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states because it has done so despite its low per capita income and poor growth performance. Clearly, low per capita income and a high Gini coefficient (i.e., unequal distribution of expenditures) and yet low levels of poverty in relation to other states cannot all be true simultaneously. What gives way is the per capita income.

    Figure 5.4. Literacy rates in Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and India, 1951–2011
    Source: Authors’ construction based on data from the Census of India, various rounds

    Figure 5.5. Life expectancy at birth in Kerala, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, 1970–2006
    Source: Authors’ construction based on estimates from Sample Registration Bulletins, Census of India, various issues

    Figure 5.6. Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births in Kerala, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, 1971–2009
    Source: See Figure 5.5
    As Chakraborty et al. (2011) show, once the available gross state domestic product (GSDP) data are converted to the common 2004–2005 base and appropriate population series used to obtain per capita GSDP, Kerala consistently ranks among the top five of the largest fifteen states by this measure beginning in 1980–1981, the year from which the GSDP series is available on a continuous and consistent basis. 11 The picture is even more dramatic when we consider per capita expenditure. According to the latest large-scale expenditure survey, conducted in 2009–2010, Kerala tops the list of the larger states ranked by per capita expenditures in both rural and urban areas. High achievements of Kerala in poverty alleviation, health, and education are associated with high, not low, per capita incomes and expenditures.
    Finally, the claim by the proponents of the Kerala model that the state achieved superior health and education outcomes through significantly more activist state interventions also turns out to be implausible. Once again, at least the available data do not reveal anything out of the ordinary. During the twenty years from 1991–1992 to 2010–2011 for which we are able to obtain public-health expenditures data for the major states, per capita public expenditures on health turn out to be by far the highest in Goa. Indeed, it is consistently three times the per capita public health expenditure in Kerala. Excluding Goa, Kerala spends more than its nearest rival state in eleven out of the twenty years. This may give some credence to the Kerala model except that the expenditures themselves are not all that large: except in the recent three or four years, they rarely exceed 1 percent of the GSDP.
    What turn out to be far more impressive for Kerala are the private health expenditures. These data are available for each state for two years and they are by far the highest of any state (including Goa) in Kerala both on a per capita basis and as percent of the GSDP. Thus, for example, in 2004–2005 per capita private expenditure in Kerala was 2,663 rupees per annum with the nearest rival, Punjab, spending only 1,112 rupees. In comparison, per capita public expenditures of the two states in the same year were 280 and 234 rupees, respectively. Good health in Kerala is being financed predominantly by private expenditures (and thisalso may have something to do with the influx of massive remittances from the Middle East, which again would call into question the generally antiglobalization attitudes of the proponents of the Kerala model).
    This dominance of the private sector is also observed in education. The NGO Pratham has been conducting extensive surveys of children in school up to sixteen years of age in rural India in recent years. In its latest report (ASER 2010) it finds that, with the exception of two or three tiny northeastern states, Kerala has the highest proportion of students between ages seven and sixteen in private schools in rural areas. At 53 percent, it leads its nearest rival, Haryana, by a margin of 13 percentage points. The conventional and