Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a "Model" (Cambridge Commonwealth Series)

In 1990 approximately ten per cent of Indian babies died in their first year - but in Kerala state on the southwestern coast, infant mortality was less than three per cent. Kerala also boasted India's longest life expectancy and highest female literacy in India. Yet Kerala's per capita income was less than the lowly national average. The so-called Kerala Model has teased scholars and policy-makers since the 1970s. Is it possible to achieve a tolerable standard of living without the immense costs of industrial or political revolutions? This book argues that the disintegration of matrilineal social structure and a rigid system of caste generated widespread politicization. In this process, though women both lost and gained, they have retained a position of autonomy unique in India. This book explains how this combination of politics and women has produced the supposed "well-being" associated with the Kerala Model. For people interested in comparative politics, development policy and the position of women in society, this book examines key issues. Historians of South Asia will also find a social history that pushes beyond the conventional stopping date of 1947 - into the 1990s and the implications of the Gulf crisis for Kerala and its hundreds of thousands of Gulf-based workers.