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"...Similarly, life expectancy in Kerala is 72, the same as the Czech Republic, whereas Ireland's is 74. And 95% of Keralans over the age of seven can read and write, the same as in Israel."

http://www.greenbooks.co.uk/Douthwaite/kerala.htm

KERALA

by Richard Douthwaite One of the tragedies of our times is that even before the Communist world imploded, there was no working example of even a half-satisfactory, sustainable alternative to the western economic system under which people felt they could conceivably live. Thus, although theoretically there are many different ways in which we could organise the production of goods and services and then share them out between us, we are stuck with a particular way of doing things which is not only environmentally unsustainable but is actually making life worse for millions of people as year follows year. I made this point in a talk I gave in England a few years ago. Afterwards, I was approached by an elderly man who suggested that in fact there was a working model of a potential alternative - the system used in Kerala in southern India. However, he added, it didn't suit a lot of international organisations for word of this to be spread about. I've since established that my informant knew what he was talking about. He was William Alexander, Emeritus Professor of World Food Politics at California Polytechnic State University, and a Fulbright Professor to India in the mid-sixties. Since his retirement in 1988 Alexander has been on seven field-trips to study how Kerala's unusually-efficient system of using resources has led to high levels of human well-being. "I don't propose Kerala as a model that can be transferred to different cultures" he says, "but we ought to study its lessons and see if they can be adapted into other cultural contexts." Kerala's success is that it is able to provide its 29m. inhabitants with First World levels of health care and education on Third World levels of income and resource consumption. For example, its infant mortality rate - the number of infants per 1,000 live births who die before the end of their first year - is 13, the same as that in Greece and better than in Portugal. (Ireland's figure, 7, is one of the best in the world - only Sweden and Japan do better). Similarly, life expectancy in Kerala is 72, the same as the Czech Republic, whereas Ireland's is 74. And 95% of Keralans over the age of seven can read and write, the same as in Israel. Remarkably, even after allowing for remittances from Keralans abroad, these statistical indicators of human well-being are achieved on levels of income and resource consumption 16% lower than those in the rest of India, where infant mortality is 74, life expectancy 60 and the literacy rate only 52%. Moreover, in Kerala, the average number of live births per woman is only 1.7, less than the replacement rate, whereas in India as a whole it is 3.4 and the population is growing rapidly. In purchasing power terms, the average income in Kerala is only a fifteenth of that in Ireland. This means that Kerala has devised a culture which is much more efficient in its use of resources than our own. As a result, it is far more sustainable. For one thing, it does not depend on continuous economic growth to stave off collapse as ours does, and it is far less dependent on overseas trade. While you and I might not get excited about living like Keralans, their system demonstrates that economic growth is not required for Third World living conditions to be dramatically improved and for world population levels to be stabilised. This, of course, is in direct conflict with conventional economic thought and is an unwelcome message to organisations which see it as their job to promote economic expansion. Consequently, when Dr. William Rees, director of the School of Regional and Community Development at the University of British Columbia, attended an OECD-sponsored conference on sustainable consumption in Korea four years ago, he was accused of wasting the delegates' time when he mentioned Kerala. "I had pointed out that in some societies, very high levels - virtually First World levels - of individual and public health and welfare are achieved at as little of a sixtieth of US nominal GDP per capita and used Kerala as an example" he told me recently. "My point was a simple one - that each society is to some extent a social construction and that there is plenty of evidence that the particular 'construction' being imposed by the industrialised North may be dangerous and counter-productive. I argued that we might gain as much or more by investing in social and community capital as from efforts to preserve our present consumer society. Kerala succeeds by investing in public health and education. It also benefits from the social cement flowing from a historical matriarchy. "After my session I was accosted in the corridor by three economists who berated me for having wasted the time of the meeting by raising all this social stuff. One actually argued that what people like me did not realise was that humans are 'self-interested utility maximisers' who would not tolerate any discussion that might reduce their material welfare or threaten their chances of accumulating more and more private wealth". Professor Alexander says that Dr. Rees' experience is not an isolated one. He tells the story of a World Bank employee - whom he names - who wrote a report in 1975 on the unusually low birth rate and high quality of life measurements in Kerala only to have it suppressed. The Keralan model is unacceptable in the West both because is it egalitarian and because the election of a Communist government in 1957 enabled it to come about. Depressingly, western opposition has continued although the communists have never had a majority since. Perhaps this is because subsequent governments have followed similar policies. As Alexander writes in a recent paper: "Defenders of caste hierarchies and special privileges [have been] the enemies of all parties.... all winning coalitions continue to support the agenda of the oppressed." As a result, Keralian hierarchies are less powerful than in the rest of India or in the West. Alexander thinks that this means knowledge is able to flow more easily, enabling Kerala to use its limited resources more efficiently. In the West, he says, 'rapid downward flow of knowledge is maximised at the cost of limiting or denying upward knowledge flows'. This maximises production but buttresses heirarchies and entails greater resource use. In Kerala, on the other hand, the general appreciation of female values which stems from its matriarchal social structure encourages lateral knowledge flows. As a result, what he terms 'the efficiency of throughput utilisation in the creation of well-being' is increased. "In the late 21st Century, the throughput available per capita world-wide may be as small as it is in India and Kerala today" he writes. In this case, he asks, which system would we prefer for our grandchildren, the Indian one based on a rejection of female values or a Keralian one which enhances them? Richard Douthwaite email: richard@douthwaite.net