KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS The evidence base for the seven programs Before the programs, the proof that each addresses a real and measured problem. This chapter gathers the hard numbers in one place, so that the chapters that follow can be read as responses to documented needs rather than to assertions. Each program in this part begins from a problem that is real, large, and measured by someone other than the author. This short chapter assembles those measurements in one place, with their sources, so the reader can see the evidence base whole before meeting the programs one at a time. Every figure here recurs, cited, in the relevant program chapter; collecting them up front is a way of putting the substantiation before the argument rather than after it. The seven problems, in numbers The table below states, for each program, the documented problem it addresses and the public source for the figure. These are not the program’s claimed benefits; they are the independently measured size of the gap each program exists to close. 107