A substantial amount of academic and popular writing has used the term “model state” when discussing Kerala, referring to its high literacy rate, higher female-to-male population ratio, success in female education, and other statistical markers of so-called developed countries. This book, however, aims at deconstructing that very notion of Kerala as a role model for other states and countries in South and Southeast Asia, significantly complicating earlier, well-meant suggestions by distinguished scholars such as Amartya Sen. Editor Swapna Mukhopadhyay seeks to investigate the correlation between, on the one hand, a high Gender-Related Development Index and other sociological indicators of women's welfare in any society, and, on the other hand, their actual well-being when considering psychometric variables such as mental health, anxiety and stress-related symptoms, and self-assessed happiness. After all, not only is Kerala famous for its Marxist government, matrilineal Nair traditions, and allegedly liberated, working women, but also it can...

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