K Karunakaran was an able administrator and a quick and decisive decision-maker, an aspect which has been unanimously accepted and acknowledged by every one. Kerala owes a lot to him for putting it on a development mode through a plethora of projects, many of them innovative.
The list of developmental projects he initiated is unending – The Tecknopark, the state’s flagship IT promoter, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, the Kochi International Airport, the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi, and Pariyaram Medical College are some of the development land marks. He was instrumental in initiating Kerala into the era of electronics, through the flagship company Keltron, promoting its initiatives to bring television to the State.
He was willing to experiment with various development models. It was under his tenure as Chief Minister during 1991-95 period that Technopark, the country’s first electronics technology park was established. Even though the foundational stone for the park was laid at the fag end of the previous LDF regime under Nayanar, Karunakaran extended total support to the project, which was commissioned ahead of schedule. At the heights of factional fights, he took over the RG-CDEST, then a non-governmental organisation headed by G Karthikeyan, a protégé who led a revolt against him along with Ramesh Chennithala, and converted into an institution fostering biotechnology research. Later this came to be known as Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology. He used his clout to whittle down the Navy’s objection to the Nedumbassery Airport, reckoned as the first major airport to be constructed under State and private initiative.
He was also the first to promote the concept of self-financing institutions in the Government sector to foster higher education. His move to open up the professional education to the private sector met with stiff opposition, but later it came to be adopted as a major development programme.
During his tenure as Chief Minister between 1982 and 1987, he supported reforms in the Higher Secondary education section by promoting the Pre-degree board, which too met with considerable opposition.
Even while maintaining a Left of Centre political position, he was farsighted enough to understand the changing contours of the country’s economic policy perspectives and fine tune them to suit the State’s interests and change his own political positions.
