A state with a per capita income below the national average achieved a literacy rate above 90 percent.
Kerala, a state on India's southwestern coast with a population of roughly 35 million, achieved a literacy rate above 90 percent by the early 1990s, at a time when India's national average was below 55 percent.1 The state accomplished this without unusual wealth. Kerala's per capita income was below the Indian national average throughout the period of its greatest educational gains.
The roots of Kerala's achievement lie in decisions made decades before Indian independence. In the nineteenth century, the princely states of Travancore and Cochin, which later became part of Kerala, invested in public education and opened schools to lower-caste communities at a time when most of India restricted access.2 Christian missionaries established schools across the region. By the early twentieth century, literacy rates in Travancore were already significantly higher than in the rest of British India.
After Indian independence in 1947, Kerala's first elected communist government in 1957 passed the Kerala Education Act, which brought private schools under government regulation and expanded access further.3
In 1990, the district of Ernakulam declared itself fully literate, becoming the first district in India to make the claim. A year later, the state launched the Kerala Total Literacy Campaign, a mass mobilization involving roughly 350,000 volunteers who taught reading and writing in homes, community centers, and public spaces.1
Kerala's female literacy rate exceeded 87 percent by 1991, the highest among Indian states.2 The state's infant mortality rate, life expectancy, and birth rate resemble those of far wealthier countries, a pattern development economists have called the "Kerala model."4