A small state with an outsized appetite for silk

Kerala occupies a narrow strip of the south-western Malabar coast 38,863 square kilometres wedged between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, the twenty-second largest state in India by area and, since 1956, home to Malayalam-speaking districts merged into a single administration. It is a state of superlatives on the human side of the ledger: the highest literacy rate in the country, the highest life expectancy, the highest sex ratio, and the highest Human Development Index of any Indian state as of 2024. Its economy leans on rubber and pepper, on coconut, tea, coffee, cashew and spices, and on remittances sent home by a long-standing Gulf expatriate community.

Silk does not appear on that list of specialities, and for good reason - Kerala produces a tiny fraction of India's raw silk. Yet it is, per person, one of the country's heaviest consumers of silk products, and the state government has spent three decades trying to close the gap between how much silk Keralites buy and how much the state actually grows and reels.

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