Kerala, washed by the tepid waters of the Arabian Sea on the Malabar Coast, is the smallest and one of the poorest of India's 13 states; it is also one of the best educated (literacy is estimated at 52%). Education and poverty go badly together: in cities like Cochin and Trivandrum, some college graduates work as messenger boys for $5 a month, others as dhobis (laundrymen) for 20ยข a day.
India's Communists paid special attention to this combination of circumstances during the general-election campaigns. "Many of you are college-educated," cried Communist candidates,...
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