The article critiques the “Kerala model,” which holds up Kerala State, India, as a model that may be emulated by other developing countries, on account of its remarkable advances in social development. The dominant left in Kerala has often claimed credit for such achievements, leading to its glorification as a model for social democracy. This uncritical adoration, which has acquired the status of national commonsense in Kerala, has reduced marginalized people in Kerala, particularly the lower-caste Dalits and tribals, to a state of abjection. The present effort seeks to show how the marginalization of these social groups and their confinement to governmental categories was not a historical accident, but the effect of political strategies on the left that led to their exclusion from productive resources, and of the assertion of upper-caste agency in left-led anticaste struggle.

This article is based on mixed‐method field research in Adimalathura, a coastal village in south Kerala, India, which has been identified as one of the poorest communities in the area. Although this fishing community has been facing severe ecological challenges, including massive resource depletion, it has been able to put up stiff resistance to impending dispossession in the face of a large port project actively promoted by the government, most major political parties and globalized capital. This article traces the history of public action and work in Adimalathura since the early 20th century, and reflects on its significance in the context of the present resistance. It examines the role of women in bolstering the community in times of severe challenges to men's livelihoods, and highlights the importance of women's provisioning work. Ultimately, the author cautions against exaggerating community strength and the capacities of the women even when they are able to utilize available resources competently.

In late nineteenth century Malayalee society, the project of social reforming was caught up in the concern to evolve an alternative to established Jati-based mode of ordering human beings. The criticism by the missionaries of the CMS, LMS and the Basel Mission of the established order in Malayalee society as entirely unnatural and inimical to (universal) human values was heard right through the nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, the nascent modern educated of Tiruvitamkoor, Kochi and Malabar were beginning to echo such viewpoints actively. The terms on which these groups perceived their identities and assessed local society were more or less set by colonial sociology and the codification efforts by both imperial and local powers. Interpreting locally existing jati in terms of the construction of ‘caste’ (i.e., ‘Nair’, ‘Ezhava’, ‘Araya’ etc.) these groups sought to form organisations for the reform of caste, to transform these into full-fledged modern communities.

In this paper, historical analysis and qualitative fieldwork are combined to question the belief that recent efforts in Kerala to induct women into local governance and mobilize poor women into self-help groups implies continuity with the earlier history of women's mobility into the spaces of paid work and politics. For a longer view, the histories of gender-coding of spaces and of women's mobility into paid work and politics are examined. In the twentieth century, while the subversive potential of paid work was contained through casting it within 'feminine terms', politics was unquestionably 'unfeminine space'. However, recent efforts have not advanced women's mobility in any simple sense. The subversive potential of women's mobility towards work in self-help groups is still limited. In local governance, unlike the experience of an earlier generation of women, the ability to conform to norms of elite femininity now appears to be a valuable resource.

This paper looks at the role of gender in the shaping and exercise of political authority. Its empirical focus is a slum in central Trivandrum, Kerala's capital city, which is undergoing a phased process of formalisation and rebuilding funded through a flagship Indian national programme, the JNNURM. The upgrade project should offer a dense network of 'invited' spaces for female participation within urban governance, both through women's presence within democratically elected municipal councils, and the deliberate linking of its implementation to Kudumbashree, Kerala's network of womenonly neighbourhood groups that are responsible for implementing various antipoverty interventions throughout the state. Drawing on oral histories of the slum's evolution, interviews with project participants, and detailed ethnographic observation, we highlight the contests over identifying the list of JNNURM beneficiaries who would ultimately be granted a government-built flat at the project's completion. This key task in the project's implementation has been devolved to the local level, and therefore offers important insights into the practical efficacy of these invited spaces. The contests over this list show how 'actually existing' urban governance unfolds, and in particular highlight the interplay of formal and informal practices at work in 'fixing' a list that had local legitimacy. They also illustrate the ways in which power and authority are contested, and the role gender plays within performances of leadership. Women's political agency and efficacy are hampered both by Kerala's restrictive gender norms and by the high stakes and highly masculinist struggles present within its urban politics. The paper's theoretical contribution is to broaden our conceptualisation of leadership and claims making in the Global South, and within this to pay proper attention to the gendered nature of political space. This paper examines the interplay of gender and political authority in Kulamnagar, (1) a slum community located near to the centre of Kerala's capital city, Trivandrum. It examines a sensitive moment in the community's development: the demolition and replacement of a section of the settlement with upgraded, formal housing to be distributed to those residents deemed to be legitimate and deserving recipients. This marks the third phase of a construction programme which began in 2008 and which has been conducted through the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), India's flagship programme for urban (1) Within this paper, pseudonyms are used for all individuals, the NGO locally involved in slum redevelopment, and for 'Kulamnagar' itself.