Tamil Nadu’s Development Experience “While India has increased its per capita income in recent years through fairly sustained high growth rates in income, its human development indicators still trail those of some countries with similar incomes. An oft-cited example is Bangladesh which, despite lower per capita incomes, fares better than India in various human development parameters. It is in this regard that states like Tamil Nadu within the country have been hailed as a model in recent years for combining relatively high growth with high levels of human development. In fact, Tamil Nadu along with Kerala, is likely to rank at the top among South Asian countries, with regard to attainments in health and education.
Tamil Nadu has been a State that is witness to a long history of social and political mobilisation against caste-determined hierarchies; and it has been pointed out that its relatively better performance in terms of growth, poverty reduction and human development can be attributed to such collective action (Kalaiyarasan, ). Tamil Nadu is a State that continued to have poverty levels higher than the national average even until the 1980s. It is only since the early 1990s that we witness rapid reduction in poverty and improvement in per capita incomes. As Dreze and Sen ( ) point out, the State’s investments in social infrastructure, such as the free Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDMS) for school children, driven by the emergence of concerted public action with its roots in social movements that sought to question and delegitimise social hierarchies and democratise public spheres have been critical to this shift.
Further, the case of Tamil Nadu clearly demonstrates that investments made in social welfare need not undermine the growth imperative as it was believed that such investments dried up resources for productive growth-enhancing investments. In fact, it would appear that investments in social sectors driven by democratising collective action have led to translation of such inputs into growth increases. Importantly, the improvements in growth have allowed the State to mobilise resources that could be channelled back into social sectors.” Source: Tamil Nadu Human Development Report, State Planning Commission, . Amartya Sen