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INTRODUCTION: Health promoting school (HPS) is a holistic concept where health and learning coexist. The objective of this study was to assess the health promoting standards of schools in Kerala. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was designed in Kerala, India, with schools in Kerala as a study unit. A questionnaire which consisted of 37 items across eight domains of the HPS concept was developed and validated. The schools were then graded into compliant and not compliant categories based on scores obtained. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was also done. RESULTS: Of 120 schools, 90.8% were compliant toward health education domain and only 8.3% were compliant with nutrition services. Majority of schools showed compliance with the other six domains. Average overall scores were 153 (58.8%) with the equal number of schools in both compliant and not compliant categories. There was a significant association between health education and physical education domain with respect to the type of school, i.e., privately managed had six times more chances of being compliant toward health education domain compared to government schools (odds ratio [OR] 6.05; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.10–33.29). Hence, also private schools had two times more chance of being compliant toward physical education compared to government schools (OR 2.52; 95% CI 1.0 – 4.32). Physical education domain showed a significant association with respect to geographic region, i.e., the schools in North Kerala were found to be three times more compliant compared to South Kerala (OR 3.48; 95% CI 1.05–11.53). CONCLUSIONS: Despite the good health and social indicators in Kerala, there is a deficiency in schools promoting health of children. A coordinated effort by the government and the education system can convert existing schools into health promoting.

In India, the state of Kerala is considered as Gods own country. This Southern most state of India was cited by Amartya Sen as the model of Development, which shines in various aspects like literacy, secularism, technological pursuits, life expectancy and political upsurge. At the same time it bears impediments with respect to unemployment among educated youth, alcoholism, divorce and family breakdown. Despite these, another factor that can be added to the dread list is the spiralling suicide rate. The latest figures from the National Crime Records Bureau show that 8,431 people killed themselves during 2010; the State accounted for 6.2 per cent of the total number of suicides in the country. The NCRB data also showed that the national average suicide rate was 11.2 per lakh population during 2010, which was marginally lower than 11.4 per lakh population during 2009 (NCRB Report 2010). Though Keralas per centage share has come down, there has been an increase in the rate of suicide from 24.6 per lakh population in 2009 to 25.3 per lakh population in 2010 which is two times higher than national average; which means one suicide per hour. In fact, 2010 has had the dubious distinction of having witnessed the highest number of suicides in the last five years (NCRB reports 2010). Police sources add that 36 cases of suicide have already registered in the first two months of the current year. For each completed suicide there are 20 times more suicidal attempts. Each suicide, on an average leaves 20 times more people in severe distress (NCRB 2011). Maithri, an NGO in Kerala says that around 100 people attempt suicide every day in Kerala, of whom 25 are successful. More men kill themselves than women, the ratio being 7:3 and 80 per cent of the suicides are by those in the 15 to 59 age group.

An inevitable consequence of demographic transition in the Indian state of Kerala is the rapidly declining school enrolment in government-funded lower primary schools. So far studies dealing with demographic transition and falling school enrolment concluded that fertility decline is the sole reason for this. A major limitation of these studies is that they focused only on students enrolled in schools affiliated to the Directorate of Public Instruction without accounting for the enrolments of parallel fee-charging private unaided English-medium schools in the state. Based on the enrolment statistics of the Directorate of Public Instruction, studies argued that fertility decline is the main reason for school enrolment decline, leading to the emergence of uneconomic schools. Our analysis shows that aside from fertility decline, the poor quality of teaching in government-funded schools and the resultant exodus to private unaided English-medium schools is significant in accounting for decline in enrolments. The retention of students in government-funded schools can be sustained only by improving the quality of school education.

AbstractAttempts at measuring decentralisation are still in an underdeveloped stage. The reason for this lies in the failure to devise common standards against which measurement is possible and the lack of consensus about the very meaning of decentralisation. An attempt to measure decentralisation was made by Vengroff and Ben Salem in the context of Tunisia nearly a decade ago. An expanded and adapted version of this model is used to measure decentralisation in Kerala using the same judgmental criteria that they used after involving a panel of nine experts. These experts had a fairly good understanding of the practice of decentralisation to score on the basis of the adapted criteria. An ideal form of decentralisation envisaged in this measurement exercise is devolution. It has been found that on a scale ranging between 0 and 5, the state of Kerala obtained a score of 2.00 in spite of the fact that the investment that the state had made in decentralisation has no parallels anywhere in the developing countries. Such a low score, despite the much publicised campaign for decentralisation, was due to the focus on planning rather than on decentralisation issues. Attempts to measure decentralisation will not only enable us to develop more contextually valid measures of decentralisation, but also contribute to the clarification of the concept of decentralisation, particularly by identifying aspects neglected hitherto. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

India is growing old! The stark reality of the ageing scenario in India is that there are 77 million older persons in India today, and the number is going to grow to 177 million in another 25 years. Kerala, a relatively small Southern state in India, is experiencing the last stages of demographic transition that can be compared to the demographic trend in many aging European countries. Kerala has the highest percentage of elderly population (12.6 %), higher than the national average. Though life expectancy has been increasing steadily in Kerala for the last four decades, the retirement age of the state government employees remained at 55 years until 2011 when it was increased to 56 years. As retirement has become an essential life-stage in older adults, adapting well to retired lifestyle is crucial for long term life-satisfaction of the elderly. Kerala has four lakh pensioners and 12 lakh social security beneficiaries. Though some welfare measures have been taken for the aged persons, these measures are not fool proof. The present paper attempts to capture the dimensions and issues of post retirement adaptation of the elderly in Kerala.Quantitative data were collected from 300 retired elderly from the selected households. The problem is approached from the perspective of changes happening in their social position and relations within their family. The majority of the respondents held that they get the expected care from their spouses after retirement. Though this is a positive sign, the fact that around one tenth of them do not get the expected care invites attention to the emerging situation that the elderly in the state are likely to face more seriously in the coming days.

This article compares the ideological renewal of the Communist Parties in Kerala, India and South Africa during the 1990s. Based on archival research of Party documents, the article follows the Parties' ideological journeys that led them to theorize remarkably similar visions of `socialist democracy' around four common themes: participatory democracy; a new developmental state; the coexistence of capitalism and socialism; and the extension of civil society and the State in the economy.