I was born in the US but my parents are from Kerala and I still have family there that I visit.
One thing I found interesting was the pride in literacy and education. Kerala has a 96% literacy rate which is the highest in India [1].
It's one of my favorite places to visit. Unlike other parts of India such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderbad -- it's tropical and lush with much less pollution than what you might see in those other parts of India.
My parents have a home in a rural community which hasn't changed much in the past few decades compared to somewhere like Bengaluru. It's quiet and slow with a high important on family relationships. No doubt it's westernizing, albeit slower than other parts of India - but for now it still holds much of the charm I've known since I was a kid.
> Unlike other parts of India such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderbad -- it's tropical and lush with much less pollution than what you might see in those other parts of India.
Somewhat ironically these are relatively low pollution as large cities in India go. There is still a good amount of greenery in Bengaluru (it is famous for it) but obviously far less than a few decades ago, as many residents lament.
Bangalore today is a shadow compared to the Garden City it once was.
For outsiders not in the know, Bangalore was famous for its beautiful lakes and the lush greenery around them. It was absolutely something else, finding these beautiful water bodies smack in the middle of what is supposed to be a major city. The weather was cool, almost like a warm European summer (which is extremely cool by Indian standards).
Then they got greedy, drained the lakes, built real estate and office properties on them and now Bangalore is an unbearable cesspit just like any other Indian city. Bad weather, bad traffic and a shit scenery.
I still have some photos of my visits to Bangalore in my childhood a couple of decades back, and the visual contrast between past and present is so stark. Of course, locals love to resent the regression of the city, but they also love their coin.
I'll be honest, Mumbai is still very scenic, and I say that as someone from Kerala. Marine Drive and the Colaba area really have a very Bombay-days vibe even after all the changes in the area. While Sealink does ruin the sea views a bit, it's still not a grotesque mark on the scenery.
To be honest, my only relatively poor experience in Bombay in terms of scenery was in the Four Seasons hotel in Worli, when I could get a nice view of couples going at it on the rooftops of the chawl nearby, somehow appropriately from my bathroom window.
Delhi does have its own charms too. Assuming you're a strong enough male, it's worth exploring South Delhi on foot solo over autumns, winters and spring, just immersing in the city. Obviously face mask recommended and not recommended for ladies.
My family is part of the indigenous people of Mumbai, and my mom and dad's pictures of their childhood homes and stories are almost unbelievable if you visit now. My grandparents old bungalow is still on google maps, now surrounded by skyscrapers, but in the pictures, it's all fields and trees.
If you want an alternative view, the state government has to largely spend money on infrastructure and welfare for non-Bengaluru voters who comprise the majority of the population and the vast majority of the land area, so often all the money that flows into Bengaluru doesn't get spent in Bengaluru itself but instead the wider state.
I also think that there's a strong overcurrent of people wanting to emulate US living standards in a city that's simply designed for a different way of living, more similar to other dense cities in East Asia or maybe even Europe. You need to have skyscrapers and not large low rise estates for example.
"Then they got greedy, drained the lakes, built real estate and office properties on them and now Bangalore is an unbearable cesspit just like any other Indian city. Bad weather, bad traffic and a shit scenery."
hope indian government turn around, because china back then has a smoke problem even in its capital too
I blame a lot of the cesspoll nature of Bengaluru on over-obsession with living a Silicon Valley lifestlye in the middle of a very dense city. Bengalurians should have been copying East Asian lifestyles where cities which have ancient dense cores rather than the suburban sprawl lifestyles that the US offers. A lot of the architectural and socio-cultural concepts are also much more similar to East Asia than they are to the US.
Perhaps there will be a return to the roots. The new redesign of Bangalore airport is very much in line with an East Asian vision and I hope that carries over into the rest of the city. That being said, I'll still bemoan the loss of the lakes.
It surprised me that tech companies opted for Silicon Valley style campuses rather than Chinese stytle skyscrapers. It's not feisable to live a Bay Area lifestyle in a city surrounded by mountains like Bengaluru. You would not have to build over lakes if you built up.
As someone who visited Kerala multiple times a year, things have gotten worse both climate wise & pollution wise. Though, the monsoon gods still bless Kerala, it isn't as green as it used to be. I've found (under similar climatic conditions) the Sri Lankan lowlands (West coast) to be more greener. Ditto for rainforests of NE India & SE Asia.
To add to this: the most recent "96.2% literacy" estimate is based on a 2017 survey (not the 2011 census) where they interviewed a little over 2500 households in Kerala, though there are 7.7 million households there. I'm not a statistician, but this feels like too small of a sample size to make a definitive estimation.
In addition, other states got very close to that literacy rate, but are probably managed quite differently to Kerala. Worth considering if people want to try to replicate Kerala's efforts without considering the wider context
Most of the literacy education efforts started in the 1800s in Kerala. For example,
> Education in Kerala has deep historical roots, dating back to the rule of local dynasties and the influence of colonial missionaries. The rulers of Travancore and Cochin played a crucial role in establishing schools and promoting learning, especially among marginalized communities. The British and Christian missionaries also made significant contributions by setting up institutions that emphasized modern education.
> In 1817, the Travancore government issued a royal decree stating that education should be provided to all, including women and lower castes. By the early 20th century, Kerala had already built a strong foundation for literacy, ensuring that access to education was widespread.
You're right. You're not a statistician. My point was against yours. The consensus by experts in myltiple fields, who study specifically this, is that literacy in Kerela is exceptionally high. That is one study among many, one that only confirms what they way they already know.
In popular US culture the pursuit of wealth, is framed as crass. Movies that some see as promoting wealth accumulation are often actually critiques against wealth.
Also, since the mid 60s pop culture has embraced the slacker as being hip and cool.
They guy and gal trying to get ahead are portrayed as greedy or at best blindly joining a rat-race forgoing more noble pursuits. Not so for many other cultures.
I think that in almost all western countries, a life spent entirely on hoarding wealth for the sake of wealth, is considered a sad life. Especially if you don't even have any loved ones to share your wealth with.
I think the same it true for most of Latin america, where many of my friends and colleagues are from. And when I was in Nepal they thought that, if anything, western people are way too much focused on gathering wealth.
Islam specifically rejects hoarding wealth, so I think that pretty much takes out most of the middle east and northern africa.
So I'm curious which other cultures you are referring to. Perhaps specifically Indian and Chinese culture?
Islam specifically rejects hoarding wealth, so I think that pretty much takes out most of the middle east
I don't know much about religions but I don't believe it is that clearly delineated. How would you explain Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, from my limited vantage point they seem pretty much all in on their religion. Are they practicing a perverse form of Islam like the Christian who practice prosperity gospel?
Islam is probably the most economically savvy major religion (Mohammed was a merchant after all). Unlike other religions which issue blanket prohibitions on things like charging interest or having wealth Islam is more pragmatic. Hoarding wealth is considered sinful when it means that others are going without but it is not a sin to make money, have money or be rich. The gulf states could all broadly be described as socialist. Yes they have a lot of money but pretty much everyone lives on welfare and enjoys a high quality of life (nobody is going hungry or falling ill from easily treated diseases). In a country where everyone has attained a high standard of living there is no issue with someone having a huge pile of cash. We could throw out labor issues from guest workers, but that is a bigger topic.
Sorry but they cannot be described as socialist because workers rights are non existent.
Just because there is some protection for the native Arabs doesn't mean it can be "broadly described as socialist".
There is no protection for the Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Indians, etc, who are doing the work. Protecting the working class is pretty much the point of socialism.
This is a ludicrous statement.
They’re welfare states, with three classes of residents. A slave-like underclass, disenfranchised expats, and citizens who get paid off by their royal families with generous benefits. Maybe the closest analogy is Ancient Rome?
I don't think the underclass is living under slave like conditions though.
Full disclosure, I worked in Dubai for 2 years(as a disenfranchised expat), working closely with guys from above mentioned countries. I install heavy machinery.
It's true some are treated poorly, but most are there genuinely there out of free will, because they make buckets of money to send back home. One Pakistani foreman I worked with had stashed away 250k Dirhams and was going back home to start his own business.
The gulf states can/could be an opportunity for the poor, see Bin Laden family for a famous example.
More than criticizing the gulf states for using these people as cheap labor, the criticism should be aimed at their corrupt governments not giving opportunities to their own population. Ironically they are not even allowed inside Europe and the US.
FWIW my experience in Dubai changed my views on the region to a much more nuanced one.
There's no such thing as prosperity gospel in Islam. I researched all the major religions when I decided to become religious in my 20s. The prosperity gospel even in Christianity has very loose / 0 underpinnings in any actual theological study.
The Gulf countries became wealthy because of oil. They don't really hoard that wealth though. They are pretty famous around the world for investing that money, no? They fund universities (with many Gulf countries having their own outpost of NYU or other such prestigious colleges), arts and arts museums (there is a Louvre in the Middle East), tech startups, and of course invest in tourism to diversify their country.
They also have many horrible qualities, which are 100% not condoned in Islam like employing slaves in deadly conditions even though all nations agreed to abolish slavery years ago. Or confiscating the passports of foreign workers. Or their ethnostate mentality (similar to Israel where citizens must be of a specific blood lineage even though the majority of people living in their nation are not of that lineage). I could go on and on.
Anyways, Tl;Dr, I don't think they really hoard wealth. They do spend and invest in the world around them and find lots of charitable things (they have rebuilt Palestine a few times now, a very costly endeavor). Also, being Muslim doesn't mean they don't do anything morally wrong by that religion's standard. Same as the many charlatan "priests" of various religions in the world.
Islam is a very practical religion. And that applies to how it treats wealth and socialism.
Like many religion it emphasises the importance of being good, and doing good, to enjoy the rewards of that in the after life (i.e. it teaches delayed gratification). But it also recognizes that advocating its adherent to forego all wordly attachment and live like a saint is also not practical for society. Thus, it also pragmatically says that a muslims doesn't have to wait for the afterlife to enjoy the rewards of good deeds - God has given humans the ability to enjoy certain pleasures in life, and achieve a higher sense of spiritual enlightenment, and that too depends on the good deeds you do in this life:
Whoever does good, whether male or female, and is a believer, We will surely bless them with a good life, and We will certainly reward them according to the best of their deeds. (Quran 16:97)
Islamic scholars interpret this as a promise from God to the Children of Adam, who do righteous deeds - deeds in accordance with the Book of God and the teachings of His Prophet, with a heart that believes in God and His Messenger. God promises that He will give them a good life in this world and that He will reward them according to the best of their deeds in the Hereafter. Some scholars say this means a life with feelings of tranquillity in all aspects of life, while some suggest it means contentment and / or happiness in this life.
That is why no muslim needs to feel guilty about the wealth they have inherited or earned provided it is done through honest means, without hurting others, and they also follow the Islamic obligations of Zakat (charity). This charity is how socialism works in Islam. Islam says that the wealth of the world doesn't belong to anyone but God. And wealthy muslims (and rulers) are just custodians of his wealth. And God commands the wealthy to share their wealth with the poor, and prescribes how this should be done (annually 2.5% of your wealth should be given to the poor and needy). Even here, Islam is very practical - it recognizes how human nature is often suspicious of helping strangers, and thus says to look for people within your own family, your own friends, your own neighbourhood, your own muslim community etc. (i.e. your own social circles) to do this kind of charity.
It's also commonplace in traditional Buddhist and Hindu cultures, especially a lot of the older upper class in India are obsessed with following Gandhi-like living too. You still find it in many Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and South East Asia too.
A lot of the older upper class Hindus in India do actually act like that. And it's also quite common in Sri Lanka and South East Asia for the upper class to do that.
A lot depends on how exactly you pursue wealth. You could say that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have both striven to "pursue wealth" in their business careers, but nonetheless they did so in very different ways. And plenty of people will likely find Donald's approach somewhat "crass" compared to Elon's.
That's because America is fundamentally a Christian country. I know no one wants to hear this. But this zeitgeist is unmistakenly Christian.
Interestingly enough the same forces are at work in kerala, which is one of the most Christian states in India (and the ruling communists are associated with them)
Can you expound on this idea? What does anti-wealth have to do with Christianity and how does Communism enter the frame in India?
Prior to the mid 60s seeking betterment and wealth was one of the main reasons people migrated to the US replacing religious persecution back home as the main reason to come.
Christianity (esp. Catholicism) and socialism have a long connection, especially in South America, which did not have the economic miracle Kerala did.
Kerala did not become wealthy from socialism, it became literate and land reform lifted many out of poverty. The actual wealth started accumulating when Keralites took advantage of opportunities to work abroad and send remittances home. That has been a major economic driver for the state and India as a whole, but they did it long before others did, largely because land reform gave people a safety net to fall back on so they could risk going abroad to earn more
Socialism maybe the but the Roman Catholic church has a strong history of opposition to communism.
I would suggest God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican as for a pop-culture introduction of how the Catholic church aligned itself with fascist states including Mussolini's PNF, the Nazis and the Ustaše.
The Ustaše were particularly closely associated with the Catholic church.
I was raised by a catholic system in Kerala christian heartland. For decades every Roman Catholic church required to have a school associated with it mostly primary but often secondary - managed by priests and nuns. These priests are heavily connected to Rome often visiting or getting their degree from there. I often hear Matthew 19:23-24 preached during sunday mass and many people have become content with what they have even though its barely enough.
If you ask me about communism, I would say its effects were kind of bad - overseas remittence came in as gulf nations flourished but for others from 60s till end of 90's economic opportunities were bleak. It came in power around 1956 in Kerala and a lot of privileged christians migrated to US in the following decades - with the christian cultural background they have, they integrated really well in that society.
Christianity in India is often framed against the prevailing religion Hinduism, for better or worse. The Indian church emphasizes things like social equality, income equality, etc. Some of the earliest labor activists and trade unionists in India were Catholic (actually Catholics in general are generally pro union across the world, see the Catholic vote here in America).
Secondly, Catholics are often setting up schools for everyone. India has always had a history of education, especially Kerala, but universal education of even the lower classes is extremely protestant. The church ended up adopting this around the time colonialism started and thus brought universal education to a widespread base in India.
Finally, the idea of touching everyone and treating them equally was against the general zeitgeist of the prevailing feudalistic highly hierarchical indian society. The first conversion attempts of the Portuguese for the south indian brahmins actually were incredibly successful (Nicholas of Tolentino). The Vatican even allows (and still allows as far as I'm aware, although no one does it) vedic rites for Catholics (malabar rites controversy).
However, no one wanted to give up untouchability. The Vatican eventually forced the missionaries to not have separate missions for touchables and untouchables, which basically ended Brahmanic conversions (and is one of the reasons indian Catholics no longer really care to do the vedic rites, since most are now from the lower class. As far as I know, some still do in Mangalore). Caste is still a problem in some christian communities in India but the bishops work to end it and it is officially condemned.
Which is to say, catholicism is associated with labor movement, equal social treatment, and universal education.
Which is also what the communists want.
It's no surprise that Kerala, being way more christian (and Catholic particularly) with a rich and prominent Christian history is thus the center of socialism.
Keep in mind also that communism in feudal countries has basically no relation to the communism you find on university campuses of america.
Now to the west. In the west, the church is seen as conservative, but the church is actually radically left wing in most parts of the world. It's only because leftism (in a global sense) is fundamentally a part of western culture that the church seems right wing because the church does not go as far as some leftist parties in the west.
I don't think this is true anymore. "Selling out" is now seen as a goal. Kids post fake ads on their instagrams to convince each other that they have brand sponsorship deals. Every celebrity, from reality-show nobody to AAA-lister shills for their own signature alcohol or cell phone carrier. The culture celebrates grindset mindset crypto-scam rugpulls and denigrates anyone who toils at a 9-5 as a wage-slave who'll never make it.
It may be strong to a point, but many countries are beyond that point. Look at how many countries there are that are better educated than the USA but have lower incomes. Japan, Germany, Canada, probably dozens more.
QoL is a relative metric though. If you see people around you living better than you, your QoL becomes poor even though you live better than 99% of people in the world
1. Secondary and tertiary education is not all there is to education. A self-learned software engineer might lack a capital-E education, but has still spent significant time and effort on learning.
2. Education is one of many aspects of a successful life, at least as important is conscientiousness, diligence, intelligence and luck.
3. The US benefits from many virtuous cycles. In regards to the labor force it is able to attract a lot of the best talent in the world.
Given the current political climate in the US, it seems prudent to point out that point 3 isn't just true for business-men, doctors and other nerds, undocumented immigrants are some of the hardest-working people out there. They contribute almost 100b in taxes alone, and get almost no services in return.
It’s all relevant, but there is zero doubt that the US has the best higher education in the world (although this administration seems hell bent on attacking it). There’s a reason more international students come to the US than anywhere else for higher education.
They hire foreigners largely because they're much cheaper than Americans. The schools have little trouble getting visas for foreign professors so, of course, they maximize their profits by hiring the cheapest they can get.
At least in STEM, its all about the ability to get grants. A professor who consistently gets grants is worth their weight in gold in "indirect" costs. Foreigner or otherwise
Look at any department. It's rare for all of the professors to get big grants. Usually a substantial fraction are essentially paid by either undergraduate or graduate tuition. In these cases of the non-constellation professors, it's better to get someone who is both good enough and cheap.
While I agree, countries like the US where everyone was pretty much already literate decades ago, can and do backslide into anti-intellectualism even when living standards are rising. I have seen it myself.
Europe had really high literacy long before it reached the living standard of most of current Africa. Living standards do not have to be high for near universal literacy.
Questionable. There is defiantly some connection, but in what direction is open for debate. But its also the case that the Soviet block countries had lots of educated people, but couldn't make the economy work out.
And given for how many years the US has had sub-optimal results in international education comparison, while the overall economy has done well also doesn't fit.
Education is tricky. The wrong education can really stunt your economic competitiveness. I'm sure the Soviet world had plenty of classroom time devoted to the glory of Communism. Each classroom probably had a politruk available to help out.
Too many kids go to other universities and study similar things. It's fine to explore these ideas, but at the end of the day you've got to make someone happy or they won't pay you.
They also had really good maths and other useful things. They actually did what many in the West many wanted. Their education wasn't bad, learning wrong history isn't really that economically relevant.
But yeah, if the economy can't use those people its just not effective.
Learning wrong history can be economically relevant. So much of history is about learning patterns of human behavior. Patterns that often repeat. If you learn wrong or untrue history your understanding of and expectations for human behavior will be incorrect which will certainly cause economic issues.
Maybe if you are in top level government. But for 99% of workers it doesn't matter much.
Also, much of typical school history most people learn is incredibly shallow and the waste majority of people barley remember anything. Research show this pretty clearly. So teaching something wrong, is not gone matter much.
I think that with TikTok and such channels squeezing out the ability to read, the entire humanity is embarking on a massive de-literatization experiment.
That's patently not true. The connection exists only as far as if you're uneducated (and/or have subnormal IQ), you're likely to be poor, I suspect because you're not smart enough to master the basic skills to function in society, so it might be because of the latter.
Outside of the US there are very few countries where being highly educated (as in having an in-demand degree from a prestigious university) nets you anything beyond a small earnings bump over the middle class, and the people who have this are a small elite (no more than a few percent) everywhere.
I think the focus on literacy is laudable. However, as the article points out the wealth isn’t locally generated, it is basically folks going out to gulf states sending back remittances. So while literacy has helped that there is not much to be said for local industry.
I don’t see any startup tech or manufacturing in India falling over themselves to start in Kerala.
In the 1980s, many Keralites were courageous enough to leave the land for better prospects abroad, many in the Middle East and the UK. I remember going to my friends place and find their houses were modern and it was the first time I saw a glass door. Not to mention some of my Keralite friends are the most sincere and hard working and they have risen to very high ranks regardless of their grad scores and academics.
There's a lot of brain drain in Kerala with people getting educated and leaving. Those that leave do, however, send money back to their families and I know many who return to live in India after 5-10 years. This was the case a decade or two ago and I'm not sure if it's still the case.
I had many aunts or uncles who would leave their family behind in India and work in the middle east for many years before returning to India. This practice helped them shore up savings and build houses.
Remittanced only contribute to 15% of GDSP. 65% is from tertiary sectors of IT, Healthcare and Tourism. Kerala gets substantial investments from private companies instead as opposed to large corporations in Gujarat for example. Investments in Kerala rarely grab news headlines as it’s mostly private investments.
The guys I knew from Guatemala doing yardwork/construction in the US had the same setup. They’d sleep in shifts in bunk beds and then go home to their new ranch after a few years.
I have visited this temple. The security inside the premises is handled by regular police, but the temple also has a strict dress code.. so you get to see shirtless men in dhotis carrying badges and pistols in cloth holsters. It's really funny to look at.
> The valuables have been accumulated in the temple over several thousand years, having been donated to the Deity, and subsequently stored in the Temple, by various Dynasties, such as the Cheras, the Pandyas, the Travancore royal family, the Kolathiris, the Pallavas, the Cholas, and many other Kings of both South India and beyond.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Most scholars believe that this was accumulated over thousands of years
Remember that most Roman gold ended up in India. India was the main far East recipient and trading partner of Rome, not China (trade with China was mediated by Indian kingdoms). And that was one empire with which South India traded. It's unfortunate that a lot of narratives about India are driven by the North. The South is way more interesting, in my opinion (I'm biased).
> It's unfortunate that a lot of narratives about India are driven by the North. The South is way more interesting, in my opinion (I'm biased).
It's not from North India though. North India is not on the land-based trade routes between the Middle East and the Far East due to mountains along Myannmar.
It's from Central Asia and the Middle East, who's views are often followed by Indian Muslims for political scoring against Non-Muslims. A lot of the people in Central Asia and the Middle East absolutely hate Indians and South Indians, so they often tend to write narratives that avoid India. So something like discussing direct contact between the Middle East and the Far East but avoiding India. If you want to read about the genuine geopolitics of ancient India then read some historic texts from the Far East.
The idea of there being a strong conflict between the north and the south is something driven by corrupt left wing separatist and regionalist politicians in South India, but most North Indians don't think like that.
I am ethnically Indian but not an Indian citizen. I honestly don't really care about Indian politics or religious factionalism. For me, I find the history of my own family interesting, and don't like how 'india' is presented in history books as primarily the gangetic plain when there are hundreds of millions of Indians in other parts who have a related, but different history.
I mean even customs that are 'Indian' in the diaspora are often north indian customs. It's fine, but it'd be like asking a new Yorker to make southern bbq
It wasn't donated money entirely - at least not in the sense of offerings from regular devotees. They were donations/remittances by the monarchy. The history is that the southern half of Kerala was a kingdom named 'Travancore'. During the establishment of the kingdom, the first king declared himself and his successors to be 'Padmanabhadasa' or 'servants of lord Padmanabha'. Lord Padmanabha is the deity worshiped at this particular temple. The temple was considered as the seat of Travancore's power and therefore a big part of the kingdom's tax revenue ended up there.
There are a lot of royal families still present in India. But they're all in ceremonial roles and have no constitutional roles or powers like the one in Britain enjoys. They mostly live off their estates (similar to the British royals) or business enterprises.
Crime statistics are because Kerala Police isn’t as corrupt and registers more crimes compared to rest of India. It’s a good thing as most crimes goes unreported in India as police are corrupted in rest of India.
The region has remnants of socialist ideas.
The article, however, is indeed a puff piece on the vastly dominant economic theory, which is, as it turns out, not "fresh" at all.
I will say however that I think it's unfair to call professor Roy a neoliberal. Being a neoliberal is merely the expectation for most economic "theorists", but his vocal apologetics for imperalism and colonialism is not.
> Indian Marxists viciously attacked the CEHI, arguing the imperial state's aim was to extract surplus from India, that it withheld the capacity to do good in famines, and deployed the capacity to cause harm at all other times.
> In this void, blog and trade-book writers moved in with a leftist-nationalist political agenda posing as economic history. Most of their claims can be dismissed by subjecting them to the 1980s test: Can economic change be read as an effect of the Empire? The answer remains: No.
This is indeed a very powerful purity test, "Do your claim go against my utterly ahistorical narrative? If not, then I can comfortably dismiss them without addressing them."
> That India's trade surplus meant Britain looted India is bad logic because the surplus did not mean theft but the purchase of services. “Millions of Indians died of policy-induced famines” (Hickel) is bad logic by assuming infinite state capacity was deliberately withheld.
This one is quite rich aswell, it's just blunt unapologetic imperalism denial. It's bad logic because the logic bothers me.
I mean it just goes on and that's just his most recent tweets.
Yep. I lived there for the first two decades, and outside Kerala for the next two and a bit. The only thing Kerala exports is the workforce, since it's impossible to start anything in Kerala thanks to politics and high costs. I know because I've tried. Kerala had historical ties with the Middle East thanks in part to a substantial Muslim population, and the migrant labour force was able to funnel some of Middle Eastern prosperity during the oil boom years back into the state. That is in a nutshell, Kerala's economic story.
Speaking of the left, I remember being next to a protest circa 1990 against ... computers!
Ten years back remittance was 31% of the GDP [1] - a massive number. It might have declined, but the tiny state accounts for 20% of India's inward remittance while holding a mere 3% of the nation's population. Wikipedia says that 3 million people are working abroad (mostly in the middle East), which is like 10 percent of the population (what percentage of the youth will that be?). Also, a very significant number of Malayalees work in neighbouring states - again due to Kerala having no industries.
I don't have numbers for the last ten years, but if remittance has gone down, it is also neck deep in debt. I am in Kerala quite frequently, and can confirm that there are no industries there - except for tourism, and some IT which is relatively miniscule compared to neighbouring states.
It's not clear what you tried to start and absent any other information your personal failure at it isn't a compelling alternative picture of the region's development to me.
I'm sure there are valid other views than the one presented in the article, I'm not saying there aren't. But as someone who doesn't know much about the region, you aren't really giving me more information about it, or giving me any reasons to take your view more seriously than the one presented in the article.
You can completely ignore what I said about my personal experience. The rest of it is still valid, and please read the child comment I posted on the same sub-thread.
Basically, Kerala exports a workforce because it can't produce or export anything else. At roughly a third of the GDP (in 2012 according to Wikipedia), it's a remittance based economy. Someone commented that remittances are a smaller part of the economy of late (and that might well be true), but in the last decade or so Kerala is also heavily in debt.
I think the main point of the opposition argument is that it's Kerala's religious demographics that led the state to be dependent on Middle Eastern remmitence. If you did a demographic survey of South Asians in the Middle East, the vast majority of them would be Muslim. It's a good way to reach a lower middle income level, but it's not achieving the type of growth needed to build industry and service.
"The state has one of the highest concentrations of startups". I laughed out loud at this one. Of all the half-truths peddled in that article, this was easily the most hilarious and egregious.
Whatever it is I am not buying it. Kerala is notoriously an incredibly hard place to do business in, so a line like this needs some real hard stats to back it up.
how -> through Gulf migration remittances fueling private investment (especially in services), enabled by a skilled population and a more market-friendly political environment
"Market-friendly political environment" did not bring the higher HDI that Kerala has now (and still prioritises), even before its economic development started. That was because of its left- (communist / marxist parties) and centre-left public policies. ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309363153_A_Compara... ). As Americans and Europeans today debate about how they can afford to have a family or buy a house, and the rise of right-wing politics due to this, there's something to be said about how bridging income / wealth inequality is important in a society.
Literacy mostly means Reading skills. Goes a long way in a poor country with an abysmal record for primary education. Kerala also has a Higher % of school graduation compared to rest of India.
The definition of literally rate is the ratio of population over 7 that can read, write and do arithmetic and apply it in their lives. These numbers are over inflated tbh because the standards to measure them are pretty debatable. Kerala may have 90% literacy rate, but the average literacy rate of India is supposed to be 80%+.
Vasco da Gama, is credited with discovering a sea route to India by sailing around Africa in 1497-1498, though India was not new to the world, and the people of India were not "discovered" by Europeans. He entered India through Kerala (Calicut).
There's a lot to this article, but one interpretation of it is that it is a story somewhat similar to China's— a history with communism and gradual opening-up to private capital and the global market. In the case of China, capital has entered due to its huge export market. In Kerala there seems to have been an important capital injection from remittances, and a growing tourism industry. The article summarizes it as such:
> In short ways, four forces of change – Kerala’s reintegration with the global economy, remittances from the Persian Gulf, strong welfare policies from a legacy of Leftist government, and private investment from individuals and businesses who shared the remittance flows – have combined to form the structure of Kerala’s miracle of human wellbeing with economic growth.
I don't think they'd call themselves ex-communist. The ruling party is the Communist Party of India.
Also, to be clear, it's a common understanding in Marxism that capitalism is a stage of socialism. The "capitalism and socialism are opposites" rhetoric is too simplistic.
Socialism is different but built upon capitalism, in a similar way, for example, to how electric cars are different but built upon gas cars. Marxism opposes neoliberalism and other forms of governance that leave capitalism unchecked, but doesn't reject everything about capitalism— "just the motor, gas tank, and other harmful parts" you could say.
Paragraph after paragraph restating the question, then:
> In short ways, four forces of change – Kerala’s reintegration with the global economy, remittances from the Persian Gulf, strong welfare policies from a legacy of Leftist government, and private investment from individuals and businesses who shared the remittance flows – have combined to form the structure of Kerala’s miracle of human wellbeing with economic growth.
They went on their own accord. They wouldn't have gone had the opportunity not been large enough. Plenty of people from the West have done the same and continue to do so.
Not the same, but slavery tends to be productive for development. (I reference Indian laborers in UAE whose employers confiscate their passports. Yes they are paid, but they are not free or well treated.)
> Hundreds of thousands of people migrated to the Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar to work in construction, retail and services, sectors that saw a massive investment boom following the two oil shocks of 1973 and 1979.
> The demand for skilled workers increased as the Gulf economies diversified from oil-based jobs to finance and business services. While offering jobs in the millions, the migration also had a series of broad effects back home on occupational diversification, skill accumulation, changing gender roles, consumption, economic and social mobility, and demographic transitions.
It looks like there they were employed across the value chain and the peninsula, some (many?) of which I do not think typically practices modern-day slavery.
Not sure about Bihar, but talent / labor export isn't just a Kerala thing. Having a network does help - makes it easy to find a job, find people to live with that speak the same language, help in difficult times etc.
That's the same as asking "if Singapore can achieve near-zero levels of crime, why can't Brazil do it too?" i.e. a nonsensical question. The culture is different, the people are different and the mindsets are different.
India has a vast variation of cultures. A few states in India look like they are quite detached from mainstream India, in terms of issues, economy, norms, politics etc. This is true for north-eastern states as well and probably J&K too. It's like a colorful patch-work of different cultures.
However, there is nothing good or bad with these variations. Tourism also adds to its economy. Higher per-capita doesn't always mean a good thing. Sometimes it comes at a cost of family separation etc. Kerala is also known for high levels of alcoholic consumption and unhappiness rates.
> Fifty years ago it was one of India’s poorest states
Yea that is a absolutely wrong. A state that had the highest literacy rate at independence will unsurprisingly remain at the higher end of developmental rankings..
In the 1970s Kerala was already comparable to Indian states from a human development and economic standpoint because of a strong shipbuilding and cooperative agricultural program (same with then undivided Punjab) [0] and by 1990 had developmental indicators comparable to Delhi NCR.
Instead, we should look at states that were historically more undeveloped than Kerala but are now within range of Kerala.
As such, a better rags to riches model to dig into is Tamil Nadu [1] or Haryana [2] - both were on the lower end of India's HDI rankings in 1990, and now outperform most states and lead India in GDP per Capita as well.
Himachal Pradesh [3] and Jammu Kashmir [4][5] are two others to also look at, as they are historically undeveloped agrarian Himalayan border states with laggard developmental indicators that used land reform, cooperative agribusiness, mass rural education drives, and specialized manufacturing (Pharma in Himachal, Food Processing in Jammu) to have high HDIs.
As per your 1st document (page 15). Kerala has risen from 84.6 to 152 (~80%) while Haryana from 106.9 to 176.8 (~65%) in addition to the fact that most of the Haryana's growth has come from being in proximity of New Delhi. Same for Tamil Nadu (56%).
If you look at the results of India's National Human Development Report from 1981, Kerala was already further ahead of any other state [0][1]. And the report I listed did not have data on half of the states that existed in India in 1980.
> most of the Haryana's growth has come from being in proximity of New Delhi
Not really.
Delhi NCR de-industrialized in the 1970s-80s due to militant labor unionism [2]
Furthermore, much of Haryana's population lives well outside of what became Delhi NCR, and urbanization only began in the 1980s with the development of SEZs in Manesar, Faridabad, and Gurgaon.
> Same for Tamil Nadu (56%).
Tamil Nadu shared similar developmental metrics to Haryana in the 1981 NHDR, neighbored a state in an active civil war that often leaked into the state (Sri Lanka / LTTE), and had severe caste fractures.
Hopefully Uttarakhand can follow Himachal Pradesh, but it is ravaged by national parties as of now, best case scenario, the new youth leadership of UKD actually wins and does some work
Uttarakhand will not develop unless there are incentives to invest outside of Dehradun.
HP doesn't have a "Dehradun", which means local netas have an incentive to invest in their zilla instead of hoarding cash and real estate in a major hub. Thus, Himachal benefited from a Pharma and Food Processing industrial policy in the 1990s-2000s that industrialized the rural area around Baddi and Una, and a lot of other smaller food processing and light manufacturing industries across lower Himachal.
Also, Uttarakhand has too few MLAs for the size of population. UK has 70 MLAs but 10 million people, but HP has 68 MLAs with 6.5 million people. This means UK MLAs are much more divorced from local panchayats compared to in HP.
There is a good case study about this at Harvard Business School [0]
Agree on the point of Dehradun, as for the number of MLA's, that is due to the growing concerns of the native Pahadi population. The plain regions of Uttarakhand have been settled by desi people in recent decades and due to the difference in population density and fertility rates, their population is growing more and more. Now the Pahadi people have genuine concerns that everything they fought for during the Uttarakhand Movement will go to waste. And this is already happening, the finance minister of Uttarakhand abused pahadi people in the Vidhan Sabha, thankfully due to many protests, he has resigned. But if plain regions get majority seats, it would give approx 18% of UK the right to govern the entire region!
Also, not hating on the Kerala model - every state in India is now in the position where they can take advantage of it.
But I do not think it's replicable in most other LDCs due to historical quirks.
Like, Malawi, Guinea, or Afghanistan can't use much of the "Kerala Model" to succeed, as India was unique in that it was subsidizing the UAE's economy with the "Gulf Rupee" [0] (maybe Cambodia/Laos thanks to Thailand, but it ain't a great reason why IYKYK)
The dominant majority of Keralite youth that can, still emigrates to other states and countries. I have come across hundreds of Malayalis outside of Kerala who talk fondly of their homes, but refuse to admit there being any scope of nontrivial academic or professional growth within the state.
On the other hand.. yes, Kerala is very beautiful in many ways. I wish I was born there because it's nigh impossible to settle in permanently otherwise.
My great-grandparents were landowners in Kollengode, a village on the foothills of the Western Ghats. They operated on a system of sharecropping, which the Communist party took away (along with their land) in the 1970s for redistribution. While this eliminated much of our family wealth, most of the next generation family members weren't disturbed by it because they were proud of Kerala's reputation of having the highest literacy rates and human development standards in India due to these reforms.
Many people think of North Indians as the de-facto "business" class in India, but Kerala's long history of international trade has given its posterity a rich history of merchant knowledge. My parents started a technology company in Kerala and have seen the Communist party swing from traditional land and educational reforms to private market support. This in large part due to remittances from the Middle East fueling the state economy.
The ecological risks from climate change (e.x. the mass flooding that occurred in the past several years) is a real risk that claimed the lives of several employees at my parent's company. Kerala is posed to become the biggest success story out of India, but it needs to remain vigilant in investing in private markets and infrastructure projects to address these risks and maintain sustainable growth.
> Many people think of North Indians as the de-facto "business" class in India,
It's not "North Indians" that people think of but rather "West Indians". Virtually all of the states along the western coast of India can claim to be merchant class because they were trading with places like Europe, Central Asia and the MIddle East.
The majority of trade with East Asia seems to have been done by those on the east coast, notably Telegu, Tamils and the Sri Lankans. There are mountains in the way for substanial land-based trade between Myanmar and China, but I assume that Nepalis/Myanmar/Tibetans also had a role in connecting India and East Asia. Interestingly India has much for cultural and social synergy with East Asia despite this.
Kerala has extremely aggressive out-migration (including my entire family): it is a bad place to be ambitious, particularly with the France-like union culture. If India is to become China-rich or Mexico-rich, my prediction is Kerala will regress to the mean of India states. Its model seems geared towards being an extremely good place to be poor (which is a huge achievement to be clear: they dealt with COVID better than the US, universal literacy is amazing etc) but not towards getting richer.
I'm curious, how does their "aggressive out-migration" play out? Extremely high, progressive tax system? No funding infrastructure for new business? I can imagine many ways but my thoughts lean toward financial reasons due to your last sentence.
Inability to build a business easily nor allow others to build one. The union culture is way too strong. There is a joke that the Kerala model of development requires a rich oil state nearby.
Ambitious Keralites move out of the state to set up businesses. The ones who remain usually get rich through a mix of unethical businesses, political party connections and corruption, or the gold and money-lending businesses (which were inherently shady). Keralites are either highly ambitious, in which case they go to more welcoming cities such as Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai, or extremely lazy, in which case they stay at home and abuse the welfare state. The welfare state is so abused by lazy government employees who will do anything to block you from setting up your business. And if it isn't them stopping you, it's the pesky political parties who will send their goons after you to charge for every task.
For instance, the richest Keralite, Yussufali MA, made his fortune in the Middle East. His sons-in-law, both billionaires, as well as KP Basheer, Ravi Pillai, PMC Menon and Mohammed Ali of Gulfar made their fortune in the Middle East, all of whom are silent billionaires even most Indians barely know of. Vivek Ramaswamy's parents were from Kerala too, as is Thomas Kurian (head of GCP).
If you look at the West, Keralites are increasingly taking spots in the medical and healthcare sectors, especially nursing, and now even the education sector. There are Keralite teachers in the oilfields of Midland, Texas, because most people are otherwise not ready to work there. Some of my neighbours relatives from back home were even working in Afghanistan for the USG, making bank for working in a warzone. The only groups that are more or equally as prominent as Keralites worldwide might be the Gujaratis (the Patel motel guys and diamond merchants) and the Jews.
Honestly, reading this article, it's not making Kerala-style communism sound bad. What's more, they appear to have pivoted when they'd achieved their aims into making people richer. It's a classic "invest, then profit" story, only for an entire state.
The article is co-written by a member of Kerala's Planning Board and heavily oversells the state. I'd say Kerala is nowhere near rich so even the title is technically incorrect.
When COVID was spreading around china the state govt was putting out public announcements about this disease and what symptoms to watch out for. I remember that even in the month of Feb 2020 there were public announcements in train stations. There is a lot of emphasis on education and health in the state. Granted it may not be rich as other states but it leads other states in a lot of other markers
That may be but the topic of the thread is how rich Kerala supposedly is, not how super awesome their public train announcements are. The claim is not just false, the article is outright propaganda given how one of the co-authors works for the state government.
I guess my main point is that a communist type govt was not exclusively bad for Kerala since they took a lot of effort to improve education and public health.
You can look at other sources to see how good kerala is doing wrt other states but I do agree the article over emphasised the good parts without any hint to it's bad parts
To put this in context, during Covid, hundreds of bodies were being dumped in the Ganges river, buried in shallow graves on the sandbars in states like Uttar Pradesh. The state govt took an active role to remove the grave markers so that an accurate estimate of the numbers could not be ascertained. These were covered by local bloggers, vloggers and news channels.
Kerala is one of the few states that managed medical supplies of Oxygen pretty well. In many other states many died because hospitals ran out of it.
In India atleast, 'communism' or 'Marxism' in the names of political parties that actually run a state is just a name that has stuck. These entities and people have to be a lot more pragmatic. This is in contrast to those who are arm chair think tanks that you would find in advisory boards, universities etc. These would be people who do not run for elections.
Now, as for Kerala's handling of Covid, that was funded by state govt coffers. So Middle East money had a negligible contribution. What made a difference though is a history of preference for investing in social safety nets and basic infrastructure for people, such as schools, nutrition, hospitals.
What really happened was that the health authorities in Kerala were prepared for an outbreak because Kerala has had a history of past outbreaks and a health system with very well trained doctors and health professionals to handle it. See the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala that was handled really well, there was even a popular movie about it (Virus) that came out the year after.
It's the same story in east Asian countries where they had the SARS outbreak in early 2000s and so they were prepared for new outbreaks.
To be clear I'm not saying Kerala is particularly bad by regional standards, it's not. But compare Kerala and India as a whole with other parts of Asia, they're not doing well. Look at China vs India in the 1970s vs 50 years later. Compare India/Kerala and Thailand in the same time frame. Kerala and Korea, etc etc. South Asia as a whole is doing worse than many other parts of Asia. Kerala government excels at what many socialist governments are good at: Praising themselves. In reality is has made little difference.
India has a lot of other issues, I grant you that the socialist ideology probably had a positive influence in some ways other than economics, particularly socially. But no offense, if you've ever walked the streets Trivandrum and other cities you know there are much more pressing issues.
Socialism with Kerala characteristics? I'm a bit skeptical of that, people often point to the Scandinavian model as especially successful but when you look into the data, that actually combines redistribution (funded by higher taxes) with a lot of economic freedom and a light-touch attitude from government that are all ideologically counter to "communism" or "socialism" of any kind.
This is a no true Scotsman argument. If you define socialism as purely being policies that don't work, of course socialism doesn't work. If you accept that you can stick to your principles whilst being flexible about the implementation strategy, socialism seems to work out pretty well in some places.
That's how "communism" is in India. Two states (West Bengal and Kerala) are run by "Communist" parties. But these parties are quite different from what people typically mean by "Communists".
Have you read the Communist Manifesto? It also makes Communism sound like a good idea. Nevermind that Kerala doesn't have a particularly high GDP per capita even by southern Indian standards. It's not rich by any rational measure, not in median income or otherwise. There is a lot of poverty, slightly better compared to some of the northern states but then South India in general does a bit better than the north so there isn't anything particularly noteworthy.
Btw, for some historic context this part of India used to be extremely rich in the past by global standards, centuries ago. They became rich with international trade. Modern India is nowhere close to its wealthy past, the subcontinent as a whole produced the largest percentage of the world's GDP during Late Antiquity, surpassing China and all others!
Portugal also has a similarly active communist party. I think what distinguishes Portugal and Kerala's communist parties from other communist parties is that they were (and are) first, and foremost, democrats.
A capitalist dictatorship will be every bit as horrible as a communist dictatorship.
Actually, when literal communists run your government, you become China-rich, as OP put it. Contrast China's economic development with that of India's post 1950.
Haiti is capitalist but people don't use it an example for capitalism as a whole. More important than a stated ideology is whether a government is corrupt
It's only fair to compare them to other victims of unprovoked Western aggression, like Libya. In that arena, they are actually doing relatively well, and imagine how successful they could be without the "global policeman's" boot on their neck.
Compare the policies and results of Deng to Mao, the latter is more "literally communist." Their embracing of capitalist principles is what enabled their boom, same with Vietnam with their Đổi Mới policies.
Deng famously said "white cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice it's a good cat". His policy choices were not driven by 'embracing' of any principles but pure pragmatism.
"Capitalism" is a very confusing word that should be avoided in a serious discussion one way or the other, society is a lot more complex than that. For instance "crony capitalism" is also seemingly capitalism but is directly opposed to the broad principles of a market economy that people think of as good.
"Crony Capitalism" is just a term socialists came up with to shit on capitalism. The reality is every society is going to have some amount of corruption and cronyism. But "Crony Capitalism" isn't an actual coherent concepts, it doesn't have 'principles', its just highlighting something negative that happens in countries, including capitalist ones.
Socialists love to add some negative word 'X' to capitalism to highlight that all bad things in the world are connected to capitalism, and if they could finally defeat capitalism, then the world would be perfect. Instead of actually trying to fix 'X' they will tell you that what we really need to change is 'capitalism'. Surveillance Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Disaster Capitalism and so on.
Trying to fix corruption, to hard, lets just destroy property rights and money instead. Great idea!
Let me give you a tool for your mental toolkit. When you find yourself saying this:
> <some group> loves to
...it's a smell. What follows may be perfectly reasonable, but in my experience it's more commonly unexamined twaddle.
If you happen to be American, see where you get with these:
- many Americans fetishise America
- J Edgar Hoover spent 20 years programming Americans to consider socialism to be "un-American"
In this case, I think a little reflection would reveal a J Edgar Hoover homonculus in your head, pulling your levers.
I'm all for emotional arguments. Ultimately, we all have core values, and I like to lead an argument by stating mine.
But hating socialism isn't a core value, it's _at best_ a reaction. Which is to say, if you're from, ooh, Bulgaria or Cuba, then I can indulge you. You may not be logical but you do have cause.
If you merely have a little J Edgar Hoover homonculus in your head, pulling your levers, then refrain from posting, because a J Edgar Hoover homonculus is not an interesting conversationalist.
Just like anything else that can't be back up with solid empirical research in a discussion forum. With is 99% of what we are dissing. (And most books written by intellectuals of both the socialist and capitalist variety).
Communism is originally a utopian social movement, and there is a strong tendency and a very well document intellectual history of communism that asserts that pretty much most problems at its root are an issue with capitalism and that they can only be solved in the absence of capitalism. So much so that it was pretty normal for communist to oppose working with social democrats on any reform of existing systems.
> Americans to consider socialism to be "un-American"
I'm not american and I couldn't care less if something is 'American' or not. And I have no idea what 'americanness' has to do with our discussion. So far as I can tell, nothing what so ever. And I don't hate 'socialism' either.
> But hating socialism isn't a core value, it's _at best_ a reaction. Which is to say, if you're from, ooh, Bulgaria or Cuba, then I can indulge you. You may not be logical but you do have cause.
So unless you are the victim of rape, being against rapist isn't a 'core value'? That's a outright crazy line of argument.
P.S: I really think you are waste overestimate the importance of Hoover.
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
He can say whatever he likes, but in reality, what he did is literally throw in the garbage the complete intellectual baggage of the European socialist/communist movement and basically copied what Western allied South East Asian nations were already doing.
If it makes him feel good not to call that 'capitalism' then that's fine. I guess it wouldn't have played well with the base back then.
But in reality and operations, its is how capitalism has worked in practice.
The state that one-sidedly 'threw away' the baggage of communism was the USSR, and we all know how that went. Any China scholar could tell you that China was already implementing market reforms before Deng, and that their controlled transition, managed by a strong party-state, is the grounds for their success. China is still a country operated on the basis of five-year plans. China is still a country governed by a Communist party adhering to democratic centralism. China is still a country where the state owns all land. China is still a country where capital is not allowed to usurp the public interest. And the judge of that is not any logical syllogism of 'definitions' of capitalism or socialism that exist in your head but do not premise the actual world. It is outcomes, observations of material reality. In this, the reforms of Deng and the continued path of Xi are simply the highest synthesis of communism, in the Chinese context. They are the most faithful to Marxism, which has never preached any kind of static dogma, especially as it relates to economic policy.
> The state that one-sidedly 'threw away' the baggage of communism was the USSR, and we all know how that went.
That's not actually what happened, you should look up some history.
The USSR didn't throw away, communism, the member states just simply left.
And many of those states were then free of the communist party actually did quite well. Russia didn't, Ukraine didn't, but that's the reality when a country splits apart, some parts do well others don't.
> Any China scholar could tell you that China was already implementing market reforms before Deng
Part of it wasn't even voluntary on the party front, they simply accepted what was already happening instead of reversing it again.
> China is still a country operated on the basis of five-year plans.
hose plans are mostly projects of what they hope they can encourage private business to do and some public investment. Guess what many countries do, planning and public investment.
Lots of things they plan don't happen, lots of things that happen aren't planned. The planning is constantly adjust to what actually happens in the economy, including the global context.
> China is still a country where the state owns all land.
Legally maybe, but if you hand out control for 100 years the relevance of that isn't all that great. And that land can be freely traded between people. So in practical terms it works far more like private land ownership then anything the socialist thinkers of the late 19 and early 20th century.
> China is still a country where capital is not allowed to usurp the public interest.
That is just factually false, large companies in China regularly do things that hurt public interest. Unless you mean 'interest of the party leadership' and even then its only mostly true.
> In this, the reforms of Deng and the continued path of Xi are simply the highest synthesis of communism
Lol, they literally copied other East Asian economic models almost 1 to 1. They are just a log bigger and have more people. But I guess copying other successful clearly capitalist countries can be resold as 'highest synthesis of communism' to people who have irrational hate for capitalism.
And China economic growth or wealth isn't all that magically, its simply that China is much bigger then most others who have done it.
> They are the most faithful to Marxism, which has never preached any kind of static dogma, especially as it relates to economic policy.
I love Marxism, since he didn't actually define any outcome beyond maybe 'stateless and moneyless' you can just make up whatever the fuck you want as long as you are claiming to 'get there'. And China doesn't seem to go into a stateless moneyless direction.
Marx's "Historical materialism" is wrong for Western Europe and laudably false for China.
His critic of capitalism seems to be mostly ignored in China. As is his theory of class struggle as in China there is an ever growing Bourgeoisie.
But I guess copying what Taiwan and friends did and calling it 'Marxism' is one way to go.
It is the Communists who are flexible and pragmatic. It is the Communists who can free the market. It is capitalists who shoot themselves in the foot over pride in 'principles' and 'ideals', a great irony when no country on this earth today is 'purely' capitalist. They misunderstand Marxism, which is the doctrine that capitalism itself is revolutionary as it develops into its own opposite, that communism and capitalism are two stages of the same course of development.
Typically "a bad place to be ambitious" implies that others will try to exploit you instead. Keep in mind that a mismanaged government can be a lot more predatory than any private actor.
> Keep in mind that a mismanaged government can be a lot more predatory than any private actor.
What's the basis for this claim? What is a "mismanaged government" but one that is controlled by narrow private interests? Or is this coming from a "all tax is exploitation" angle?
Is there a government that's not ultimately controlled by narrow private interests? A well-managed government is merely one where inbuilt norms and traditions (including the Western traditions of constitutional human rights and separation of powers, but not only!) manage to limit the extent to which the narrow private interest of government actors can lead to predatory exploitation of the broader public.
> including the Western traditions of constitutional human rights
I never really got why the west is so proud of not establishing basic rights of access to food, shelter, healthcare, and education. I don't quite understand the point of them otherwise.
I noticed this in Taiwan between 2018-2020 when I was staying there. A highly educated population but with little to no opportunities. Most of very ambitious talent found jobs in China or Singapore.
A strong business environment, or strong investment opportunities, or a large consumer base is very much needed to have attractive jobs. A strongly educated workforce does little to enable such an environment. Intuitively, it is just very hard to make money off of a small, low income population, and it is even harder to export services built for a local market to a non local market. So the ambitious talent just find opportunities elsewhere.
It also depends how hard it is to migrate out of the region. If there are strong family ties and good standard of living, you'd be surprised at how much talent is willing to stay.
Interestingly enough, Taiwan in 2024/2025 has seen huge growth in wages, for many reasons, but the biggest IMO being the highly educated workforce.
Interesting view of Taiwan. What is the Taiwanese view of China. Do a lot not mind migrating to China or do they hate China, and want to be independent?
I think its just perception. A place that is smaller will appear to have more movement because its across country, while in China or the US you would just move internally. Taiwan had amazing economic growth for 50+ years.
The reality is that in all places the most ambitious people are likely going to move, as such talents usually depend on specific environments.
And with things like TSMC in Taiwan, claiming anything close to 'no opportunities' is a bit ridiculous.
I worked in a recruitment company in SEA for software devs and management/exec layers.
Just sharing my perspective, Taiwan's Software Devs were paid 1/3 of what devs in SG or HK are paid, the biggest reason being there aren't any software companies headquartered in Taiwan that are big/growing fast enough to offer competitive salaries to SG / HK. In SG/HK you have banks, hedgefunds and tech companies all competing for talent—Grab, Amazon, Google, Shopee, DBS, HSBC, etc, pushing up prices to be competitive globally. Taiwan's local companies have to make enough money to pay global salaries for strong talent, or they just get their best talent poached by SG/HK or China (which has plenty of strong tech giants of their own).
But... a tiny 23 million population island where the average wage is low and people are generally happy and content... is not a great business environment for startups. I think some local startups saturated the Taiwan market with like 70% of the island's population in their database... and like $2-5m US revenue/yr? Great achievement but not a large base for continued rev growth.
As a Taiwanese company, you are not winning against bigger tech companies in China. Neither are you building for english speaking audiences of SEA because Taiwan's english is not native... in short, the local market conditions is just unable to pay for global level talent, who leave.
This is a software dev focused view of Taiwan, but it applies to all or most other industries not named TSMC.
The article specifically talks about how Kerala has some of the highest concentrations of startups in India.
Also, the Communist party in power has not stopped themselves from adapting to the new times and dumping older views.
The most recent Econ Nobel showed how institutions create wealthy nations, and Kerala is building those.
Perhaps the statement “not a place to be ambitious” can be seen in a narrower sense, while seeing that it leaves much more space for the median individual.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 284 ms ] threadOne thing I found interesting was the pride in literacy and education. Kerala has a 96% literacy rate which is the highest in India [1].
It's one of my favorite places to visit. Unlike other parts of India such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderbad -- it's tropical and lush with much less pollution than what you might see in those other parts of India.
My parents have a home in a rural community which hasn't changed much in the past few decades compared to somewhere like Bengaluru. It's quiet and slow with a high important on family relationships. No doubt it's westernizing, albeit slower than other parts of India - but for now it still holds much of the charm I've known since I was a kid.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
Somewhat ironically these are relatively low pollution as large cities in India go. There is still a good amount of greenery in Bengaluru (it is famous for it) but obviously far less than a few decades ago, as many residents lament.
For outsiders not in the know, Bangalore was famous for its beautiful lakes and the lush greenery around them. It was absolutely something else, finding these beautiful water bodies smack in the middle of what is supposed to be a major city. The weather was cool, almost like a warm European summer (which is extremely cool by Indian standards).
Then they got greedy, drained the lakes, built real estate and office properties on them and now Bangalore is an unbearable cesspit just like any other Indian city. Bad weather, bad traffic and a shit scenery.
I still have some photos of my visits to Bangalore in my childhood a couple of decades back, and the visual contrast between past and present is so stark. Of course, locals love to resent the regression of the city, but they also love their coin.
To be honest, my only relatively poor experience in Bombay in terms of scenery was in the Four Seasons hotel in Worli, when I could get a nice view of couples going at it on the rooftops of the chawl nearby, somehow appropriately from my bathroom window.
Delhi does have its own charms too. Assuming you're a strong enough male, it's worth exploring South Delhi on foot solo over autumns, winters and spring, just immersing in the city. Obviously face mask recommended and not recommended for ladies.
It became India's Silicon Valley. Acecnture. Infosys. Western IT money came pouring in and never stopped.
https://www.businessinsider.com/india-silicon-valley-bengalu...
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/10672gn/til_before...
I also think that there's a strong overcurrent of people wanting to emulate US living standards in a city that's simply designed for a different way of living, more similar to other dense cities in East Asia or maybe even Europe. You need to have skyscrapers and not large low rise estates for example.
hope indian government turn around, because china back then has a smoke problem even in its capital too
its hard to fought stigma but its not impossible
> much less pollution
Comparatively? Perhaps. One look at the Vembanad Lake and you'll know what I'm talking about: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Kochi/high-levels-of-fa... It stinks these days.
> Kerala has a 96% literacy rate
Lieracy surveys aren't as rigorous; likely 5% to 20% drop from reported numbers: https://www.dataforindia.com/measuring-literacy/
> still holds much of the charm
As someone who visited Kerala multiple times a year, things have gotten worse both climate wise & pollution wise. Though, the monsoon gods still bless Kerala, it isn't as green as it used to be. I've found (under similar climatic conditions) the Sri Lankan lowlands (West coast) to be more greener. Ditto for rainforests of NE India & SE Asia.
This is very well studied in sociology and anthropology and has been for many decades. Kerala is a major case study in many fields because of this.
In addition, other states got very close to that literacy rate, but are probably managed quite differently to Kerala. Worth considering if people want to try to replicate Kerala's efforts without considering the wider context
> Education in Kerala has deep historical roots, dating back to the rule of local dynasties and the influence of colonial missionaries. The rulers of Travancore and Cochin played a crucial role in establishing schools and promoting learning, especially among marginalized communities. The British and Christian missionaries also made significant contributions by setting up institutions that emphasized modern education.
> In 1817, the Travancore government issued a royal decree stating that education should be provided to all, including women and lower castes. By the early 20th century, Kerala had already built a strong foundation for literacy, ensuring that access to education was widespread.
https://livekerala.com/blog/how-kerala-became-indias-most-li...
Also, since the mid 60s pop culture has embraced the slacker as being hip and cool.
They guy and gal trying to get ahead are portrayed as greedy or at best blindly joining a rat-race forgoing more noble pursuits. Not so for many other cultures.
I think the same it true for most of Latin america, where many of my friends and colleagues are from. And when I was in Nepal they thought that, if anything, western people are way too much focused on gathering wealth.
Islam specifically rejects hoarding wealth, so I think that pretty much takes out most of the middle east and northern africa.
So I'm curious which other cultures you are referring to. Perhaps specifically Indian and Chinese culture?
Full disclosure, I worked in Dubai for 2 years(as a disenfranchised expat), working closely with guys from above mentioned countries. I install heavy machinery.
It's true some are treated poorly, but most are there genuinely there out of free will, because they make buckets of money to send back home. One Pakistani foreman I worked with had stashed away 250k Dirhams and was going back home to start his own business.
The gulf states can/could be an opportunity for the poor, see Bin Laden family for a famous example.
More than criticizing the gulf states for using these people as cheap labor, the criticism should be aimed at their corrupt governments not giving opportunities to their own population. Ironically they are not even allowed inside Europe and the US.
FWIW my experience in Dubai changed my views on the region to a much more nuanced one.
The Gulf countries became wealthy because of oil. They don't really hoard that wealth though. They are pretty famous around the world for investing that money, no? They fund universities (with many Gulf countries having their own outpost of NYU or other such prestigious colleges), arts and arts museums (there is a Louvre in the Middle East), tech startups, and of course invest in tourism to diversify their country.
They also have many horrible qualities, which are 100% not condoned in Islam like employing slaves in deadly conditions even though all nations agreed to abolish slavery years ago. Or confiscating the passports of foreign workers. Or their ethnostate mentality (similar to Israel where citizens must be of a specific blood lineage even though the majority of people living in their nation are not of that lineage). I could go on and on.
Anyways, Tl;Dr, I don't think they really hoard wealth. They do spend and invest in the world around them and find lots of charitable things (they have rebuilt Palestine a few times now, a very costly endeavor). Also, being Muslim doesn't mean they don't do anything morally wrong by that religion's standard. Same as the many charlatan "priests" of various religions in the world.
Like many religion it emphasises the importance of being good, and doing good, to enjoy the rewards of that in the after life (i.e. it teaches delayed gratification). But it also recognizes that advocating its adherent to forego all wordly attachment and live like a saint is also not practical for society. Thus, it also pragmatically says that a muslims doesn't have to wait for the afterlife to enjoy the rewards of good deeds - God has given humans the ability to enjoy certain pleasures in life, and achieve a higher sense of spiritual enlightenment, and that too depends on the good deeds you do in this life:
Islamic scholars interpret this as a promise from God to the Children of Adam, who do righteous deeds - deeds in accordance with the Book of God and the teachings of His Prophet, with a heart that believes in God and His Messenger. God promises that He will give them a good life in this world and that He will reward them according to the best of their deeds in the Hereafter. Some scholars say this means a life with feelings of tranquillity in all aspects of life, while some suggest it means contentment and / or happiness in this life.More here: https://islamqa.info/en/answers/12702/is-there-reward-for-go...
That is why no muslim needs to feel guilty about the wealth they have inherited or earned provided it is done through honest means, without hurting others, and they also follow the Islamic obligations of Zakat (charity). This charity is how socialism works in Islam. Islam says that the wealth of the world doesn't belong to anyone but God. And wealthy muslims (and rulers) are just custodians of his wealth. And God commands the wealthy to share their wealth with the poor, and prescribes how this should be done (annually 2.5% of your wealth should be given to the poor and needy). Even here, Islam is very practical - it recognizes how human nature is often suspicious of helping strangers, and thus says to look for people within your own family, your own friends, your own neighbourhood, your own muslim community etc. (i.e. your own social circles) to do this kind of charity.
More on this: https://thequranrecital.com/zakat-obligatory-charity-explain...
And this kind of wealth creation, with charity, is seen in the middle-east, amongst all these middle-eastern countries you mentioned.
Interestingly enough the same forces are at work in kerala, which is one of the most Christian states in India (and the ruling communists are associated with them)
Prior to the mid 60s seeking betterment and wealth was one of the main reasons people migrated to the US replacing religious persecution back home as the main reason to come.
Kerala did not become wealthy from socialism, it became literate and land reform lifted many out of poverty. The actual wealth started accumulating when Keralites took advantage of opportunities to work abroad and send remittances home. That has been a major economic driver for the state and India as a whole, but they did it long before others did, largely because land reform gave people a safety net to fall back on so they could risk going abroad to earn more
I would suggest God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican as for a pop-culture introduction of how the Catholic church aligned itself with fascist states including Mussolini's PNF, the Nazis and the Ustaše.
The Ustaše were particularly closely associated with the Catholic church.
India is so far removed from Europe that things work a bit differently.
The keralites were not communist the way European countries were
If you ask me about communism, I would say its effects were kind of bad - overseas remittence came in as gulf nations flourished but for others from 60s till end of 90's economic opportunities were bleak. It came in power around 1956 in Kerala and a lot of privileged christians migrated to US in the following decades - with the christian cultural background they have, they integrated really well in that society.
Secondly, Catholics are often setting up schools for everyone. India has always had a history of education, especially Kerala, but universal education of even the lower classes is extremely protestant. The church ended up adopting this around the time colonialism started and thus brought universal education to a widespread base in India.
Finally, the idea of touching everyone and treating them equally was against the general zeitgeist of the prevailing feudalistic highly hierarchical indian society. The first conversion attempts of the Portuguese for the south indian brahmins actually were incredibly successful (Nicholas of Tolentino). The Vatican even allows (and still allows as far as I'm aware, although no one does it) vedic rites for Catholics (malabar rites controversy).
However, no one wanted to give up untouchability. The Vatican eventually forced the missionaries to not have separate missions for touchables and untouchables, which basically ended Brahmanic conversions (and is one of the reasons indian Catholics no longer really care to do the vedic rites, since most are now from the lower class. As far as I know, some still do in Mangalore). Caste is still a problem in some christian communities in India but the bishops work to end it and it is officially condemned.
Which is to say, catholicism is associated with labor movement, equal social treatment, and universal education.
Which is also what the communists want.
It's no surprise that Kerala, being way more christian (and Catholic particularly) with a rich and prominent Christian history is thus the center of socialism.
Keep in mind also that communism in feudal countries has basically no relation to the communism you find on university campuses of america.
Now to the west. In the west, the church is seen as conservative, but the church is actually radically left wing in most parts of the world. It's only because leftism (in a global sense) is fundamentally a part of western culture that the church seems right wing because the church does not go as far as some leftist parties in the west.
1. Secondary and tertiary education is not all there is to education. A self-learned software engineer might lack a capital-E education, but has still spent significant time and effort on learning.
2. Education is one of many aspects of a successful life, at least as important is conscientiousness, diligence, intelligence and luck.
3. The US benefits from many virtuous cycles. In regards to the labor force it is able to attract a lot of the best talent in the world.
Given the current political climate in the US, it seems prudent to point out that point 3 isn't just true for business-men, doctors and other nerds, undocumented immigrants are some of the hardest-working people out there. They contribute almost 100b in taxes alone, and get almost no services in return.
More relevant would be K-12
At least in STEM, its all about the ability to get grants. A professor who consistently gets grants is worth their weight in gold in "indirect" costs. Foreigner or otherwise
And given for how many years the US has had sub-optimal results in international education comparison, while the overall economy has done well also doesn't fit.
Too many kids go to other universities and study similar things. It's fine to explore these ideas, but at the end of the day you've got to make someone happy or they won't pay you.
But yeah, if the economy can't use those people its just not effective.
Also, much of typical school history most people learn is incredibly shallow and the waste majority of people barley remember anything. Research show this pretty clearly. So teaching something wrong, is not gone matter much.
(Fun SNL video with similar confusion: https://youtu.be/8h_N80qKYOM)
Outside of the US there are very few countries where being highly educated (as in having an in-demand degree from a prestigious university) nets you anything beyond a small earnings bump over the middle class, and the people who have this are a small elite (no more than a few percent) everywhere.
I don’t see any startup tech or manufacturing in India falling over themselves to start in Kerala.
I had many aunts or uncles who would leave their family behind in India and work in the middle east for many years before returning to India. This practice helped them shore up savings and build houses.
> The valuables have been accumulated in the temple over several thousand years, having been donated to the Deity, and subsequently stored in the Temple, by various Dynasties, such as the Cheras, the Pandyas, the Travancore royal family, the Kolathiris, the Pallavas, the Cholas, and many other Kings of both South India and beyond.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Most scholars believe that this was accumulated over thousands of years
Remember that most Roman gold ended up in India. India was the main far East recipient and trading partner of Rome, not China (trade with China was mediated by Indian kingdoms). And that was one empire with which South India traded. It's unfortunate that a lot of narratives about India are driven by the North. The South is way more interesting, in my opinion (I'm biased).
It's not from North India though. North India is not on the land-based trade routes between the Middle East and the Far East due to mountains along Myannmar.
It's from Central Asia and the Middle East, who's views are often followed by Indian Muslims for political scoring against Non-Muslims. A lot of the people in Central Asia and the Middle East absolutely hate Indians and South Indians, so they often tend to write narratives that avoid India. So something like discussing direct contact between the Middle East and the Far East but avoiding India. If you want to read about the genuine geopolitics of ancient India then read some historic texts from the Far East.
The idea of there being a strong conflict between the north and the south is something driven by corrupt left wing separatist and regionalist politicians in South India, but most North Indians don't think like that.
I mean even customs that are 'Indian' in the diaspora are often north indian customs. It's fine, but it'd be like asking a new Yorker to make southern bbq
Unemployment is at 40%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_Kerala
Kerala is in the grip of a surging drug crisis https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/kerala-is-in...
Kerala rooting on central govt to solve state's Rs 26,000 crore monthly expenditure crisis https://keralakaumudi.com/en/news/news.php?id=1498119&u=kera...
I will say however that I think it's unfair to call professor Roy a neoliberal. Being a neoliberal is merely the expectation for most economic "theorists", but his vocal apologetics for imperalism and colonialism is not.
> Indian Marxists viciously attacked the CEHI, arguing the imperial state's aim was to extract surplus from India, that it withheld the capacity to do good in famines, and deployed the capacity to cause harm at all other times.
> In this void, blog and trade-book writers moved in with a leftist-nationalist political agenda posing as economic history. Most of their claims can be dismissed by subjecting them to the 1980s test: Can economic change be read as an effect of the Empire? The answer remains: No.
This is indeed a very powerful purity test, "Do your claim go against my utterly ahistorical narrative? If not, then I can comfortably dismiss them without addressing them."
> That India's trade surplus meant Britain looted India is bad logic because the surplus did not mean theft but the purchase of services. “Millions of Indians died of policy-induced famines” (Hickel) is bad logic by assuming infinite state capacity was deliberately withheld.
This one is quite rich aswell, it's just blunt unapologetic imperalism denial. It's bad logic because the logic bothers me.
I mean it just goes on and that's just his most recent tweets.
Speaking of the left, I remember being next to a protest circa 1990 against ... computers!
I don't have numbers for the last ten years, but if remittance has gone down, it is also neck deep in debt. I am in Kerala quite frequently, and can confirm that there are no industries there - except for tourism, and some IT which is relatively miniscule compared to neighbouring states.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kerala
Table 5.2, pg 51 of https://iimad.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/KMS-2023-Report...
I'm sure there are valid other views than the one presented in the article, I'm not saying there aren't. But as someone who doesn't know much about the region, you aren't really giving me more information about it, or giving me any reasons to take your view more seriously than the one presented in the article.
Basically, Kerala exports a workforce because it can't produce or export anything else. At roughly a third of the GDP (in 2012 according to Wikipedia), it's a remittance based economy. Someone commented that remittances are a smaller part of the economy of late (and that might well be true), but in the last decade or so Kerala is also heavily in debt.
"The state has one of the highest concentrations of startups". I laughed out loud at this one. Of all the half-truths peddled in that article, this was easily the most hilarious and egregious.
[0] - https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Coming literacy, what does that mean? They all know how to read & write in a particular language? OR they have passed minimum undergrad?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama
https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/money/malayalis-make-in...
> In short ways, four forces of change – Kerala’s reintegration with the global economy, remittances from the Persian Gulf, strong welfare policies from a legacy of Leftist government, and private investment from individuals and businesses who shared the remittance flows – have combined to form the structure of Kerala’s miracle of human wellbeing with economic growth.
Also, to be clear, it's a common understanding in Marxism that capitalism is a stage of socialism. The "capitalism and socialism are opposites" rhetoric is too simplistic.
Socialism is different but built upon capitalism, in a similar way, for example, to how electric cars are different but built upon gas cars. Marxism opposes neoliberalism and other forms of governance that leave capitalism unchecked, but doesn't reject everything about capitalism— "just the motor, gas tank, and other harmful parts" you could say.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/vlxxv...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/1g5kd...
> In short ways, four forces of change – Kerala’s reintegration with the global economy, remittances from the Persian Gulf, strong welfare policies from a legacy of Leftist government, and private investment from individuals and businesses who shared the remittance flows – have combined to form the structure of Kerala’s miracle of human wellbeing with economic growth.
They went on their own accord. They wouldn't have gone had the opportunity not been large enough. Plenty of people from the West have done the same and continue to do so.
> The demand for skilled workers increased as the Gulf economies diversified from oil-based jobs to finance and business services. While offering jobs in the millions, the migration also had a series of broad effects back home on occupational diversification, skill accumulation, changing gender roles, consumption, economic and social mobility, and demographic transitions.
It looks like there they were employed across the value chain and the peninsula, some (many?) of which I do not think typically practices modern-day slavery.
Thonik not sure what the difference is when the servent can be killed with impunity
From what I see from the article the major gains were from investment in health and education which should be a no brainer.
However, there is nothing good or bad with these variations. Tourism also adds to its economy. Higher per-capita doesn't always mean a good thing. Sometimes it comes at a cost of family separation etc. Kerala is also known for high levels of alcoholic consumption and unhappiness rates.
> India has a vast variation of cultures.
isn’t consistent with this.
> mainstream India
You can have a variety and a single largest.
Yea that is a absolutely wrong. A state that had the highest literacy rate at independence will unsurprisingly remain at the higher end of developmental rankings..
In the 1970s Kerala was already comparable to Indian states from a human development and economic standpoint because of a strong shipbuilding and cooperative agricultural program (same with then undivided Punjab) [0] and by 1990 had developmental indicators comparable to Delhi NCR.
Instead, we should look at states that were historically more undeveloped than Kerala but are now within range of Kerala.
As such, a better rags to riches model to dig into is Tamil Nadu [1] or Haryana [2] - both were on the lower end of India's HDI rankings in 1990, and now outperform most states and lead India in GDP per Capita as well.
Himachal Pradesh [3] and Jammu Kashmir [4][5] are two others to also look at, as they are historically undeveloped agrarian Himalayan border states with laggard developmental indicators that used land reform, cooperative agribusiness, mass rural education drives, and specialized manufacturing (Pharma in Himachal, Food Processing in Jammu) to have high HDIs.
[0] - https://eacpm.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/State-GDP-Wo...
[1] - https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...
[2] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/comment/birth-of-h...
[3] - https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...
[4] - https://ras.org.in/index.php?Article=land_reform_in_kashmir
[5] - https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-strategic-myth/9788194717560...
> most of the Haryana's growth has come from being in proximity of New Delhi
Not really.
Delhi NCR de-industrialized in the 1970s-80s due to militant labor unionism [2]
Furthermore, much of Haryana's population lives well outside of what became Delhi NCR, and urbanization only began in the 1980s with the development of SEZs in Manesar, Faridabad, and Gurgaon.
> Same for Tamil Nadu (56%).
Tamil Nadu shared similar developmental metrics to Haryana in the 1981 NHDR, neighbored a state in an active civil war that often leaked into the state (Sri Lanka / LTTE), and had severe caste fractures.
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_and_un...
[1] - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/HUMAN-DEVELOPMENT-INDEX-...
[2] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/4376065
HP doesn't have a "Dehradun", which means local netas have an incentive to invest in their zilla instead of hoarding cash and real estate in a major hub. Thus, Himachal benefited from a Pharma and Food Processing industrial policy in the 1990s-2000s that industrialized the rural area around Baddi and Una, and a lot of other smaller food processing and light manufacturing industries across lower Himachal.
Also, Uttarakhand has too few MLAs for the size of population. UK has 70 MLAs but 10 million people, but HP has 68 MLAs with 6.5 million people. This means UK MLAs are much more divorced from local panchayats compared to in HP.
There is a good case study about this at Harvard Business School [0]
[0] - https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Asian_Survey_550...
Trust me. You don't want that. Ussi najuwane nu khadi pata ni hege (Kangri but translate to your equivalent)
But I do not think it's replicable in most other LDCs due to historical quirks.
Like, Malawi, Guinea, or Afghanistan can't use much of the "Kerala Model" to succeed, as India was unique in that it was subsidizing the UAE's economy with the "Gulf Rupee" [0] (maybe Cambodia/Laos thanks to Thailand, but it ain't a great reason why IYKYK)
[0] - https://ar.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%...
On the other hand.. yes, Kerala is very beautiful in many ways. I wish I was born there because it's nigh impossible to settle in permanently otherwise.
Many people think of North Indians as the de-facto "business" class in India, but Kerala's long history of international trade has given its posterity a rich history of merchant knowledge. My parents started a technology company in Kerala and have seen the Communist party swing from traditional land and educational reforms to private market support. This in large part due to remittances from the Middle East fueling the state economy.
The ecological risks from climate change (e.x. the mass flooding that occurred in the past several years) is a real risk that claimed the lives of several employees at my parent's company. Kerala is posed to become the biggest success story out of India, but it needs to remain vigilant in investing in private markets and infrastructure projects to address these risks and maintain sustainable growth.
It's not "North Indians" that people think of but rather "West Indians". Virtually all of the states along the western coast of India can claim to be merchant class because they were trading with places like Europe, Central Asia and the MIddle East.
The majority of trade with East Asia seems to have been done by those on the east coast, notably Telegu, Tamils and the Sri Lankans. There are mountains in the way for substanial land-based trade between Myanmar and China, but I assume that Nepalis/Myanmar/Tibetans also had a role in connecting India and East Asia. Interestingly India has much for cultural and social synergy with East Asia despite this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokku_kooli
For instance, the richest Keralite, Yussufali MA, made his fortune in the Middle East. His sons-in-law, both billionaires, as well as KP Basheer, Ravi Pillai, PMC Menon and Mohammed Ali of Gulfar made their fortune in the Middle East, all of whom are silent billionaires even most Indians barely know of. Vivek Ramaswamy's parents were from Kerala too, as is Thomas Kurian (head of GCP).
If you look at the West, Keralites are increasingly taking spots in the medical and healthcare sectors, especially nursing, and now even the education sector. There are Keralite teachers in the oilfields of Midland, Texas, because most people are otherwise not ready to work there. Some of my neighbours relatives from back home were even working in Afghanistan for the USG, making bank for working in a warzone. The only groups that are more or equally as prominent as Keralites worldwide might be the Gujaratis (the Patel motel guys and diamond merchants) and the Jews.
You can look at other sources to see how good kerala is doing wrt other states but I do agree the article over emphasised the good parts without any hint to it's bad parts
Kerala is one of the few states that managed medical supplies of Oxygen pretty well. In many other states many died because hospitals ran out of it.
Now, as for Kerala's handling of Covid, that was funded by state govt coffers. So Middle East money had a negligible contribution. What made a difference though is a history of preference for investing in social safety nets and basic infrastructure for people, such as schools, nutrition, hospitals.
It's the same story in east Asian countries where they had the SARS outbreak in early 2000s and so they were prepared for new outbreaks.
India has a lot of other issues, I grant you that the socialist ideology probably had a positive influence in some ways other than economics, particularly socially. But no offense, if you've ever walked the streets Trivandrum and other cities you know there are much more pressing issues.
Btw, for some historic context this part of India used to be extremely rich in the past by global standards, centuries ago. They became rich with international trade. Modern India is nowhere close to its wealthy past, the subcontinent as a whole produced the largest percentage of the world's GDP during Late Antiquity, surpassing China and all others!
A capitalist dictatorship will be every bit as horrible as a communist dictatorship.
Socialists love to add some negative word 'X' to capitalism to highlight that all bad things in the world are connected to capitalism, and if they could finally defeat capitalism, then the world would be perfect. Instead of actually trying to fix 'X' they will tell you that what we really need to change is 'capitalism'. Surveillance Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Disaster Capitalism and so on.
Trying to fix corruption, to hard, lets just destroy property rights and money instead. Great idea!
Let me give you a tool for your mental toolkit. When you find yourself saying this:
> <some group> loves to
...it's a smell. What follows may be perfectly reasonable, but in my experience it's more commonly unexamined twaddle.
If you happen to be American, see where you get with these:
- many Americans fetishise America - J Edgar Hoover spent 20 years programming Americans to consider socialism to be "un-American"
In this case, I think a little reflection would reveal a J Edgar Hoover homonculus in your head, pulling your levers.
I'm all for emotional arguments. Ultimately, we all have core values, and I like to lead an argument by stating mine.
But hating socialism isn't a core value, it's _at best_ a reaction. Which is to say, if you're from, ooh, Bulgaria or Cuba, then I can indulge you. You may not be logical but you do have cause.
If you merely have a little J Edgar Hoover homonculus in your head, pulling your levers, then refrain from posting, because a J Edgar Hoover homonculus is not an interesting conversationalist.
Just like anything else that can't be back up with solid empirical research in a discussion forum. With is 99% of what we are dissing. (And most books written by intellectuals of both the socialist and capitalist variety).
Communism is originally a utopian social movement, and there is a strong tendency and a very well document intellectual history of communism that asserts that pretty much most problems at its root are an issue with capitalism and that they can only be solved in the absence of capitalism. So much so that it was pretty normal for communist to oppose working with social democrats on any reform of existing systems.
> Americans to consider socialism to be "un-American"
I'm not american and I couldn't care less if something is 'American' or not. And I have no idea what 'americanness' has to do with our discussion. So far as I can tell, nothing what so ever. And I don't hate 'socialism' either.
> But hating socialism isn't a core value, it's _at best_ a reaction. Which is to say, if you're from, ooh, Bulgaria or Cuba, then I can indulge you. You may not be logical but you do have cause.
So unless you are the victim of rape, being against rapist isn't a 'core value'? That's a outright crazy line of argument.
P.S: I really think you are waste overestimate the importance of Hoover.
They know exactly what it is, but they don't wanna say it out loud.
If it makes him feel good not to call that 'capitalism' then that's fine. I guess it wouldn't have played well with the base back then.
But in reality and operations, its is how capitalism has worked in practice.
That's not actually what happened, you should look up some history.
The USSR didn't throw away, communism, the member states just simply left.
And many of those states were then free of the communist party actually did quite well. Russia didn't, Ukraine didn't, but that's the reality when a country splits apart, some parts do well others don't.
> Any China scholar could tell you that China was already implementing market reforms before Deng
Part of it wasn't even voluntary on the party front, they simply accepted what was already happening instead of reversing it again.
> China is still a country operated on the basis of five-year plans.
hose plans are mostly projects of what they hope they can encourage private business to do and some public investment. Guess what many countries do, planning and public investment.
Lots of things they plan don't happen, lots of things that happen aren't planned. The planning is constantly adjust to what actually happens in the economy, including the global context.
> China is still a country where the state owns all land.
Legally maybe, but if you hand out control for 100 years the relevance of that isn't all that great. And that land can be freely traded between people. So in practical terms it works far more like private land ownership then anything the socialist thinkers of the late 19 and early 20th century.
> China is still a country where capital is not allowed to usurp the public interest.
That is just factually false, large companies in China regularly do things that hurt public interest. Unless you mean 'interest of the party leadership' and even then its only mostly true.
> In this, the reforms of Deng and the continued path of Xi are simply the highest synthesis of communism
Lol, they literally copied other East Asian economic models almost 1 to 1. They are just a log bigger and have more people. But I guess copying other successful clearly capitalist countries can be resold as 'highest synthesis of communism' to people who have irrational hate for capitalism.
And China economic growth or wealth isn't all that magically, its simply that China is much bigger then most others who have done it.
> They are the most faithful to Marxism, which has never preached any kind of static dogma, especially as it relates to economic policy.
I love Marxism, since he didn't actually define any outcome beyond maybe 'stateless and moneyless' you can just make up whatever the fuck you want as long as you are claiming to 'get there'. And China doesn't seem to go into a stateless moneyless direction.
Marx's "Historical materialism" is wrong for Western Europe and laudably false for China.
His critic of capitalism seems to be mostly ignored in China. As is his theory of class struggle as in China there is an ever growing Bourgeoisie.
But I guess copying what Taiwan and friends did and calling it 'Marxism' is one way to go.
Ambition doesn't imply exploitation. I think you mean "predatory".
What's the basis for this claim? What is a "mismanaged government" but one that is controlled by narrow private interests? Or is this coming from a "all tax is exploitation" angle?
I never really got why the west is so proud of not establishing basic rights of access to food, shelter, healthcare, and education. I don't quite understand the point of them otherwise.
Without deep knowledge, I'd suggest Switzerland, simply because of the directness of its democracy
A strong business environment, or strong investment opportunities, or a large consumer base is very much needed to have attractive jobs. A strongly educated workforce does little to enable such an environment. Intuitively, it is just very hard to make money off of a small, low income population, and it is even harder to export services built for a local market to a non local market. So the ambitious talent just find opportunities elsewhere.
It also depends how hard it is to migrate out of the region. If there are strong family ties and good standard of living, you'd be surprised at how much talent is willing to stay.
Interestingly enough, Taiwan in 2024/2025 has seen huge growth in wages, for many reasons, but the biggest IMO being the highly educated workforce.
The reality is that in all places the most ambitious people are likely going to move, as such talents usually depend on specific environments.
And with things like TSMC in Taiwan, claiming anything close to 'no opportunities' is a bit ridiculous.
Just sharing my perspective, Taiwan's Software Devs were paid 1/3 of what devs in SG or HK are paid, the biggest reason being there aren't any software companies headquartered in Taiwan that are big/growing fast enough to offer competitive salaries to SG / HK. In SG/HK you have banks, hedgefunds and tech companies all competing for talent—Grab, Amazon, Google, Shopee, DBS, HSBC, etc, pushing up prices to be competitive globally. Taiwan's local companies have to make enough money to pay global salaries for strong talent, or they just get their best talent poached by SG/HK or China (which has plenty of strong tech giants of their own).
But... a tiny 23 million population island where the average wage is low and people are generally happy and content... is not a great business environment for startups. I think some local startups saturated the Taiwan market with like 70% of the island's population in their database... and like $2-5m US revenue/yr? Great achievement but not a large base for continued rev growth.
As a Taiwanese company, you are not winning against bigger tech companies in China. Neither are you building for english speaking audiences of SEA because Taiwan's english is not native... in short, the local market conditions is just unable to pay for global level talent, who leave.
This is a software dev focused view of Taiwan, but it applies to all or most other industries not named TSMC.
Also, the Communist party in power has not stopped themselves from adapting to the new times and dumping older views.
The most recent Econ Nobel showed how institutions create wealthy nations, and Kerala is building those.
Perhaps the statement “not a place to be ambitious” can be seen in a narrower sense, while seeing that it leaves much more space for the median individual.