The Kerala Model: Good to Read About!

Kerala, India is a favorite case study of left-leaning Western development experts. Bill McKibben wrote a book about it; in the Utne Reader, he claims that Kerala proves "sharing works." The New York Times describes Kerala as a place "famously good to be poor" with good reason: Kerala is a communitarian success story. High taxes and heavy redistribution seem to have yielded good schools, relatively high life expectancy, and low infant mortality. Though poor even by India's standards, Kerala is pitched as a "humane alternative to market-driven development." It's a beautiful dream. And according today's New York Times, it's a dream largely sustained by…global capitalism.

"Remittances from global capitalism are carrying the whole Kerala economy," said S. Irudaya Rajan, a demographer at the Center for Development Studies, a local research group. "There would have been starvation deaths in Kerala if there had been no migration. The Kerala model is good to read about but not practically applicable to any part of the world, including Kerala."

…Even as Kerala gained fame, large numbers of its workers were leaving. The Persian Gulf needed labor, and Keralites were used to traveling for jobs. The number of overseas workers doubled in the 1980s, and then tripled in the 1990s. In a state of 32 million where unemployment approaches 20 percent, one Keralite worker in six now works overseas. The largest number work at taxing construction jobs, outdoors in the Arabian sun, though high literacy allows some Keralites to land office work.

It would be easy to overstate the point here. Kerala seems to have done well with limited resources, and absent better opportunities abroad, perhaps it was ideal. The high quality of the schools seems to be part of what's driving the exodus, since educated migrants can land better jobs. But the paradise-amid-poverty status conferred on Kerala by Mckibben and other Westerners is questionable, given that many of its residents choose to drive trucks in Saudi Arabia rather than remain home. Keralans don't seem to want to be poor, even in a place where it's famously good to be.