Impending State Election, Living Cost

The state of Kerala is gearing up for yet another elections. No miracles are expected, in the long running tradition of alternating governments from Congress led UDF & Communist led LDF, this shall be the turn of UDF. However, the incumbent government has put in measures that can be termed as populist. With global economies coming down to India & our opening up from license raj regime, common man is put to many difficulties. Price hike for anything & everything is the most harsh stuff. From daily goods to education & health care, prices are sky rocketing. The upward spiral is expected to continue too. Only silver lining in the horizon is that salaries in govt as well as private sector & wages for the laborers are also increasing. Kerala has come to a stage where it is pretty difficult to find a domestic help for the double income couple staying in a city. Even in big metros of the country such as Delhi, part time domestic help is available in plenty. Kerala has progressed to organised sector in this arena with lot of agencies coming up. They provide home nurse / doemstic help / aayyah (Nanny) etc etc. Since many earning members of malayali community are out in different parts of the world, present average age of Kerala residents must be quite high. The working members have money. There is high demand for these domestic help services and alas the supply is low. To circumvent increasing costs on labour, many construction companies have 'imported' work force from far flung regions such as Rajasthan, Orissa & West Bengal. I heard that the slump in land prices / real estate is over & it got a shot in the arm owing to the sign up of 'Smart City' project. Hope Global warming will be controlled & Kerala will remain as Land ;-)