Note: In preparation for the Raj Centennial conference, CDS faculty and PhD scholars have put together notes on the research work from the Centre using the conference panels as categories. This note on Poverty, Inequality, and Welfare should be interpreted as a work-in-progress, and the Centre hopes to work on it further based on feedback and more archival exploration. Further, we acknowledge that there are different possible thematic narratives of the research; the present note can be seen as a preliminary perspective constructed by the corresponding authors using a style and approach preferred by them.
Poverty, Inequality, and Welfare
It may not be an exaggeration to say that from its inception, the CDS has maintained a marked focus on research on the themes of poverty, inequality and welfare. Encapsulating this are two benchmark studies, the UN-CDS (1975) study Poverty, Unemployment and Development Policy: A Case Study of Selected Issues with Reference to Kerala and the Human Development Report 2005, Kerala (CDS, 2006) and more recently the emerging work sometimes characterised as the ‘post Kerala model’. The research reviewed here has extended to the national level and included inter-state comparisons as well as assessments of poverty and development in several states. It reflects a commitment to a better understanding of questions of human development, to advancing social justice and to an approach marked by rigorous empirical investigation. It would be difficult to summarise this vast body of research to do justice to all contributions; therefore only a few citations are provided indicating benchmarks and studies that initiated discussions on specific themes. The rest of the note is organised under the sections on achieving wellbeing, concern over social justice, and new challenges.
Achieving wellbeing
The much-acclaimed UN-CDS (1975) study undertaken under the leadership of K. N. Raj heralded Kerala’s progress in what is now familiar to us as human development, that is, achievements in the domains of education, demographic transition and health accomplished on a low economic base. The focus of the study, however, was on poverty and unemployment, and it comprised an in-depth investigation into the challenge of food security and distributional inequality in a state that, at the time, was among the poorest in the country on the criteria of access to food. The puzzling nature of outcomes, the ‘phenomenal reduction in infant and over-all mortality rates despite the markedly low average food intake in the state’ and ‘the rapid proletarianization of labour and the reported rise in the real wage rates of unskilled labour amidst large-scale unemployment’ among other issues prompted the authors to emphasise the ‘interrelationship between social and economic policies and the potentialities of both for promoting development.’ In retrospect, it is possible to see that the study defined an organic progression of the trajectory of future research at the CDS both thematically in terms of an undiminished critical engagement with inequality, welfare, and human development and methodologically through the emphasis on empirical research informed by theory.
Research interest sparked by the UN-CDS study, contributed to a better understanding of Kerala’s distinctive development experience in terms of its historical, social, and policy underpinnings. Notable in this light were studies on policy and advances in education and health in the Travancore region as well as access to school education and availability of education infrastructure after state formation—even as scholars continued to track trends in poverty, health, and demographic outcomes. In a comprehensive assessment of the agrarian reforms, Raj & Tharakan (1983) observed that the paradox of a rapid growth in the supply of rural labour alongside an increase in real wages in 1956-72 and later could partly be attributed to how increased ownership of land by rural labour households raised their reserve price of labour. By the 1990s, it became apparent that there was continued improvement on health parameters but also heavy reliance on the private sector at high cost, which posed a challenge to equitable development. The cost of higher education has also come under scrutiny.
Inter-state comparisons included a study of economic growth and human capability Kerala and Maharashtra in 1960-2010 that showed that while they differ considerably in per capita income, there are signs of slow convergence in human development attainments. Comparisons of Kerala and West Bengal showed the significant differences in mobilisation of people and development outcomes under broadly left political regimes. PhD dissertations have explored education deprivation in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and the political economy of hunger in Odisha.
The healthcare system has come into research focus in the light of the challenges of providing basic services while reducing spatial inequalities and discrimination against vulnerable groups and in the context of local governance institutions. Reforms advocated include user fees and health insurance to enhance public service quality and sustainability by leveraging patients’ willingness to pay for better care. Financial incentives were found to improve the health of the girl child and parental attitudes towards girls with implications for improving sex ratios over the long term.
The UN-CDS study was undertaken before Kerala began to experience the effects of an exponential increase in international migration which was to have a major impact in terms of poverty reduction while also altering aspirations and initiating new consumption behaviour. The CDS pioneered research on this theme from the early 1990s, even before the Centre organised a series of Gulf Migration Surveys from the late 1990s (Nair, 1991). The migration surveys provided estimates of migration, its social and spatial distribution and documented the use of remittances improve living standards and advance health and education (Zachariah et al., 2001).
Social justice
By the 1990s, research showed that older problems of poverty and development were taking on significantly new dimensions. Kerala witnessed a turnaround in economic growth but while unemployment, a problem that engaged the attention of the UN-CDS study, remained high, it also came to be associated increasingly with women. Analysis of supply-side constraints underscored gender unfreedoms (Eapen & Kodoth, 2002). The Human Development Report (CDS, 2006) took stock of Kerala’s development experience in the light of the changed circumstances. The report identified caste discrimination and gender unfreedoms as significant problems within Kerala society:
A highlight of Kerala’s development experience has been the rapid reduction in intra-State disparities and gender-differentials in most indicators of human development. It must, however, be emphasised that gender equality in education and health in Kerala has not led to the elimination of female disadvantage in social and economic roles. While literacy and education have spread across different social groups, with even the hierarchically lower castes being much ahead of their counterparts in the rest of the country, they are substantially behind the rest of the Keralite population in terms of some indicators of human development.
Research on caste and gender was not new to this moment. Barriers faced by the Scheduled castes (SC) and Scheduled tribes (ST) in social and economic life had received attention in previous decades. Lower access to higher education and capital raised entry barriers for the SC and ST in non-agricultural occupations and the land reforms had limited impact as much of the redistributed land was uncultivable (Sivanandan, 1992). Marking a key moment in research on STs, Kunhaman (1982) found that economic history, land use, and farming practices explained how the settled agricultural communities in the hills of the Travancore region achieved more than their counterparts in Malabar.
More recently PhD scholars have attended to the failure of the land reforms to address the caste dimension of inequality even though access to some landholdings was crucial for educational and occupational mobility for Dalits. It has been contended that the very distinctiveness of development in Kerala has had negative externalities for social groups on its margins. Along these lines, studies of the plantation sector showed how the decline of the tea industry impacted Dalit workers. Critiques of the Kerala experience of development have included perspectives from the coastal sector, characterised as an outlier in terms of human development indicators (Kurien, 1995). Fishing communities were not only excluded from the benefits of land reforms but more recently have also had to bear the brunt of ecological changes.
The CDS also produced some of the early critical studies on social security for vulnerable social groups and the poor. These included studies on agricultural workers’ pension and social security for widows and the elderly (see for instance, Gulati & Gulati (1995). Emerging demographic trends were investigated in the light of the restructuring of welfare programmes while demographic ageing and the lack of institutional provisions for care of older people led scholars at the CDS to advocate for a national policy for the elderly. Study of social protection in the form of the novel informal sector welfare funds added to new thinking on the vexed question of labour market informality (Kannan, 2002).
New challenges
The Human Development Report (HDR) highlighted its potential for social protection through the Kudumbashree programme, the poverty eradication and women’s empowerment programme implemented by the State Poverty Eradication Mission of the Government of Kerala:
[C]ontrary to most welfare or social security schemes, in principle, the decision-making authority rests with the elected representatives, who are poor women themselves rather than bureaucrats or politicians. It also has a dual advantage, which no other existing welfare programme can boast of: a functional dynamism which is found among the nongovernmental organisations as well as strong interaction with, and backing from, local self-governments and thereby gaining a legitimacy.
Critical engagement with the Kudumbashree programme has underscored its potential for political empowerment but also the gender inequality implications of the triple role of women (Devika & Thampi, 2007) while also examining the successes and limits of women’s micro enterprises (Shanta & Pillai, 2008).
The 2005 HDR characterised unemployment as ‘the most serious form of capability failure in Kerala’ and argued that there may be structural links between education, migration, and unemployment. The report observed that ‘fresh thinking will lead to a different perception on the need for further state intervention in education’:
It will ask for strengthening the quality of education, beginning with basic education and to enhance the levels of skill and specialised knowledge at the higher education level. This calls for appropriate public policies and investment in education to equip the unemployed to seize opportunities anywhere. Such an approach has to be complemented by enhancing the quality of economic and social infrastructure as well as that of governance.
These observations resonate sharply in the present moment marked by demand for care sector workers and the growing potential to employ women with higher secondary or lower levels of schooling, where unemployment has been concentrated. While early research on migration of domestic workers and entertainers from Asia drew attention to the class dimension of international labour migration (L. Gulati, 1997), more recent work has highlighted the negative impact of gendered state regulation and societal norms on women’s migration as domestic workers and nurses. Even as the care sector assumes greater importance, research at the CDS has attended to questions of strained household resources for care owing to migration of younger people as well as the legal framework in India, the role of old age homes, and community-based care arrangements.
The 2005 HDR identified four crucial factors that contributed to sustaining the human development achievements of Kerala: remittances from overseas migrants, growth of the service sector, and attainments in health care and education. In this light, it observed that ‘[t]he so-called ‘limits’ to the Kerala model of development appear to have somewhat receded’. Ongoing research directs attention to the present moment which has been rendered significantly different and more complex by the unfolding of climate and health-related economic shocks, environmental damage and the resulting strain on resources.
Significant shifts in governance regimes and the nature of emerging problems have been characterised variously as the ‘post Kerala model’ and the ‘new Kerala model’. Newer forms of deprivations and ill-being that have come to the fore in the context of practices related to inter-state migrant labour (Prasad, 2016) and a dominant culture of familialism. Kerala society stands at a new threshold.
References
CDS. (2006). Human Development Report—2005: Kerala. Kerala State Planning Board.
Devika, J., & Thampi, B. V. (2007). Between ‘Empowerment’ and ‘Liberation’: The Kudumbashree Initiative in Kerala. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14(1), 33–60.
Eapen, M., & Kodoth, P. (2002). Family structure, women’s education and work: Re-examining the high status of women in Kerala. CDS Working Paper, 341.
Gulati, I. S., & Gulati, L. (1995). Social security for widows: Experience in Kerala. Economic and Political Weekly, 30(39), 2451–2453.
Gulati, L. (1997). Asian women in international migration: With special reference to domestic work and entertainment. Economic and Political Weekly, 32(47), 3029–3035.
Kannan, K. P. (2002). The welfare fund model of social security for informal sector workers the Kerala experience. CDS Working Paper, 332.
Kunhaman, M. (1982). Tribal Economy in Kerala: An Intra-regional Analysis [MPhil Thesis]. Centre for Development Studies / Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Kurien, J. (1995). The Kerala model: Its central tendency and the outlier. Social Scientist, 23(1/3), 70–90.
Nair, P. R. G. (1991). Asian migration to the Arab world: Kerala (India). In G. Gunatilleke (Ed.), Migration to the Arab World: Experience of Returning Migrants (Vol. 47, pp. 19–55). United Nations University Press.
Prasad, M. (2016). Migration and production of space: Labour, capital and the state in Kerala, India [PhD Thesis]. Centre for Development Studies / Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Raj, K. N., & Tharakan, M. (1983). Agrarian reform in Kerala and its impact on the rural economy–a preliminary assessment. In A. K. Ghose (Ed.), Agrarian reform in contemporary developing countries. Routledge.
Shanta, N., & Pillai, P. M. (2008). ICT And Employment Promotion Among Poor Women: How Can We Make It Happen? Some Reflections on Kerala’s Experience. CDS Working Paper, 398.
Sivanandan, P. (1992). Caste and Economic Opportunities: A Case Study of Effect of Educational Development and Land Reform on the Employment and Income Earning Opportunities of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes in Kerala [PhD Thesis]. Centre for Development Studies / Jawaharlal Nehru University.
UN-CDS. (1975). Poverty, Unemployment and Development Policy: A Case Study of Selected Issues with Reference to Kerala. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Zachariah, K. C., Mathew, E. T., & Rajan, S. I. (2001). Impact of Migration on Kerala’s Economy and Society. International Migration, 39(1), 63–87.