Visiting International Jesuit to Talk about Successful Development Model in Small Indian Province

WORCESTER, Mass. – Rev. M.K. George, S.J., International Visiting Jesuit Fellow in the sociology and anthropology department, will give a talk on the celebrated Kerala development model, titled "Learning from 'God's own Country,' Kerala, India: a Development Model and a Paradox,” on Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 4 p.m. in Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a welcome reception for Fr. George in Ciampi Hall on campus.

“The talk will address the fact that a small state, with slow economic growth has achieved unbelievable results in areas such as literacy, life expectancy, morality rates and other indicators of development, on par with the developed world,” explains Fr. George. “So much so, in development discourse, it is called the ‘Kerala Model of Development.’”

The talk will focus on four main points; the rationale for calling the Kerala Experience a model; the factors that made it a model; if the model can be replicable elsewhere in the world; and the current state of the model.

Fr. George, a Jesuit of the Kerala Province in India, is a social scientist at Loyola College of Social Sciences in Kerala, India, where he has taught for the past 22 years.  He earned a master’s degree in andragogy (adult education) from the University of Madras, a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Kerala, and a Ph.D. in education from Pune University in India. At Holy Cross he is teaching courses on the comparative sociology of education in India and the U.S. and urbanization in the developing world. He is currently performing research on the comparison of family dynamics in U.S. and India.