KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS 25. Why this might fail Every chapter so far has argued that this could work. This one argues the opposite, as forcefully as an honest critic could, because a reader deserves to see the strongest case against the idea stated plainly rather than buried in qualifications. Nothing here is softened. If any of these holds, the framework fails, and no amount of the preceding argument saves it. The book has been candid about risks in the way proposals usually are: naming them, then immediately offering a mitigation. This chapter does not do that. It states the ways this could fail at full strength and leaves them standing, because a reader weighing whether to spend public attention and public money on the idea is entitled to the prosecution’s case, not just the defence’s. Some of what follows has a partial answer elsewhere in the book; a fair critic would say the answers are promises, and promises are not evidence. The behaviour might simply not transfer The entire edifice rests on one assumption: that the social feedback loop which spread literacy will spread waste segregation, careful driving, and water conservation. There is a real chance it will not. Reading is aspirational, visibly tied to a child’s 307