Within the poverty (of money income) of India, we find the wealth (of well-being) in Kerala. On the path of improving the human condition in India, we are standing at a fork. (1) The western development model---seek wealth of money in India and wealth of well-being will follow. (2) The Kerala experience---higher status of female contributions increasing well-being. Each path is difficult.
What advice may be offered to policy makers? Following the western development model appears to impair and delay the second. On the other hand, raising the status of female contributions may support the first. Given the probable limitations on the Earth resources available per capita in the twenty first century, policy makers should ask, Which path toward improving the human condition in India is possible?
This explanation of the Kerala phenomena reveals an unintended consequence in India and points to another unintended consequence world-wide. As the Indians have striven to maintain and improve their family status, they did not intend to cause their own unsustainability. As world citizens have striven to maintain and improve their individual status, they certainly do not intend to cause their own unsustainablilty.
The unsustainability of Indian families is indirect, through the over consumption of the Earth resources of their over population. The unsustainability of world citizens is directly caused by over consumption. These cases of unintended consequences have the same human motivational basis---status striving up social and economic hierarchies. Status striving may be within the genes of homosapiens, but these hierarchical systems are human inventions.