K. Ravi Raman - Böcker

The Indian state of Kerala is known for its high social model of development and social democratic governance. This book presents the most comprehensive analysis of the Kerala Model of Social Development to date. The model has often been identified as one worth emulating because it is seen to have taken the state to the zenith of human development and democratic governance. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book sheds new light on the paradoxes of the Indian state and its model of economic development. The book provides a consolidated exploration and critique of the Kerala model, which usually has been portrayed as linear with the grand narrative of progress, development and democracy. Chapters discuss the past and present dimensions of the Kerala experience from a historical and political-economic perspective, thus providing a fresh understanding of the emerging concerns in the state and the construction of an ethically viable development agenda, eschewing the scourge of social inequity. A significant contribution to the literature on development, democracy and the state, it analyses the complex interconnectedness of the various political-economic and socio-cultural domains involved in these experiences.

The Indian state of Kerala is known for its high social model of development and social democratic governance. This book presents the most comprehensive analysis of the Kerala Model of Social Development to date. The model has often been identified as one worth emulating because it is seen to have taken the state to the zenith of human development and democratic governance. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book sheds new light on the paradoxes of the Indian state and its model of economic development. The book provides a consolidated exploration and critique of the Kerala model, which usually has been portrayed as linear with the grand narrative of progress, development and democracy. Chapters discuss the past and present dimensions of the Kerala experience from a historical and political-economic perspective, thus providing a fresh understanding of the emerging concerns in the state and the construction of an ethically viable development agenda, eschewing the scourge of social inequity. A significant contribution to the literature on development, democracy and the state, it analyses the complex interconnectedness of the various political-economic and socio-cultural domains involved in these experiences.

Political Ecospatiality offers a new perspective on subaltern struggles and raises the issue of how people with limited lobbying power can still organise to defend their honour or livelihood-environmental ecospatial systems. The book narrates and analyses the historical and contemporary situations that shape and reshape the strategies and practices of larger livelihood-environmental and identity politics in Kerala by drawing parallels from the rest of India and the global South. By employing Kerala as an example, it engages with and broadens debates in political economy, political ecology, and subaltern politics. The book moves through six ecospatial conflicts and assembles three key ideas – transverse solidarity, epistemological coalescence, and subaltern modernity – and applies them as analytical tools to form an overall framework of political ecospatiality.

'Kerala is different, but not in the way we think.' Economic change in this southern state has fascinated economists. Most studies focused on the state's unusual human development, asked how a poor and economically stagnant state could achieve high levels of education and healthcare and pointed to politics and government policy to answer the question. Little of that scholarship took history seriously. History, this book says, shows that the foundations of human development were laid before the formation of the state and were owed to many factors besides politics. The striking thing about the state is its unusual income growth, which has been faster than most states since the 1990s. The question the authors ask is, 'How could an income-poor state break out of stagnation so dramatically?' The answers consider past globalisation, labour mobility, a legacy of welfare spending, and the positive ways these features interacted since India's economic reforms.