Beyond statistics: The more important lesson from Kerala’s poverty eradication initiative

Kerala became the first state in India to eradicate “extreme poverty”, announced Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on November 1. It marked the culmination of the Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme. Launched in May 2021, it involved the identification of 1,03,099 individuals in 64,006 households who were declared as “athidaridrar” – “extremely poor” in Malayalam – and the adoption of policies to address their situation.

This comes two years after the Central government thinktank Niti Aayog progress review report in 2023 noted that Kerala had the lowest poverty rate in India – 0.55% compared to the national average of 14.95%, according to its Multidimensional Poverty Index.

Kerala’s announcement is being hailed as a landmark in the handling of poverty in a developing country but it has also been critiqued for its methodology of identification, definitional incorrectness in the processes adopted, and whether it is at all an advance for a genuine poverty eradication agenda.

What does Kerala’s announcement mean in terms of who the “extremely poor” or “athidaridrar” are, how they were identified and what measures were undertaken to lift them out of poverty? To what extent can Kerala experience’s with handling poverty be considered an alternative to dominant approaches, or is it, as some critics say, a...

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