Free Why Growth Matters by Jagdish Bhagwati Page A

the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. Based on his account, four key factors can be highlighted.

    Figure 5.7. Comparing progress in literacy rates in Kerala to those in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and India beginning at approximately the same level
    Source: See Figure 5.4
    First, the rulers in Travancore and Cochin played an important role in the spread of education. Travancore Maharajas began investing in the spread of vernacular primary schools in the 1860s. Maharajas of Cochin followed suit beginning in the 1890s. Their objective was to spread modern knowledge to the widest circle of people through the use of the mother tongue, Malayalam. Children of upper-caste Hindus and Syrian Christians dominated the government schools till the end of the nineteenth century. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, both Travancore and Cochin offered concessions to lower-caste students whose numbers expanded rapidly.
    Second, the culture of old Kerala, which included the importance assigned to women by matrilineal tradition among several communities, wasconducive to the spread of education. Even before Travancore Maharajas got actively involved in education, an extensive network of village schools had existed. Landed high-caste Hindu and Syrian Christian families supported these schools. The wealth enjoyed by these families allowed them to send their children to schools rather than to work. Nayars and other matrilineal groups sent girls to the schools as well. One measure of the contribution made by this culture of education is that Malabar, the remaining Malayalam-speaking district, which was administered by the Madras presidency and had no princely government to promote education, never fell below third place within the presidency overall and consistently ranked top in female literacy.
    Third, caste- and religion-based groups also played some role in the spread of education. Among the upper-caste groups, the Nair Service Society, which was founded in 1914, promoted education through the so-called Nair schools. The Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam that the widely revered Sri Narayan Guru founded in 1903 played the same role among the lower-caste Ezhavas, though with less success since the community was much poorer and lacked resources. The Christian missionaries also helped accelerate the process of the spread of education. Protestant missionaries made their debut in Travancore with the arrival of Tobias Ringeltaube in 1806. He quickly got permission from the Maharaja to open a few schools. According to Jeffrey (1992, p. 97), by the middle of the nineteenth century, Travancore had a higher density of Protestant missionaries than any other part of India. They not only actively promoted literacy directly, especially among the lower-caste Nadars, but also greatly influenced the largest Christian group, the Syrian Catholics, who started establishing formal, literacy-oriented schools beginning in the early 1880s.
    The fourth and last factor, which rarely is highlighted in the spread of education in Kerala prior to independence, is economic. A necessary condition for all of the above agents of the spread of literacy to succeed was the availability of necessary resources. Those building schools had to have the necessary revenues and the parents sending children to school had to have enough income to make ends meet without theirchildren’s labor. To sustain the process, it was also necessary that those acquiring education would have prospects for jobs commensurate with their qualifications.
    This is where globalization played a key role. Roman coins commonly found in Kerala testify to its trade links abroad through pepper and cardamom exports going back 2,000 years. Jeffrey (1992) suggests that this trade link is a plausible explanation for the early presence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians—they came to trade and chose to stay: “Long before Britain or America, Kerala was a part of a