Subin Dennis
A very interesting facet of the Kerala Budget 2021-22 presented today by Finance Minister Dr.T.M Thomas Isaac is the plan outlined to eradicate extreme poverty.
Kerala is already among the states with the lowest poverty levels in India. (Official statistics of the central government institutions use inadequate criteria and hence underestimate poverty; but they nevertheless would suffice broadly for inter-state comparisons of extreme poverty.) The Finance Minister estimates that there would be about 4-5 lakh (400,000 to 500,000) families living under extreme poverty in Kerala.
The strategy is to formulate micro-plans targeting these families to lift them out of poverty. The poor families have to be precisely identified and enlisted. Their needs and problems have to be studied, remedial measures and expenses for them documented. Basic needs such as housing have to be ensured. (LIFE Mission, Kerala’s massive public housing programme which has built 2.5 lakh houses during the last four years, has gone a long way in this already.) Adequate technical or higher education, and jobs have to be ensured for them. This is a model that has been fairly successfully adopted under the PK Kalan Scheme to lift the Ulladar community in Alappuzha out of poverty.
Teams of resource persons are proposed to be formed at block panchayat and municipality levels to prepare micro plans.
The micro plans would be implemented by Kudumbashree, Kerala’s massive network of women’s collectives with 4.5 million members. Monthly income transfer could be made to families who are unable to work and earn their incomes, with local self-government institutions and the state government (through Kudumbashree) providing the funds.
The Hunger-Free Kerala programme announced in last year’s budget is an important part of the plan to eliminate extreme poverty. More than 1000 People’s Restaurants providing food at low prices have been started by Kudumbashree. These will be supported by local bodies, and Maveli stores (government-run fair price shops) would provide the required rice and provisions for these restaurants. People identified as extremely poor under the micro plans would be supplied food from these restaurants if necessary.
Special attention would be paid to the most marginalised sections such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, fish workers, the disabled and the elderly.
The target is to build 40,000 houses for SC families and 12,000 houses for ST families through LIFE Mission during 2021-22. Kerala’s SC Sub Plan and ST Sub Plan allocate a share in the budget to SC/STs that is higher than their share in the population. There is special emphasis on education, such as allocation to strengthen Model Residential Schools. Skill development, cooperative societies and credit schemes will also play a major role in the efforts to eradicate extreme poverty among SCs and STs.
For fish workers in coastal areas, there is a special package for coastal area development (announced in the previous budget) which is to be implemented in five years. Apart from housing, funds have been set aside for the development of fishing harbours, sea walls, hospitals, schools and markets, for credit schemes and for fuel subsidies. During the last five years, 13,018 houses have been constructed in coastal regions. Another 7,500 are to be constructed under the LIFE Mission in 2021-22. As many as 2500 fish workers’ families living within 50 metres from the sea are to be rehabilitated under the ‘Punargeham’ scheme.
There are also programmes for the disabled and the elderly, including expansion of the BUDS schools system for the mentally challenged, and schemes to ensure medicines at cheaper rates to the elderly.
Perhaps it is striking that the strategy of micro-targeting poor families to lift them out of poverty is very similar to the strategy adopted by China to eradicate extreme poverty. In China, maps were created with details of all poor families across the country, and teams of civil servants, officials from state-owned enterprises, and Communist Party cadre were dispatched to villages to lead the efforts to lift poor families out of extreme poverty. These efforts included providing housing, skills training, higher education, jobs and social security, supporting livelihoods, and even relocating families to towns in cases where the possibility of them earning adequate incomes was remote in the places where they lived. The progress of each family was tracked. Families who newly fell into extreme poverty were added to the list; families which moved out of poverty were removed from the list and so on.
The approach that Kerala proposes to adopt is something that aims to reach everybody in need, till the last person. To reach the last person, you need attention to detail. You need state institutions and people driving those institutions who actually care about the people. Behind these lie organised efforts led by mass organisations and class organisations. Without all of these, all that we’ll have would be bogus statistics like those peddled by the Modi government regarding GDP growth, percentage of people who have toilets at home and so on.
Eradicating extreme poverty in a state in a backward capitalist country is a very onerous challenge. The task becomes even more difficult when the state government does not have control over the resources of the state, as is the case for Indian states, and with the central government adopting policies that are very clearly harmful to the interests of the working people. Nevertheless we can be certain that Kerala’s efforts to lift people out of extreme poverty will go a long way towards building a more humane society.
Subin Dennis is a researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
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