HOW KERALA BEAT EXTREME POVERTY

South Indian state's focus on education and welfare holds lessons for the rest of the country

- BY SWATI CHATURVEDI | Special to Gulf News

It is easy to forget that extreme poverty defined as living on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank still stalks and preys on many Indians.

This means that millions cannot meet their most basic needs for food, shelter, and sanitation.

I share this definition with my readers because I want to report a rare piece of good news. Kerala, on India's southernmost tip, has become the first state in India to announce in its Assembly that it has eradicated extreme poverty. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala, led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, said this milestone followed the launch of the Extreme Poverty Alleviation Project in 2021, under which 64,006 families were identified as extremely poor. These families then became beneficiaries of a four-year project aimed at eliminating extreme poverty in the state.

Vijayan emphasised that this progress came after a Niti Aayog (formerly the Planning Commission) report found that Kerala had the lowest poverty rate in India at just 0.7 per cent. This gave the government a target, and ground-level efforts were made to reach out to these families through surveys using indicators such as access to food, health, water, and livelihood. In total, 103,099 individuals from 64,006 families were identified as extremely poor.