How Kerala got rich

Families are "socialist". Investing in each other and their young.

Wealthy families are even more "socialist". Dramatically so. Investing in offspring through childhood, higher education, and often long after.

For good reason. Education and health have a compounding impact on people's potentials, for themselves and as a benefit to others.

Key word here is: Compounding

That being said, all investments must be prioritized against a total balance sheet. Debt also compounds. And Kerala demonstrates health and education are a matter of prioritization of efforts, even more so than money.

EDIT: Not promoting actual Socialism. Which has been demonstrated to be catastrophically unstable, quickly transforming into an authoritarianism of elites, inevitably economically propped up by a "free market", either ad hoc, underground or as a "dual" system. Critiquing a particular brand of "anti-socialism" in the U.S. that can best be described as anti-national investment in people, without consideration for specifics or benefits, and often agnostic on corporate subsidies.

"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

Compared to many other better states and cities, the places in Kerala have this combination of low expenses, good government/public health care. It’s utter shit in most of India — including other rich states like Karnataka (~Bangalore). The place has no or less hostility to outsiders, a general non-RW political atmosphere, and being less polluted or free from it. While Tamil Nadu (~Chennai) is ahead of Kerala in many ways, it kind of falls behind on integration points and weather (that's just a personal preference).

I see one more difference there (this is kind of specific, and I just wanted to take an example) — all over India, people are scared of cops. Severe chronic fear of the police (from the British times; maybe continued). You don’t get in their way, you don’t talk to them, you don’t argue with them, and you hope they never notice you exist. Mostly! Not in Kerala (and to some extent in Tamil Nadu as well) — in Kerala, police in most cases don’t get that some kind of feared reverence at all. It has always heartening to see police getting questioned by locals there when they demand something from the people. I am someone originally from the Indian North, and it was an alien experience — just like seeing government/public hospitals in villages and small towns that are well-equipped and functioning.

The thing about protest culture and the so-called union culture that right-wingers and/or the "economically progressive" folks accuse Kerala of — is actually a highly educated populace (very close to 100%; let that sink in — because we are talking about India) standing up for their rights and not allowing either the corporates or the government to steam-roll them. Is that ideal? I don't think so. But then they easily forget that Kerala always had a left-leaning ideology and India’s centre never had any left majority Govt (hell, not even significant representation), which means the state has always been at odds with the centre—and still did well literally on its own.

The Indian right-wing loves to hate on Kerala (you might see some right here; veiled or direct; or not; and that's alright - I guess, people just like and dislike things) — calling the state and its people with left-bashing slurs and abuses. There have been concerted efforts to flare up the Hindu-Muslim divide in the state, which has worked almost everywhere — with great success in the North India (which is the mostly uneducated, mostly conservative, mostly poor and backward India) and to good success in Karnataka (~Bangalore) and Maharashtra (~Mumbai). These last two are among the richer states of India, while the North is generally a proper shit-hole (I am originally from there).

One can go on and keep counting the majestically built homes that are empty most of the year because the well-off occupants mostly stay out of the state or India or attribute everything to the Gulf. But the bottom line is it is much better than the hellhole that most of India is. They also conveniently forget that it has been in direct and active trade contact with the rest of the world (especially Europe) from very old times. The state has one of the oldest mosques and churches in the world (not just India). I have seen the tech industry of Kerala very closely. There are some boutique software places in that state - not very big (except one kinda famous FOSS photos, 2fa app shop), some service industry but not gigantic like in other states et cetera. Do I have hopes from the place? Yes. Will it be fast? I doubt it.

Do their socio-economic-political choices have their drawbacks and unflattering outcomes? Yes, of course. But I think Kerala state and its people have realised one thing—that by virtue of being in a third-world country like India, they have two options: either keep working and keep getting better at a slower pace while maintaining a better "quality of life" compared to almost all of the rest of India or give in and become a sweatshop like a lot of India currently is and for them if that means moving out of India to do work and earn money and send money back home then so be it.