KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS What comparable efforts teach Rainwater-harvesting mandates and subsidies are not new and Tamil Nadu’s well-known harvesting mandate and Kerala’s own subsidy schemes have built large numbers of structures. The recurring finding across these efforts is the gap this program is built to close: structures get built when there is money or a mandate, and then quietly fail when no one is accountable for their survival. Studies of harvesting and recharge programs repeatedly note that built-asset counts overstate functioning-asset counts, sometimes badly. The persistence check is the direct answer to that documented failure mode. The wider lesson from community water management, from watershed programs across India to international community-based natural-resource schemes; is that durable maintenance follows from local ownership and visible standing, not from oneoff payments. This program encodes exactly that: the reward, the leaderboard position, and the patron’s renewed sponsorship all depend on the asset still working next dry season, which aligns the incentive with the maintenance rather than the construction. 144