The Kerala model keeps you in high spirits!!!

I remember an old Wipro recruitment ad, which told me how unfortunate I was to have not learnt driving from Michael Schumacher or batting from Sachin Tendulkar. But when it comes to Macro Economics I don’t think PGPX has left me with any room to complain. Our professor on this subject happens to be very much on top of things and incidentally, in addition to his day job of teaching duds, err.. dudes like me, he also finds time to sit in the sixth central pay commission. So needless to say, our whole class is excited to hear his experiences and views in setting our macroeconomic policies straight.

Today during class discussions, I got an opportunity to talk to the out-and-out capitalist in him about a contrarian view, the one that is presented by the famed Kerala macroeconomic model. I was not surprised that he was quick to dismiss that as a failed one.

So I got back to my drawing board and here is all that I could find in my attempt to pull it together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model

If you think that materialism, fuelled by consumption led economic growth as practiced in the west is the only way to prosperity, then you should read this article by Bill Mckibben.

What is True Development? The Kerala Model
http://www.ashanet.org/library/articles/kerala.199803.html
Some excerpts:

• Demographically, Kerala mirrors the United States on about one-seventieth the cash. It has problems, of course: There is chronic unemployment, a stagnant economy that may have trouble coping with world markets, and a budget deficit that is often described as out of control. But these are the kinds of problems you find in France. Kerala utterly lacks the squalid drama of the Third World--the beggars reaching through the car window, the children with distended bellies, the baby girls left to die.
• Kerala undercuts maxims about the world we consider almost intuitive: Rich people are healthier, rich people live longer, rich people have more opportunity for education, rich people have fewer children. We know all these things to be true--and yet here is a counter case, a demographic Himalaya suddenly rising on our mental atlas. It's as if someone demonstrated in a lab that flame didn't necessarily need oxygen, or that water could freeze at 60 degrees. It demands a new chemistry to explain it, a whole new science.
• In Kerala the birth rate is 40 percent below that of India as a whole and almost 60 percent below the rate for poor countries in general. In fact, a 1992 survey found that the birth rate had fallen to replacement level. That is to say, Kerala has solved one-third of the equation that drives environmental destruction the world over. And, defying conventional wisdom, it has done so without rapid economic growth--has done so without becoming a huge consumer of resources and thus destroying the environment in other ways.
• One-seventieth the income means one-seventieth the damage to the planet. So, on balance, if Kerala and the United States manage to achieve the same physical quality of life, Kerala is the vastly more successful society. Which is not to say that we could ever live on as little as they do--or, indeed, that they should. The right point is clearly somewhere in between.

Here are some additional resources:

Is There a Kerala Model?
http://chss.montclair.edu/anthro/julypap.html

Kerala: A Lesson In Light Living:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC26/AtKisson.htm

Kerala State: A Social Justice Model
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm0795.08.html

Female-Supported Households: A Continuing Agenda for the Kerala Model?
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/anthro/febconf.html

The Relevance of the Kerala Model in the Emerging World Order
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/anthro/augpap.html

Is the Kerala Model Sustainable? Lessons from the Past
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/anthro/decconf.html

For all those guys out there who are still not convinced, let me take out my brahmastra. No statistical discourse on Kerala is complete without highlighting our per-capita-alcoholic consumption, which happens to be the highest in the country. If that doesn’t convince you that God’s Own Country is the happiest and the happening place around here, then no amount of Macro Economic mushrooming will. I rest my case…