Kerala's 'extreme-poverty-free' achievement a sham?

The celebration planned for November 1, 2025, to declare Kerala "extreme poverty-free" faces intense criticism not merely for the validity of its claims, but for what critics view as a fundamental moral contradiction — spending public resources on grandeur and publicity while leaving those workers instrumental in the government's welfare apparatus in extreme poverty.

The Core Ethical Problem: Inverted Priorities

The central issue from critics remains opportunity cost and moral coherence. While the government declares success in poverty eradication, several categories of workers who enabled this claim remain trapped in poverty themselves. This creates what social activists describe as a profound paradox: celebrating the elimination of poverty while leaving many who worked to achieve this feat in dire straits.

The ASHA Workers' Protest:

Over 26,125 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) have been on strike for 263 days (since February 10, 2025), demanding an increase in their honorarium to ₹ 21,000 per month with retirement benefits. Currently, they earn only ₹ 8,000 per month (after a marginal ₹ 1,000 increase announced on October 29, 2025)—equivalent to just ₹ 233 per day.

The government's response was particularly galling: the increase from ₹ 7,000 to ₹ 8,000 represents merely ₹ 33 per day added to their earning capacity. The ASHA workers, who were the state's frontline during COVID-19 and conducted the surveys identifying the 64,006 extremely poor families, view the declaration as deeply hypocritical.

"We do everything from vaccination to disease surveillance, maternal care and counselling. Yet we earn less than a daily wage labourer. We are not volunteers. We are workers who keep this system running." — Prameela, 38-year-old ASHA worker

The workers issued an open letter to film stars Mohanlal, Mammootty, and Kamal Haasan, urging them to skip the event, stating: "We are not asking for charity. We are asking for justice. Before declaring Kerala poverty-free, visit our protest camp and see how its women workers live."

The Question of Spending Priorities:

While specific figures for the November 1 event's budget have not been publicly disclosed in available reporting, the criticism centres on the principle of allocating resources for publicity and celebration at a moment when systematic demands for worker welfare remain unmet.

The government reports spending over ₹ 1,000 crore on the Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme itself over four years (2021-2025). However, this massive investment stands in stark contrast to:

• ASHA workers receiving a meagre ₹ 1,000 raise after 263 days of protest
• The government allocating resources for a star-studded public event with film icons and elaborate stage productions.
• A government official explicitly stating that the event would showcase "Kerala's progress" and that "it would be unfair to paint a negative picture on such an occasion” - essentially subordinating the reality of ongoing worker struggles to the narrative of state achievement.

The Broader Contradiction: Success on Paper, Silence on the Street

Social activist P E Usha crystallised the paradox: "You have film icons and politicians announcing the end of poverty while the poor sit outside in protest. It is a paradox that captures Kerala's current mood - success on paper, silence on the street."

The ceremony reveals what scholars call a governance disconnect - a gap between statistical claims of success and lived reality. Consider:

Tribal Communities Still Landless and Struggling:

In Wayanad, tribal leader Manikkuttan Paniyan stated: "They came here last year with tablets and cameras. They asked about our food, our income and our health. They said we would get houses and land. Now they say Kerala is poverty-free. But where is our land? Where is our house?" Despite the 2011 Census identifying 4.85 lakh tribal people, only 6,400 (5.5%) were classified as extremely poor in the government's new survey - a figure economists question.

Coastal Communities Buried in Debt:

Fisherwoman Mini Joseph said: "I had two houses. The first was taken by the sea, the second by a bank loan. Now I live in a shed given by the church." While the government's Punargeham scheme offers Rs 10 lakh to relocate families from coastal erosion zones, this amount falls far short of actual land and housing costs in most coastal districts, pushing families into debt.

Plantation Workers Rendered Invisible:

In tea estates, workers earning just ₹ 420 per day - living in colonial-era "line rooms” - were excluded from poverty surveys because they lack proper documentation, even though they are among the poorest. As a labour department official admitted: "The system does not see them."

The Economic Case Against Grand Celebrations

From a basic public finance perspective, spending resources on event management, advertisements, and celebrity appearances when frontline workers remain underpaid violates fundamental principles of:

1. Allocative Efficiency: Resources could have been used to immediately increase ASHA worker wages to Rs 21,000 per month as demanded, or to reach the excluded tribal and coastal communities. A government that truly wanted to celebrate poverty eradication would ensure that no one claiming to have participated in the effort remains in poverty themselves.

2. Fiscal Justice: Public money spent on celebrations to announce poverty eradication, while workers responsible for that eradication remain poor. This represents a failure of fiscal justice and proper resource allocation. Research on social welfare spending demonstrates that such expenditures work effectively only when they improve employment quality and reduce vulnerability—not when they fund political narratives while workers remain exploited.

3. Sustainability and Credibility: When governments prioritise optics over substance—spending on events while ignoring worker demands—they undermine public trust in social programs. The government's official response that the strike "should not be allowed to overshadow the celebration" reveals a prioritisation of narrative management over addressing legitimate grievances.

The Methodological Failure Exposed: The contradiction becomes even more acute when examining whom the government claims to have helped versus whom it visibly excludes. The government claims to have:

• Built 5,422 houses and renovated 5,522 homes
• Yet 5,91,368 applications are pending under the LIFE Mission for housing, with only 4,62,307 houses completed in 10 years
• Identified and helped 59,277 extremely poor families
• Yet keeps 5,91,194 people classified as "poorest among the poor" under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) - which represents 10 times the number the government claims to have identified

This numerical inconsistency suggests that the poverty survey methodology was selective rather than comprehensive - excluding inconvenient populations from the definition of "extreme poverty" while later celebrating the resulting low figures.

The Deeper Shame: Priorities Revealed

As social scientist J Prabhash noted, "The state government hasn't clarified which scientific study it used to identify these 64,000 families as extremely poor. This is simply a political stunt ahead of the elections.

The shame of spending on celebrations while workers protest is not merely fiscal inefficiency—it reveals inverted moral priorities. A government that genuinely believed in poverty eradication would:

1. First ensure its own workers are not poor before vaingloriously declaring the state as extreme-poverty free.
2. Allocate event funds toward immediate wage increases for ASHA workers and other marginalised groups
3. Engage in dialogue with the poor rather than dismissing their protests as insignificant
4. Prioritise substance over spectacle - focusing on resolving structural issues like tribal landlessness, coastal vulnerability, and plantation worker exploitation rather than stage productions

Instead, what the November 1 celebration reveals is that Kerala's government has prioritised political messaging over economic substance - spending on narrative construction while the women workers who built that narrative remain underpaid, the tribal communities remain landless, and the coastal families remain trapped in debt.