KERALA—THE EMERGING PERSPECTIVES 5 ^. THE KERALA MODEL Kerala's development experience questions a widely held paradigm: first agriculture and industry have to develop and then, in due course, improvement in the standard of living of the masses would take place. It is this historical sequencing of economic growth and mass welfare sanctified by the experience of developed countries that is being challenged by Kerala. One of the relatively economically backward states in India with per capita domestic production consistently below national average, has been able to provide for the basic needs of most of its citizens. This is revealed by comparative indicators of health, education and demographic transition.2 A composite index of quality of life taking into account the various factors, placed Kerala far above the general situation prevailing not only in India but also in most parts of the third world.3 These average indicators hide the experience of communities that have been left out of the development process such as the fisherfolk and the tribals. A number of papers sought to discuss such 'outliers' rather than 'the central tendency'. There were separate sessions devoted to the status and problems of the tribals and those of the fisherfolk and also a session 'profiling poverty* among stone breakers, coir workers, Tamil migrants etc. It was argued that the Kerala miracle had bypassed the agricultural labourers too. The days of employment for agricultural labourers had continued to shrin^, adversely affecting their earnings.4 However, there were other papers which indicated that even though the relative backwardness of dalits persisted, their situation was relatively superior to the rest of India,5 there was significant occupational mobility in terms of job diversification and aspirations6 and that the gap in terms of development indicators was rapidly narrowing within Kerala.7 The factors which hindered the public action for 'capacity building' among the fisherfolks community was discussed in an interesting paper.8 Caught in a peculiar matrix of socio-political factors there was no active demand from below from the community. Thus the exceptions to the general societal tendencies in Kerala only underlines the active role of the people in demanding the supply of development services and monitoring their effective implementation. It is precisely this active role of the masses in demanding redistributive policies or directly pursuing such goals themselves, that is being ignored by two opposing ideological approaches to the Kerala model: those who hail it as the ideal 'cheap' model and those who reject it as yet another distorted outcome of neo-colonial development. It has been argued by the first school that Kerala has succeeded in achieving a quality of life nearly comparable to the developed countries at a much lower level of resource comsumption. Hence kerala