After the Kerala government declared itself free from extreme poverty on November 1, poverty is back again in public discussion. Never before has it become such a widely debated topic in Kerala and perhaps in India. Kerala’s declaration marked the culmination of a massive four-year endeavour titled the Extreme Poverty Eradication Project (EPEP).
As part of this programme, the government identified around 64,000 households in the state deemed to be ‘extremely poor’ through a strenuous mission involving multiple government agencies and field level actors, perhaps the first such coordinated exercise of its scale anywhere in the world. While the EPEP as a scheme has been widely appreciated, Kerala’s claim of having become free from extreme poverty has also invited criticism. In this backdrop, I want to clarify certain aspects of the debate.
The first major question that arises is whether Kerala is truly free from extreme poverty. The answer depends on how we define poverty. How it is defined and measured determines not only who gets counted but also who gets left behind. The Kerala government’s definition of ‘extremely poor’ used for this exercise is debatable. It would be more accurate to call it a ‘targeted poverty upliftment’ programme.
The programme identified families most in need of government support through a multi-stage process and shortlisted 64,006 households involving 1,03,099 individuals who were unlikely to rise out of poverty without state intervention.
Interestingly, many of the targeted households did not possess basic government documents such as ration or Aadhaar card, and as a result, they had not been benefiting from government schemes. The local self-governments then prepared customised micro plans for each of these households based on their specific vulnerabilities.
However, targeting this many households with specific interventions is only a necessary step, not a sufficient one, for eradicating extreme poverty. Even so, the programme has created an important social safety net for these households.
Identifying and targeting the poor is never a mechanical exercise — it involves difficult choices about what kind of deprivation we choose to see. Within the limited definition adopted by the Kerala government, the claim of having eradicated extreme poverty is overstated.
The deeper point, however, is that poverty, or the absence of it, is never a permanent condition. It is recurrent, cyclical, and deeply tied to the rhythms of the economy. A flood, a pandemic like COVID-19, or policy shocks such as demonetisation can upend lives overnight — pushing those who were once secure into poverty and the poor into destitution. To assume that households lifted out of poverty today will remain there tomorrow is to ignore how fragile economic security has become for large sections of society.
What is missing in most official narratives — including the present one — is precisely this dynamic understanding of poverty. Poverty is not just about the absence of income or assets, it is also about relative deprivation, which looks different across time and place.
Decades ago, economists VM Dandekar and N Rath famously estimated in their 1971 book Poverty in India that nearly 90% of Kerala’s population was poor, based on uniform nutritional norms applied across India. The finding was puzzling. As statistician and Marxian political economist N Krishnaji noted in 2007, “Open signs of extreme poverty and destitution such as pot-bellied children and those with running noses, the sores of the unwashed, swarms of beggars in public spaces in urban areas, and so on, all too visible in many other parts of the country, were hard to find in the towns in Kerala even in those times.”
The root of the mystery, as it turned out, was largely statistical. A study done by the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum in collaboration with the United Nations in 1975 showed that the high poverty figure was inflated because the calorie norms used were inappropriate for Kerala’s population and workforce. Earlier surveys had also failed to account for the extensive consumption of home-grown foods like tapioca, vegetables, and fruits that were staples of the Kerala diet.
No matter how detailed a government’s definition of poverty, it is always difficult to apply it across time. If poverty is understood as the lack of basic necessities, what counts as ‘basic’ keeps changing. A mobile phone that once seemed a luxury in the 1990s is now indispensable. During the pandemic, for instance, many students were cut off from education simply because they lacked a smartphone or an internet connection. Poverty, in that sense, is time-relative — but most official methods of identifying the poor are not.
Political economists have long argued that poverty cannot be fully eradicated. Barbara Harriss-White, writing in Economic and Political Weekly in 2006, observed that poverty is continually being created and recreated under the institutions of capitalism. She noted that while states may try to mitigate poverty, they must first understand the processes that create it and the sometimes perverse effects of their own mitigating strategies.
The current debate also highlights how poverty is shaped by both structural and individual factors. In Kerala, Dalits, Adivasis, and fisherfolk remain most vulnerable to economic shocks. Their poverty is not only about income but also about historically constructed exclusion from opportunities and resources.
There are also many instances where poverty arises from downward mobility due to individual circumstances, such as personal crises or sudden financial upsets. The story of Unnikrishnan from Kerala’s Malappuram reported by The News Minute is a reminder that poverty is never too far even for those who appear economically secure today. Once a heavy vehicle driver in Qatar and Dubai, the owner of a jewellery shop used to lead a comfortable life with his wife and four daughters. But a family dispute followed by a long court case took everything from him. He became bankrupt and was forced to live alone in a shed. Today, he runs a small tea shop under the EPEP.
Saji from Thiruvananthapuram faced a similar fate. Once employed in Kuwait, he had built a stable life for his family until he sustained severe injuries to his leg in a road accident. Years of costly treatment drained his savings, forcing him to sell his home and property. Estranged from his family and unable to work, he now lives alone in a small shed. While he had a ration card and other documents, he could not cook for himself, and often went hungry.
Many such stories reveal a deeper truth: poverty is not always inherited or straightforward. It can be sudden, unpredictable, and deeply personal, turning security into hardship in the space of a single event.
Anirudh Krishna, professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, in his works based on studies from four countries, including India, found that illness and healthcare costs are a major cause of people slipping into poverty. Many households remain ‘one illness away’ from falling back into poverty. Anirudh’s research shows that poverty is created at the same time as it is reduced. While some people escape poverty, others descend into it, and some remain trapped for long periods. Scholars therefore argue for both preventive and supportive social policies to address poverty effectively.
Anthropologist and professor of international studies John Harriss in a 2006 article titled ‘Bringing Politics Back into Poverty Analysis’ argued that mainstream poverty research had generally failed to address the dynamic, structural, and relational factors that give rise to poverty. As a result, discussions on poverty have become narrowly focused on the technicalities of measurement rather than the larger political economy that shapes people’s lives.
One positive outcome of the current debate is that it has moved the idea of poverty beyond academic discussions and into the realm of public political engagement. Discussions on poverty need to move beyond individual deprivation and engage with the deeper inequalities in the distribution of power, wealth, and opportunity.
While Kerala’s claim of having eradicated extreme poverty demands serious questioning, what the government has achieved through its participatory and locally driven approach remains commendable, reminding us that building state capacity from below should begin here, for eradication is never the end of the story.
CR Yadu is a researcher working with Water, Environment, Land and Livelihood (WELL) Labs, Bengaluru.
Views expressed are the author’s own.