There is a story that, a few decades ago, used to make audiences at development conferences visibly uncomfortable. A researcher would ask: in which city is infant mortality higher – Thiruvananthapuram, capital of one of India’s poorer states, or New York City, in one of the world’s wealthiest countries?

The answer, documented by economists including Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze in their work on human development, was New York.

Kerala’s decades of public investment in health, education and women’s empowerment had produced outcomes that shamed far richer places. It was, and remains, one of the most striking arguments ever made for what committed socialist governments can do with limited means.

I was reminded of this recently – not by a seminar paper, but by potholes on the street where I live.

Some years ago, a colleague of mine from the Centre for Development Studies, who was serving as finance minister of Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government, briefly held additional charge of the Public Works Department.

He wasted no time. He put the PWD on a campaign footing: photograph every pothole, set targets, repair them fast. As a finance minister he understood the numbers, but he also understood something simpler and more powerful – that every cyclist, motorcyclist, and car driver...

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