Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

CHAPTER 3
Assessing Development
THE INCOME DIMENSION
1. Introduction
The preceding chapter dealt with Kerala’s development experience in
relation to non-income aspects of achievements. This perspective does not
dismiss the income dimension of development as unimportant. Access to
income – both for its intrinsic importance as a source of self-respect and the
respect of others, and for its contingent importance as a means to a `good
life’ as the end – is valued as a significant human freedom, even if not the
only one which matters. The present chapter, therefore, complements the
previous one by undertaking an assessment of Kerala’s development in terms
of the pattern of income-growth, enhanced by the inflow of remittances and
the profile of income-poverty that have characterised its economic regime.
We then review the social security measures the State has undertaken for
poverty eradication, which assume considerable significance given the sharp
reduction in poverty, both rural and urban, in Kerala during the 1990s.