Kerala’s elected MLAs may appear to have been coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds since the 1950s, going by the occupational profile of the State’s MLAs till 2011 sourced from the Legislature Secretariat.
MLAs who had declared their profession as educationists came to 9.43 per cent of the total since 1957. The House had an 8.32 per cent of farmers while the representation of professionals like journalists and medical practitioners has been 3.27 and 1.60 per cent respectively. Clerks, writers, planters, film artistes and chartered accountants made up a combined 3.76 per cent of the elected representatives.
Interestingly, the number of businessmen turning MLAs also showed a steady trend. They marked their presence in the Assembly for the first time in the sixties, and slowly logged a highest-ever representation of 3.95 in the 1980’s, which hovered around 3.60 per cent in the nineties and until 2001.
In the eighties, the House had 16 MLAs coming from a business background. Of the 47 businessmen elected as MLAs, 35 belonged to the Muslim League followed by the Congress and Others five each, and the CPI(M) and the CPI one each. The presence of MLAs, who had marked agriculture as their profession, seems to be declining. From 41 in the 1980s, it slipped to 20 in the nineties and 19 up to 2011. Journalists too have been going down in the graph. Seventeen MLAs had a media background in the 1980, but it plummeted to three during the period between 2000 and 2006. The Congress logged the highest number of farmer — MLAs at 51, followed by 21 of the CPI(M) and 20 belonging to the Muslim League. The House has had 26 medical practitioners as MLAs since the 1950s. Muslim League and Kerala Congress (all factions) had the highest representation in this category, with six members each.
