KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS 7. Clean Kerala The first proof. Cleanliness is not the most important outcome, it is the most visible, and therefore the fastest way to prove the machine in public. Lakshmi runs a small tea shop on a lane in Fort Kochi. She has swept the front of her shop every morning for thirty years, and for thirty years the lane has been dirty by noon, because the man two doors down tips his waste into the open drain and the tourists drop their bottles where they stand. Lakshmi is not lazy and neither are her neighbours; they simply have no way to know that their effort adds up to anything, and no reason to believe the next person will do their part. This chapter is about what changes for Lakshmi when, for the first time, the lane keeps score: when her segregated bag is seen and counted, when her stretch of Fort Kochi can watch itself climbing past the next lane, and when the small daily act she has performed alone for thirty years finally becomes something her whole street does together. 111