John Mathai
1886–1959
Economist; independent India's first Railway Minister and Finance Minister (1948–1950), who lived at Lalur
John Mathai was born in Kozhikode in 1886 and became one of the best-known Indian economists of his day. He studied at Madras Christian College and the Madras Law College, and taught economics at Presidency College, Madras. But the home he chose was a quiet bungalow among the trees at Lalur, in Aranattukara.
In Nehru’s cabinet
When India became independent in 1947, he joined Jawaharlal Nehru’s first cabinet as Railway Minister. In 1948 he moved to the Finance Ministry. He presented the Union budgets of 1949 and 1950, and the 1950 budget was the first of the new Republic. He resigned later in 1950. The book links his resignation to a row over that budget. Most other accounts say he left in protest at the growing power of the new Planning Commission.
Afterwards he served as Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University and as the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala. He also helped set up the National Council of Applied Economic Research in Delhi. He received the Padma Vibhushan in 1959, the year he died.
At home in Aranattukara
Local memory keeps a more personal picture. Even as a minister, the book says, he liked to travel home from Kochi by boat and step ashore below his own gatehouse. He filled his garden with rare trees from Ceylon, Malaysia and further away. His house is remembered as the first in Aranattukara to get electricity.
He gave land and houses to poor Dalit families (the book uses the older word Harijan). The colony at Lalur that grew from this is still called Mathaipuram. He also started the Chacko Memorial school at Padinjarekotta for boys whose families could not afford fees. After his death, his family handed his 18-acre home to the University of Calicut. It is now the Dr John Matthai Centre.
Related
Dr John Matthai Centre, Lalur
The University of Calicut campus at Lalur, on the green estate where John Mathai lived, home to the Department of Economics and the School of Drama.
Aranattukara in 10 Minutes
The whole story of Aranattukara in one short read — from a landing on the edge of the kol wetlands to a busy ward of Thrissur city.
Aranattukara Today
Ponds, paddy and bamboo gave way to roads and houses, and a market village became a ward of Thrissur city. What has changed, who has spoken for Aranattukara, and what is still worth keeping.
The Schools That Shaped Aranattukara
From village writing schools taught by Hindu teachers to Tharakan's School, the girls' high schools and St. Aloysius College at Elthuruth, this is how Aranattukara learned to read, and how its classrooms helped heal a divided parish.
Struggles and Movements
From Gandhiji's visit to the Lalur colony and the 1936 electricity agitation to a seventy-year fight over the city's rubbish at Lalur. Aranattukara's part in the public life of Thrissur and Kerala.
Temples and Older Faiths
Long before the church bells, Aranattukara had its sacred groves, its kol paddy fields and its temples. This chapter looks at the land's older faiths, the Brahmin settlement of Thrissur, the temples of Lalur and Kizhakkeppuram, and the village healers.