to the colour of the card.
It was found that the "Laksham Veedu" colonies, built by the government to provide one lakh homes to the poor in the state, had a single pipeline supplying water for an hour a day to 40 families through a single tap. So, Twenty20 dug borewells, built water tanks and provided pipe connections to all the houses.
Twenty20's progress card claims that it has also turned large parts of the barren area under the panchayat into arable land. Paddy, banana, nutmeg, coconut, guava, mango tamarind and vegetables are now grown here.
"An ambulance service that picks and drops patients home is also being offered," says Shaijan Mathew, who runs a tea shop in the village. Twenty20 runs an evening market where groceries and vegetables are sold at almost half the market price. Shaji, an autorickshaw driver, says the evening market has brought down his monthly expense on groceries and vegetables from Rs 3,000 to Rs 1,000. Jacob claims Twenty20 incurs a loss of Rs 2.5 lakh per day on an average to run the market but will continue to do so. But not everybody is happy with the initiative. Several shopkeepers in the village complain that the market has severely hit their business.
Navigating choppy waters
Jacob says when the earlier panchayat started objecting to Twenty20's welfare measures, the organisation decided to contest the elections.
But the move has invited questions from political parties, especially the Indian National Congress that was ruling the panchayat until now. The Congress has alleged that contesting the panchayat elections is the company's way of getting clearance for its future projects, which includes a bleaching plant that it says would pollute the village.
Others have alleged that since Twenty20 is led by a corporate group, the panchayat will be in the hands of Kitex. Jacob dismisses these allegations and says the Kitex Group and Twenty20 Kizhakkambalam are different entities.
Jacob, who also distributed pamphlets among voters to counter these allegations, insists that the company complies with stringent quality and environmental regulations. He says to set up a factory in the state, the company would need 36 licences: 25 from the state government and 10 from the central government. The work permit from the panchayat would only be one among the many approvals needed, he says.
Regarding the allegations on pollution, Jacob says the village has nine big crushers and about 120 brick kilns, besides plywood industries, many of which are polluting the environment. He says instead of adding to the pollution, Twenty20 will identify these industries and help them comply with regulations. The aim, he says, is also to turn Kizhakkambalam into an "internet panchayat" with wi-fi services across the village in the next six months.
All this will require money - Rs 300-350 crore, estimates the organisation. The panchayat fund is about Rs 60 crore for the five-year term. Jacob says they will also reach out to industrialists.
Ambitious as its plans are, Twenty20 has a long way to go. The innings has only just begun.
