Whats New: Check EVENTS to sign up for art workshops, Janal Talks, Film Screenings & More! Whats New: Check EVENTS to sign up for art workshops, Janal Talks, Film Screenings & More! 
22nd November, 2025
6 pm, Saturday
Kerala Museum, Kochi
in English
SPEAKER
NS Madhavan
(Author and columnist)
ABOUT THE LECTURE
When Robin Jeffrey published Politics, Women and Well-Being (1992), he traced Kerala’s remarkable social achievements to a distinctive blend of politics, education, and women’s social participation. His “Kerala model” suggested that social reform, rather than wealth, could produce well-being. Three decades later, this Janal lecture by N.S.Madhavan re-examines those foundations. Have Kerala’s politics and gendered welfare continued to sustain Jeffrey’s vision in an age of migration, remittances, and market liberalisation? Or has the model become more myth than method?
Drawing on developments since the 1990s—the rise of the care economy, transformations in education and family, and new vulnerabilities—the talk asks how far Kerala still exemplifies the humane, politically mobilised society Jeffrey described. It offers both a return to his questions and a contemporary reflection on what continues to make Kerala distinctive—and what may no longer fit the idea of a “model.”
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
N.S. Madhavan is an award-winning author and columnist known for his incisive social commentary on contemporary issues, and vivid Malayalam fiction writing. Celebrated for his work ‘Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal,’ his widely-read stories and novels produced over a four-decade-long career continue to revitalise the ideological and stylistic landscape of Malayalam literature.
