Kerala's unusual socioeconomic and demographic situation was summarized by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben:[26]
Kerala, a state in India, is a bizarre anomaly among developing nations, a place that offers real hope for the future of the Third World. Though not much larger than Maryland, Kerala has a population as big as California's and a per capita annual income of less than $300. But its infant mortality rate is very low, its literacy rate among the highest on Earth, and its birthrate below America's and falling faster. Kerala's residents live nearly as long as Americans or Europeans. Though mostly a land of paddy-covered plains, statistically Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development; there's truly no place like it.[26]
"High levels of political participation and activism among ordinary people along with substantial numbers of dedicated leaders at all levels"
It's an interesting point. Political activism has been noted before as a plausible contributor to high social capital (especially as traditional social-capital-providing arrangements tend to recede in modern societies), which in turn is a significant contributor to high quality-of-life.
Of course things are not that great if that very same political activism leads to misguided policies which keep you stuck in the middle-income trap, as we see in so many places in South America. But it seems that a legacy of substantial educational achievement (which is lacking elsewhere) has helped Kerala escape that trap.
Note that Kerala, like the rest of India, is definitely middle income. It just has much better education rates, public health, etc, than most of India.
I grew up in Kerala in the 80s. When I go back I feel like we have walked backwards in many areas - religious conservatism and fundamentalism are out in the open. The internet had a huge role to play in that. Still better than many other states, but certainly not what it could have been.
There are certainly many good things the Communists did, but it has also been the most violent (by democratic standards, not on a North Korea scale). Now, that isn't surprising because that's been the case with communism throughout history. Back then Stalin posters were everywhere, and most of us were only exposed to one side of such people.
I was born in 1989 and even post-USSR we had lots of books in English and Malayalam translated from Russian. From Raduga publishers, I had an illustrated astronomy book narrated as a grandfather making his kids observe the night sky; a book about a Moscow kid going to the countryside where his father was stationed; a book about a girl who kept on her not-remote farm a tall deer, two wolves (one had offspring that was star of a military parade), a tiger (who died of a heart attack at a zoo) and a boring horse.
Kerala's unusual socioeconomic and demographic situation was summarized by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben:[26]
Kerala, a state in India, is a bizarre anomaly among developing nations, a place that offers real hope for the future of the Third World. Though not much larger than Maryland, Kerala has a population as big as California's and a per capita annual income of less than $300. But its infant mortality rate is very low, its literacy rate among the highest on Earth, and its birthrate below America's and falling faster. Kerala's residents live nearly as long as Americans or Europeans. Though mostly a land of paddy-covered plains, statistically Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development; there's truly no place like it.[26]