KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS rather than sit forever on the budget. You would not be asked to fund a technology in perpetuity, and you would not be asked to create a body that threatens any of your existing departments; the design makes the departments it touches look more effective, not less, which is why they tend to become its allies rather than its opponents. The political cost is smaller still, because the design protects you from the way ventures like this usually fail. You would not be staking your name on a single large, irreversible bet. You would be authorising a small first step, with the result independently assessed and published, and a written agreement to stop if it does not work. If it succeeds, the credit is visible, public, and yours. If it does not, you will have spent little, learned in the open, and stopped early, which is a far better story than a large failure discovered late. The downside is bounded by design; the upside is the kind that defines a government. The honest risk It would be dishonest to put only the prize before you. The whole idea rests on one assumption: that the same force which once made reading spread across this state, neighbours seeing and encouraging neighbours, will work for behaviours like clean streets and safe driving. There is good reason to believe it will, and the first small step is designed precisely to test it cheaply before anything 12