I might be biased but the poverty alleviation work done in Himachal Pradesh (and also Tamil Nadu and Haryana to a certain extent) are much more impressive than Kerala, which already had higher than average developmental indicators at independence.
When Himachal became a state in 1971, there were only 1,000 MI of roads total, and the literacy rate was around 6-7%, yet by 2023, the literacy rate has reached 82.8% (it's near 100% for those born in the 1990s onwards), rural healthcare and electrification has reached even tiny hamlets on the Tibetan plateau, and there is a massive biopharmaceutical industry with a annual revenue roughly comparable to Telangana despite being a much smaller state (6 million Himachalis).
Tamil Nadu and Haryana are 2 other states that made amazing leaps from undeveloped to industrialized.
Here's are good reads on the governance apparatus in Himachal:
https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Asian_Survey_550...
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...
> The gods of this region are closely associated with the land itself; and these gods, nature and humans are intimately connected
While plenty of people are religious, everyone there know it's a mix of climate change and unchecked construction and logging mafias destroying the local ecology and leaving it ripe for massive disasters.
For example, take a look at the recent floods in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu Kashmir. It was triggered by climate change but further exacerbated by a mix of shoddy construction, unpermitted construction of hotels on ridge edges, riverbed mining (done by both the INC and BJP - both Agnihotri and Satti are part of the mining mafia back in Una) and the Indian Govt building highways in a manner that works for plains, not high altitude ridges. [0][1][2]
The scary thing is, Himachal Pradesh is pretty well governed by developing country standards - it's developmental indicators match up with Kerala and most Provinces within China.
Imagine if climate change disasters and unchecked development happens in weakly governed areas (eg. The Medicane in Libya - 7 dead in Türkiye, 10,000-100,000 dead in Libya)
[0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/himachal-floods-a-perfect...
[1] - https://theprint.in/india/himachal-to-consider-controlled-ri...
[2] - https://theprint.in/india/as-rains-kill-20-in-himachal-resid...