Best, yes, but not quite good enough

At 80, Chathy has forgotten what it means to be seen. She lies on a sack spread on the damp mud floor of her hut in Melekakkupady, a hamlet in Kerala’s largest tribal area, Attappady, in Palakkad district. The roof leaks. The air smells of smoke and wet earth.

The daylight that enters through the open doorway falls weakly on the floor beside her. Her son, Aneesh, leaves before dawn for daily-wage work. He earns enough to buy rice for a day or two. “They said Kerala has no poor left,” he mutters, staring at the cracked wall. “But look at us… is this not poverty?” In the survey for the Extreme Poverty Eradication Project (EPEP), launched in 2021, families like Chathy’s should have been counted among the 64,006 households officially identified as ‘extremely poor’. But she is not on any list.

“We told the officials about her many times,” says B. Udayakumar, a tribal activist in Attappady. “They said she is not eligible because her son earns something. So she lies there all day, alone, uncounted and uncared for.”

The widow without a card

In Pudur panchayat, also in Attappady, 39-year-old Asha keeps a plastic folder close to her chest. It contains applications for a ration card, a death certificate and two rejection letters. Her husband, Murugan, died of cancer. Because he died at home and never had an Aadhaar card, the authorities refused to issue a death certificate.

Without that, she cannot apply for a ration card. Without a ration card, she cannot access subsidised food. “My three children are growing up hungry,” she says quietly. “They told me I am not on the extreme poverty list because I applied once under another scheme. But I got nothing.”

Every door she knocks on leads to another list, every list to another office. “They say Kerala is free of extreme poverty,” she says, shaking her head. “Maybe they mean some other Kerala.”

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The man who lives in half a house

In Kakkupady, another hamlet in Attappady, 62-year-old Kakki Sivan lives in what remains of a twin house built decades ago by a government agency. The family living in the house adjoining his demolished their portion and built a new home nearby. Kakki stayed in the half that remained, a 150 sq. ft shell with no toilet, no window and a wall that leans precariously.

He has been told he is not eligible for a new house because his name appears on another family’s ration card. “My brother lives in another hamlet,” he says. “He gets the ration. We get nothing.” Across Kerala’s tribal settlements, from Attappady to Wayanad and Kannur, from Idukki’s slopes to the coastal stretches that are home to the vulnerable fishers of Thiruvananthapuram, there are hundreds of similar stories. They remain invisible amid the applause surrounding a political declaration marketed as a global milestone.

Red-letter day?

On 1 November, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan convened a special one-day sitting of the state assembly. The session lasted only a few hours. When he rose to speak, the chief minister said, “Through systematic interventions and people’s participation, every family once identified as ‘extremely poor’ now lives in dignity. We have ensured that no one in our state goes hungry or homeless again.”

The Opposition boycotted the session. The Congress-led United Democratic Front called it “a stage-managed political drama”. That afternoon, the same declaration was repeated at a grand public event at Thiruvananthapuram’s Central Stadium. The stage glowed red and gold. Choirs sang. Fireworks marked the moment.

Film superstar Mammootty, dressed in a white mundu and kurta, stood beside the chief minister as the statement was read out again. But outside the secretariat, the scene was starkly different.

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The ASHA workers’ protest

The ASHA workers—women who led Kerala’s pandemic response, stars of the state’s celebrated public health system—had been on the streets for months demanding fair wages and social security. Their agitation, initially an indefinite strike in front of the secretariat, has become a district-level campaign.

Faced with government indifference even after protracted negotiations, they decided to take their protest to every ward and panchayat. With local body elections approaching, their movement has taken on the shape of a grassroots campaign against the government’s apathy.

“We will take this fight to every panchayat before the polls,” said Prameela, an ASHA worker from Nemom. “This government celebrates poverty eradication while keeping us—the caregivers of the poor—in poverty.” Their demand was simple: a minimum wage of Rs 750 per day and social security coverage. Despite their crucial role during the pandemic and in poverty surveys, they earn a measly Rs 7,000–9,000 a month, and no pension or insurance.

For the LDF (Left Democratic Front) government, the 1 November announcement was the culmination of a four-year mission to identify and rehabilitate families living in extreme poverty. Ward-level committees surveyed a reported 1.18 lakh households, and after verification, classified 64,006 households and 1,03,099 individuals as extremely poor. Each family, as per local self-government minister M.B. Rajesh, received a tailor made micro-plan covering housing, food, health, education and livelihood.

But not everyone believes these claims or numbers. Economist K.P. Kannan, one of Kerala’s foremost authorities on social development, called the claim “statistically fragile and morally hasty”.

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“The government says Kerala has only 64,006 extremely poor families, but the state’s own Economic Review admits that nearly 5.92 lakh families hold Antyodaya Anna Yojana cards [issued to the ‘poorest of the poor’ households in India to help them access subsidised foodgrains under the Public Distribution System].

Are we to believe that five lakh families magically beat poverty in three years?” Most families listed were elderly, single or destitute individuals, Kannan points out. “That is destitution, not structural poverty. The working poor—the insecure, indebted, underemployed—are invisible in these statistics.

Poverty has changed form; it hides behind wages that do not sustain and debts that never end.” Now that the state has declared itself poverty-free, the Centre might stop allocating funds for targeted welfare schemes, “which will hurt precisely those who still need it most,” he warns.

The other faces of poverty

Kerala ranks #1 among Indian states in the NITI Aayog’s national multidimensional poverty index (MPI), with a headcount ratio of 0.55 per cent, the lowest in India. For context, that ratio for election-bound Bihar is the highest in the country—at 33.8 per cent.

MPI measures deprivation across 12 indicators in three dimensions—health (nutrition, child/ adolescent mortality, maternal health), education (years of schooling, attendance) and standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, bank accounts). A person is MPI-poor if deprived in at least a third of these weighted indicators.

But public health expert S.S. Lal warns that these statistics hide ‘the new poverty’. “Kerala has reduced visible poverty, not vulnerability,” he says. “People here do not beg, they borrow. Poverty hides behind EMIs and credit cards. One illness, one flood, one job loss—and a family collapses.”

A 2024 study by the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation found that 22 per cent of Kerala’s workforce is in low-wage, insecure employment; among women, that figure is 28 per cent. Youth unemployment stands at 13.1 per cent, twice the national average.

“These numbers define the Kerala of today,” says Lal, implying that the government’s triumphant narrative obscures the state’s reality.

Inside the secretariat, officials privately admit the ‘extreme poverty’ announcement was strategically timed. “The Chief Minister wanted to announce it on ‘Kerala Piravi’ [1 November 1956, otherwise known as Kerala Day, marks the birth of the state of Kerala],” says a senior bureaucrat who was part of the review team.

“We were told to finish the documentation fast.” Kerala’s achievements in reducing multidimensional poverty are real. But its claim that no one in the state now lives in extreme poverty is an exaggeration driven by politics. Its achievements in health and education, through decades of progressive governance, are no doubt enviable, but official statistics mask persistent fragilities.