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On 1 November 2025, the Government of Kerala announced that it has ended “extreme poverty” in the state. The achievement was widely welcomed by policy makers, civil society activists, and common people at large. Many observers pointed out that only a State like Kerala – given its sociopolitical legacy – could succeed in eliminating different forms of extreme poverty and deprivation that survive and persist in contemporary Indian society.
Kerala was globally known for its unique developmental experience from the 1970s itself. It was acclaimed then for attaining global standards in a range of social indicators even as its per capita income remained lower than in other Indian states. The low per capita income implied that Kerala’s “income poverty” was one of the highest among States. Let us first consider numbers from the National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO) consumption expenditure rounds. Few may know that the share of Kerala's population classified as “income poor” by the Government of India was 58.8% in 1973-74, which was higher than the corresponding national average (54.9%) or the corresponding shares in Uttar Pradesh (57.1%), Rajasthan (46.1%), Maharashtra (53.2%) or Gujarat (48.2%). In fact, the share of income poor in Kerala was closer to the share of income poor in Bihar (61.9%).
However, through the following decades, Kerala achieved an extraordinary success in reducing income poverty through the expansion and universalisation of social protection and social assistance measures. Per capita incomes rose from the 1980s due to a revival of growth in its productive sectors, particularly agriculture, and the helpful flow of remittances from its educated migrant population in West Asia. Thus, the share of income poor in Kerala fell to 12.7% in 1999-00 and 7.1% in 2011-12. Kerala had the lowest share of income poor in the population among all the major States in 2011-12; the corresponding national average was 21.9%.
The more recent consumer expenditure survey by the NSSO in 2022-23 adopted a revised methodology that essentially inflated consumption expenditure – and thus deflated the extent of poverty. Consequently, the results for 2022-23 are not comparable with the results for 2011-12. In 2022-23, the share of income poor in Kerala was recorded at 1.3%.
In the intervening period, when consumption expenditure surveys were not organised, the Government of India had begun to rely on a new indicator of poverty: the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) of the Niti Aayog. The share of the “multidimensionally poor” in Kerala’s population was 12.31% in 2005-06, which fell to 0.55% in 2019-21 (a discussion paper of the Niti Aayog places the extrapolated share for Kerala at 0.48% in 2022-23). The corresponding share at the national level was 15% in 2019-21. At the same time, the design of the MPI has come in for serious criticisms by scholars. According to them, MPI is more an indicator of deprivation than poverty, and adopts a complex and arbitrary method in the choice of indicators, their definitions, and the weights used to arrive at the final composite index.
Regardless of the criticisms of the data sets available from the NSSO and the Niti Aayog, two conclusions stand out. First, despite methodological infirmities, Kerala performed creditably in reducing overall levels of poverty and deprivation from the 1980s. Secondly, Kerala’s next task was to focus on addressing the persistence of extreme poverty in certain pockets and among certain sections – even if the numbers involved were small or relatively lower than in other states. The second conclusion formed the basis for the institution of the Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme (EPEP) in Kerala in 2021.
‘Poverty’ and ‘Extreme Poverty’
In 2021, the Government of Kerala was acutely aware that defining “extreme poverty” – leave alone defining “poverty” – was a contentious exercise. Given that poverty is a multidimensional concept, defining it in absolute terms was fraught with problems of subjectivity and methodological reductionism. There is an official methodology to compute poverty rates based on the monetisation of a normative quantum of food consumption. However, other dimensions of poverty excluded from the official methodology have been brought up time and again in critical debates. Alternative indicators like the Human Development Index (HDI) and the MPI were available, but these too were not free from criticisms. Finally, there was also the foundational argument that an objective definition of absolute poverty is an impossibility, and poverty can only be measured in relative terms.
Given such debates, public policy in Kerala has historically focussed on two strategies. First, it upheld the centrality of the universalised provision of social services – as opposed to targeted provision – which would pre-empt the possibilities of excluding the poor while trying to identify them. Secondly, it relied on different, but broad, definitions of the “poor” while designing policy for the most marginalised sections in the society via government schemes. Of course, one definition of poverty was always contestable vis-à-vis another definition of poverty, but the adoption of many broad definitions became necessary while designing a range of interventions that sought to address diverse forms of deprivations.
In short, different government interventions adopted different definitions of the “poor” or “poverty” to suit the requirements of each context and maximise the reach of each intervention.
In Kerala, there is a long history to policy that focussed efforts on the most marginalised sections in the society. The Kudumbashree scheme, instituted under the local self-governments in 1998, had “poverty eradication” as its founding theme. The Asraya scheme, instituted in 2002, followed the Kudumbashree scheme and focussed on the identification and rehabilitation of destitute families who were overlooked in the general poverty alleviation schemes. In Asraya, a family was identified as destitute if it qualified with respect to at least one among nine risk parameters. In 2017, the Asraya scheme was rechristened as a new and expanded scheme called “Destitute-Free Kerala” (or “Agathi Rahitha Keralam”). Here, those families were identified as destitute that satisfied seven out of nine criteria (plus an additional criterion). In both these schemes, the beneficiaries were identified by the local self-governments, and their lists had to be approved by the grama sabhas.
While the Asraya scheme and the Destitute-free Kerala scheme used a certain official methodology to identify the destitutes, other schemes of the government used different concepts and definitions. For instance, another concept of the “poor” came to be used with the introduction of the National Food Security Act of 2013. Here, 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population were classified as “priority”, who were eligible to receive subsidised food grains. From within the priority families, a smaller group was identified as the beneficiaries of the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY). Within the AAY, they were sometimes referred to as “poorest of the poor” families who were to, initially, receive rice and wheat at a subsidised rate of ₹3 and ₹2 per kg respectively; later, they received 35 kg of rice and wheat per month free of cost.
The eligibility conditions followed by the AAY and the Asraya/Destitute-Free Kerala schemes were vastly different. In the AAY, state governments were to identify beneficiaries based on a range of new indicators: landless agriculture labourers, marginal farmers, rural artisans/craftsmen, persons dependent on the informal sector, households headed by widows or terminally ill persons/disabled persons/persons aged 60 years or more, and primitive tribal households.
Most importantly, the eligibility conditions in AAY were designed with the limited intent of deciding if a family was to receive subsidised/free food grains or not – and not for any general analytical purpose to define or understand poverty. While the term “poorest of the poor” was used in the official AAY documents, no one ever considered the AAY families as poor in the sense that poverty was officially defined in India. The AAY was just one government scheme with some criteria laid out to identify its beneficiaries. The term “poorest of the poor” was more a broad description rather than an analytical category; the AAY beneficiaries were not officially classified anywhere as “extreme poor”. As a matter of fact, there is no official definition for the “extreme poor” in any official document of the Government of India.
For the record, the number of AAY families in 2021 in India was 2.38 crores and in Kerala was 5.96 lakhs. These figures translated to 9 crore persons in India and 25.59 lakh persons in Kerala. In addition, 1.57 lakh families were supported under the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme in 2021.
The EPEP scheme
It was at this stage – in 2021 – that the Government of Kerala decided to implement a new scheme – the EPEP – to eradicate “extreme poverty”. The implementation of the scheme was entrusted with the Local Self Government (LSG) department.
The motivation behind the EPEP was different from the objectives of either the Kudumbashree/Asraya/Destitute-Free Kerala schemes or the AAY. These existing schemes were to continue, and the families identified therein were to continue to receive their benefits. But it was recognised that there were many families that were extremely poor and/or in a dire destitute state, and who were not covered as beneficiaries in any of the existing schemes including the AAY and the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme. These were families or persons invisible to most poverty alleviation efforts. Thus, a new definition was formulated, and a new methodology was designed, to identify such families or persons and address their livelihood concerns. In the EPEP, they were called “extreme poor” families or persons.
It is natural that one may have questions on the new category of the “extreme poor”. Are these households that the EPEP called “extreme poor” the same as the “poorest of the poor” under the AAY or the beneficiaries of the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme? In reality, these were not overlapping categories. Just as the AAY used a certain definition to classify families as its beneficiaries for the distribution of subsidised food grains, or the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme used a certain definition to classify families as “destitute”, the EPEP used its own definition to classify families as “extreme poor”. All these were categories with different definitions crafted for the specific purpose of each scheme; in this case, the “extreme poor” was a category specifically defined for the purpose of the EPEP. The objective was to identify those marginalised families who were not covered by any of the existing schemes and bring them out of their dire state.
Who were these families? To begin with, of course, if a family or a person was an existing beneficiary of the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme, they were automatically excluded from the EPEP. The extreme poor were those who were entirely incapable of accessing even the fundamental survival requirements, such as food, clothing, shelter and income – i.e., the most destitute; the entirely unsupported; the thoroughly helpless. Official documents provide examples of such families or persons: homeless individuals; families where all members had disabilities; elderly persons who faced physical and mental challenges and lacked income or assets; families abandoned by their primary breadwinner and lacked income, assets, or capacity to work; and families consisting exclusively of bedridden patients who lacked assets or income.
Thus, “extreme poverty” had a specific conceptualisation in the EPEP: “extreme poverty constitutes the most severe manifestation of poverty. Those subsisting in extreme poverty cannot progress in life or transcend poverty without substantial governmental and societal support”. In contrast, the “general poor” could somehow sustain their everyday affairs with the little income or employment they had, and with assistance from one or the other government scheme. But the “extreme poor” were those who did not even have access to the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme. They faced a crisis of their existence. These were the sections targeted by the EPEP. It was announced in 2021 that all such “extreme poor” families or persons would be identified and brought out of that condition by 1st November 2025.
Addressing dimensions of deprivation
It must be clear, then, that the “extreme poor” under the EPEP had no overlap with the beneficiaries of the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme. Being a beneficiary of the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme made families or persons ineligible to be a beneficiary of the EPEP. The idea was to identify those families or persons whom the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme failed to include. But if a family or a person was included under the AAY or a government scheme in the spheres of food, housing, social security or palliative care, they were not automatically excluded from the EPEP. The reason was that while the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme provided a comprehensive coverage for the destitutes, access to one or two other schemes like the AAY or the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) addressed only a single dimension of deprivation leaving other dimensions unaddressed.
To begin with, the ward committees at the panchayat - or municipality - or corporation-level put together a long preliminary list of potential beneficiaries from their databases. Additional lists of potential beneficiaries were drawn from the Kudumbashree units and various charitable or non-governmental organisations in the region. This constituted a large-scale participatory nomination process into the EPEP. Focussed group discussions on the preliminary list of beneficiaries were held in each ward, which culminated in the preparation of a first list of 118,309 families. The deprivation criteria identified for the preparation of the first list were related to: (a) food security, (b) health protection, (c) income generation, and (d) safe and secure shelter.
From this list of potential beneficiaries, those who were included in the ongoing Destitute-Free Kerala scheme were excluded. This resulted in a second list of 87,158 families. The second list was placed and approved in the grama sabhas in every ward. Then, volunteers visited each of these 87,158 families and collected additional information with the help of a mobile application. More families were excluded from the second list as many were found to be beneficiaries of more than one existing poverty alleviation scheme. Thus, a third priority list of 73,747 families was prepared. Before the finalisation of the fourth and final list, one round of super-check was conducted with regard to 20% of the information collected with the mobile application. Finally, a confirmed list of 64,006 families was prepared, published for comments and approved once again in the grama sabhas. The 64,006 families consisted of 103,099 persons.
For each of the 64,006 families in the list, local self-governments and the Kudumbashree groups prepared micro plans. These micro plans were not of the one-size-fits-all variety but customised for the specific livelihood requirements of each identified household. For example, a family may have a very small plot of land that was inadequate to build a house. Such a family was provided with a larger plot of land. Another family may have a very specific requirement in the field of health, such as a major surgery or a wheelchair. In such a case, the surgery was organised, or a wheelchair was provided, free of cost. It was through the design and implementation of such micro plans that all the identified households were lifted from their dire situation into one of well-being, dignity and self-reliance. These were not just compassionate gestures but the outcome of a structured, accountable and democratic process of governance.
A response to the concerns
The following points may be made in lieu of a conclusion. These points would also constitute a response to the concerns raised from various quarters on Kerala's achievement.
Firstly, Kerala has made no claim that it has eliminated “poverty”. Kerala’s claim is that it has eliminated “extreme poverty”. For this, it followed a specific definition of the “extreme poor”; a participative process of identification; a scientific and customised design of relief or livelihood generation; and a democratic and decentralised system of monitoring. Updated details of the exercise were periodically published in various official reports, such as the annual Economic Review of the State Planning Board. The procedures followed to identify the 64,006 extreme poor families, including the steps followed in reducing the number of beneficiaries from 118,309 families, were described above and have been in the public domain from 2021.
Secondly, there is no official definition of extreme poverty in India today. The AAY has a list of identified beneficiaries for the purpose of subsidised or free provision of food grains. Being a beneficiary of the AAY does not classify a family or a person as “extreme poor”, as it covers only one dimension of deprivation i.e., food security. But the EPEP followed a specific definition and a set of multidimensional criteria to identify the “extreme poor”. The aim was to identify those suffering from the most severe manifestation of deprivation. Most importantly, if an AAY family was included as a beneficiary in EPEP, it would not exclude it from continuing to receive benefits under the AAY. The AAY would continue to be operational alongside the EPEP.
Thirdly, just as the AAY would continue to be operational, the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme would also continue to be operational with its coverage of 1.57 lakh families. Under the ongoing scheme, they are classified as “destitutes” or “agathi”. They will remain a distinct category alongside the 64,006 families identified by the EPEP as “extreme poor” and will continue to receive the benefits they currently access from the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme.
Fourthly, the initiation and completion of EPEP 1.0 says nothing about the success or failure of the ongoing Destitute-Free Kerala scheme. An evaluation of the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme may be organised at any point of time, but the fact remains that the 64,006 families identified under the EPEP do not overlap with the 1.57 lakh families covered under the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme. In this sense, the EPEP represented an expansion of the efforts under the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme.
Fifthly, the announcement on the elimination of extreme poverty was made after elaborate and democratic checks at the level of each local government. The EPEP aimed to converge the benefits of the existing central, State, and local-government schemes where possible. It also aimed to use fresh resources at the State and local-government level where existing schemes were found to be inadequate to address the situation in each household. The preparation of customised micro plans followed such a principle. Each local government has a comprehensive report of the activities undertaken in their jurisdiction as part of the EPEP. A converged state-level list of the beneficiaries and the micro plans are also available but have not been published due to privacy concerns.
Sixthly, given the wide coverage of Dalit and Adivasi households in the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme, the shares of each caste group in the list of 64,006 families need not correspond with their shares in the population or the extent of poverty within them. Indeed, there were only 6,400 Adivasi families in the list of 64,006 families. The reason is that Adivasi families are comprehensively covered by various social security schemes of the Government of Kerala as well as the Destitute-Free Kerala scheme. The figure of 6,400 families neither shows an exclusion of Adivasi families from the EPEP nor must it stem from a view that all Adivasi families in Kerala are automatically “extreme poor”.
Seventhly, the preparation of the first list of EPEP beneficiaries followed a participatory nomination process and was, admittedly, not based on a census survey. The nomination process was open and did not imply any ceiling on the number of families to be nominated from each local government. These nominations were combined with the recommendations from Kudumbashree groups as well as other lists received by the ward committees. Each stage in this process until a final list was approved has been officially documented and is freely available for public scrutiny.
Finally, some have raised the curious question of whether female workers employed in various schemes of the Government of India – and are denied minimum wages – must not be considered as automatically extremely poor. For instance, an ASHA worker in Kerala receives an average daily wage of close to ₹450-₹470 over a month. On the other hand, the average per capita consumption expenditure, fixed as the official Tendulkar poverty line, is only around ₹60-₹70 per day. Indeed, the provision of an assured minimum wage for ASHA workers must be raised nationally as a political demand. There is also a strong case to classify ASHA workers as “poor”, as many studies that reject the Tendulkar poverty line and adopt a minimum wage-based poverty line already do. But the denial of a minimum wage does not qualify one to be classified as “extreme poor”; the definitions and criteria followed in the EPEP were different.
Poverty elimination is a continuous process in history – always dynamic and never static. This is so not just because it is difficult to objectively define poverty but also because vulnerable families will fall back into poverty in the event of livelihood shocks. Further, there may be more households who could be defined as “extreme poor” if the government decides to expand the criteria. All these reveal the need to formulate an EPEP 2.0, which must be a larger scheme with improved convergence and expanded benefits. All these are widely accepted positions. But to raise unfounded criticisms and poorly informed questions on EPEP 1.0 shows only disdain and contempt for an extraordinarily commendable democratic exercise and the politics that informed it.
(R. Ramakumar is a Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and a member of the Kerala State Planning Board)