Proceedings of 8th Annual London Business Research Conference
Imperial College, London, UK, 8 - 9 July, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-922069-28-3
Time Trends in the Performance of the Coir Industry in
Coastal India
Roshni Narendran
Upsurge of economic growth in India caught the attention of academics;
however, beneath the economic growth traditional industries are incurring a
loss. Even though, the liberalization policies were the instigator of India’s
economic development, some of the traditional industries like the coir
industry failed to record constant growth. Besides, suicides and suicide
attempts among the owners of small scale coir producing units and
workers caught the media’s attention. This scenario prompted a study to
investigate the impact of economic, political and policy environments to
study the regressing coir industry of Kerala. The state of Kerala being the
largest producer of coir in India is an appealing case for exploring the
declining industrial climate. From the secondary data coir export trends
(CET), the period from 1970 to 2012 was classified as: the period of
stagnation (1970-1989), post liberalization period (1990-2000), and period
of rapid growth (2000-2012). The trends in Kerala’s State Domestic
Product (SDP of primary sector (SDP1) during 1970-2012 were compared
to CET to identify trend shifts specific to coir. During the period of
stagnation, CET and SDP were negatively correlated (r =-0.698; p=0.001)
with a fall in SDP1. In the post liberalization period, they were positively
correlated (r=0.813; p<0.001). However, the impact of government
initiatives like the Coir-Corporation (1969-70) and Coirfed (1979) was not
obvious in the CET. At this early stage of the investigation, it did not
appear to have prompted any significant shift in coir exports. Another
variable included in the analysis is the influence of political parties in power
and coir export. Most prominent political parties in Kerala are
the Communist party-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Indian
National Congress-led United Democratic Front. The economic output was
significantly (p = 0.008) different during the period of governance by the
two parties. The study shows the significance of economic, political and
policy environments on coir exports, however, a study of the endogenous
factors is essential to rule out correlation fallacy other factors affecting the
coir industry.
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DR. Roshni Narendran, University of Wollongong, Australia