Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen famously described Indians as the Argumentative Indian. He used this expression positively to highlight India’s argumentative tradition as the cornerstone of the country’s social culture, intellectual pluralism, and democracy.

Taking a cue from Sen, Malayalis could be called the Discontented Malayali. Though Sen never described Malayalis as discontented, he argued that Keralam’s remarkable achievements in human development owed much to the constant democratic pressure its people -backed by a vibrant media- exerted on the authorities.

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Both terms -argumentative and discontented- have negative connotations too. While argumentative literally describes a person who is quarrelsome or stubborn, being discontented can be negative when taken to the extreme. This author has often thought that even when Kerala repeatedly receives worldwide praise for its well-known achievements, many Malayalis themselves remain largely unimpressed. It is healthy to be self-critical, but when taken to its extreme, it often tends not just to correct its flaws -there are so many- but to rubbish Keralam’s universally acclaimed achievements altogether. It also dismisses the alternative path Kerala consciously adopted, which produced its indisputable gains. Though questioning a path and advocating another is a legitimate democratic right, can one belittle Kerala’s phenomenal gains of the past 70 years, which far outweigh its equally conspicuous failures?

While it is Kerala's 70th birthday, it is also the first for Keralam, following the Parliament's official restoration of its original Malayalam name. Since birthdays are occasions for stock-taking, this is an appropriate moment for such an exercise. This writer believes that Keralam’s most remarkable achievement of the past seven decades has been its securing the best of both worlds. Its fame as India’s leader in human development indices, even while it had remained economically backward, has long been celebrated as the unique Kerala Development Model. Equally remarkable is that Keralam retains this position even seven decades later, proving the doomsayers wrong. Yet, the second stage of Keralam's journey over the past seven decades saw the state achieving an unexpected feat. Keralam surged from the ranks of India’s poorest to be among the richest states from the late 1980s. The few who took note of this great leap forward described it as a miracle. This period also saw Keralam topping the country in rural Monthly Per Capita consumption Expenditure.

Over a decade ago, a heated debate erupted between globally renowned economists such as Amartya Sen, who championed the........

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