Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

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continues to be largely concentrated among the
marginalised communities, such as the tribals (adivasi)
and fishing community (though the latter, once an
‘outlier’ community, has made significant advances in
human development since the mid 1980s) and the hiatus
between the Scheduled Castes and non-Scheduled
Castes is a distressing symptom of a still uncured aspect
of horizontal inequality in the State.
As reviewed in this chapter, the growth and poverty
prospects of Kerala’s economy displayed a substantial
improvement from the late 1980s, fuelled by remittances
from overseas earnings, the growth of the service
sector and the synergistic relationship between human
development and income growth, along with State
initiatives in the attack on poverty in terms of social
security provisions. There was a dramatic decline
in poverty in the 1990s. An attack on poverty is also
an effort to end human insecurity and indignity, and
thus goes a long way in enhancing the basic human
development status of the poor. In this regard, social
security measures in Kerala assume significance, as
the State has maintained a relatively better record in
providing a range of welfare programmes aiming to
enhance socio-economic security.
While Chapter 5 considers the income and non-income
dimensions of development together, pointing to areas of
both mutual reinforcement and mutual conflict between the
goals of human development and growth, we first examine
some of the horizontal and spatial inequalities in human
development in Chapter 4.