To aid in appreciating the context of my decision, let me try explaining what would happen if we start giving lift to every hitchhiker we find on the road. People of Kerala are taught, from their childhood onwards, to be concerned more about their rights than of their duty, and to think more in terms of the duty of society in ensuring your continued existence rather than of yours towards it. So, most of these strangers who you think you would be obliging by accepting into your vehicle are likely to think of it as your duty towards them. Yes, it might be your duty to help people, but it is not THEIR’s to think so. After some time, there could be associations of hitchhikers who would block roads or call for harthals if any vehicle did not stop at their beck. And who knows, unions of auto-rikshaw drivers might demand that you pay them a ‘toll’ because your philanthropy is affecting their business. 

Surely, you think I am joking; but, in spite of the exaggeration in my account, this is how bad things can get in Kerala. While moving your stuff from one place to another, hoodlums who swear allegiance to one of the two or three main trade unions will collect a fee from you for loading and unloading your own goods whether or not you want them to get involved or get the actual work done by them. They think of it as their right to be employed by you on their terms and be paid an amount that’s so high that even they may not consider it fair if you ask them individually. It’s akin to protection money that some gangs charge for leaving you alone. There’s probably no other state in this world where such a large section of the population has wholeheartedly adopted the communist ideal that the poor doesn’t have to work hard to make their own lives better, or employees don’t have a duty to add value to their employer’s business (thereby making themselves fit for employment – I wouldn’t call it a right to be employed), but have just to use the power of numbers and hooliganism to lead a perpetual parasitic existence off the enterprising minority. In this state, even the seemingly impossible situation of hitchhikers asserting their “rights” that I described above is almost possible. 

It is not hitchhiking that I’m against, or the poor who might be dependent on the rich. It is the general mindset in Kerala to think in terms of one’s rights rather than duties, that I am against. It is not even debatable that we should help the needy. But if they start seeing it as their right to be helped, then we’re not really helping them by strengthening their delusions of self-worth. Also, everybody has times when they need help, and there’s nothing parasitic about depending on others at such times. But it is the thought that one has the right to be pampered by the government and supported by others, without any associated duty to contribute back to the society, that is parasitic. And it is exactly such a culture that communism has managed to breed in Kerala over the last few decades in which its influence has been noticeable in the politics of this state.