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Kerala Has Abolished Extreme
Poverty: The Fiftieth Newsletter
(2025) </td>
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The Indian state of Kerala has
eradicated extreme poverty
through clear public policy,
decentralised planning, and the
leadership of its cooperative
movement. </td>
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Muhammad (Young
Socialist Artists), <em>Kudumbashree</em>,
2025.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Dear
friends,</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Greetings
from the desk of <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c0d7743a6c&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">Tricontinental:
Institute for Social
Research</a>.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">On
1 November 2025, the
south-western Indian state
of Kerala \u2013 home to 34
million people \u2013 was <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=101288aee0&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">declared</a>
free from extreme poverty by
Chief Minister Pinarayi
Vijayan. Kerala is one of
the few places in the world
to have eradicated extreme
poverty, following <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3bcda82f1c&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">China</a>,
which announced in 2022 that
it had eradicated extreme
poverty nationwide.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Kerala\u2019s
achievement is significant
for two reasons. First, in a
country where <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=26bffac8f5&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">hundreds</a>
of millions of people still
live in poverty, Kerala is
the only one of India\u2019s
twenty-eight states and
eight union territories to
have overcome extreme
poverty. Second, Kerala is
governed by the
Communist-led Left
Democratic Front (LDF) and
is therefore routinely
denied assistance from the
central government led by
the right-wing Bharatiya
Janata Party (Indian
People\u2019s Party).</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Kerala\u2019s
Athidaridrya Nirmarjana
Paripaadi (Extreme Poverty
Eradication Project, or
EPEP) was built on decades
of worker and peasant
struggles, which created
strong public institutions
and mass organisations, and
the work of several left
administrations. The EPEP
was launched by Vijayan \u2013 a
leader in the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) \u2013
during the first Cabinet
meeting of the second LDF
government led by him in May
2021. After a rigorous
criteria-based process
focused on households\u2019
access to employment, food,
health, and housing, the
government identified 64,006
families (or 103,099
individuals) as extremely
poor. To carry out this
survey, the government
relied on about 400,000
enumerators \u2013 including
government workers,
cooperative members, and
members of the mass
organisations of left
parties \u2013 to identify the
unique problems faced by
poor families. These
enumerators created tailored
plans for each family \u2013 from
securing entitlements and
accessing public services to
obtaining housing, health
care, and livelihood support
\u2013 to build their strength in
the fight against poverty.
The role of the cooperative
movement was fundamental in
this campaign. The planning
process for poverty
eradication would not have
been possible without the
role of the local
self-government system, the
result of Kerala\u2019s
successful decentralisation
of power. As this newsletter
goes out, Kerala is in the
midst of new local body
elections.</p>
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alt="" width="819"
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Udayapuram-819x1024.jpg 819w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Udayapuram-240x300.jpg 240w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Udayapuram-768x960.jpg 768w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Udayapuram.jpg 1200w"
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style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true">
<p
id="caption-attachment-132512" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Vanshika
Babbar (Young
Socialist Artists), <em>Udayapuram
Cooperative Workers</em>,
2025.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="western"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Over
the past few years,
Tricontinental: Institute
for Social Research has
worked closely with the
Uralungal Labour Contract
Cooperative Society (UL)
Research Centre to build
knowledge about the
cooperative movement in
Kerala. We are very proud to
publish our joint study <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=4f36016d76&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true"><i>The
Cooperative Movement in
Kerala, India</i></a>
within a month of Kerala\u2019s
declaration of eradicating
extreme poverty. Our study
profiles six different
cooperatives, with essays
researched and written by
scholars who have worked
closely with them. One essay
focuses on Kudumbashree, an
all-women cooperative with
nearly five million members,
which played a major role in
implementing the EPEP.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Kerala\u2019s
first democratic government,
which came into office in
1957, was led by communists.
It immediately began to
execute a programme of
agrarian reform, including
land redistribution, and to
expand universal social
goods such as public
education, health care,
housing, and <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=9469753ed5&e=d206d0a40d"
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moz-do-not-send="true">libraries</a>.
This democratisation of the
rural landscape, combined
with sustained social
mobilisation, hastened the
journey of Kerala\u2019s millions
towards social indicators
that are the marvel of the
world: near-total literacy,
very low infant and maternal
mortality, high life
expectancy, and some of the
highest human-development
scores in India. These
investments, built over
decades, created the
conditions for poverty
eradication long before the
targeted programmes emerged.
Communist-led coalitions
have governed Kerala from
1957\u20131959, 1967\u20131969,
1980\u20131981, 1987\u20131991,
1996\u20132001, 2006\u20132011, and
2016 to the present. Even
when the left was not in
power, social mobilisation
by the left ensured that
right-wing governments could
not fully reverse these
gains.</p>
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src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Copy-of-dineshbeediworkers-1024x576.jpg"
alt="" width="1024"
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Copy-of-dineshbeediworkers-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Copy-of-dineshbeediworkers-300x169.jpg 300w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Copy-of-dineshbeediworkers-768x432.jpg 768w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Copy-of-dineshbeediworkers.jpg 1200w"
sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" border="0"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true">
<p
id="caption-attachment-132532" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Kadambari
(Young Socialist
Artists), <em>Dinesh
Beedi\u2019s Read Aloud
Programme</em>,
2025.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">With
the growth of the neoliberal
debt-austerity model in the
1990s, pressure grew on the
LDF government to reverse
some of these projects and
adopt privatisation.
However, the LDF chose a
different path. Through the
<a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=aaa940ef88&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">People\u2019s
Plan Campaign</a> for
Decentralised Planning,
launched in 1996, the
government devolved 40% of
state expenditures to local
governments and asked
localities to identify
needs, design programmes,
and allocate budgets for
development projects. Rather
than develop a
one-size-fits-all
development and poverty
alleviation agenda, the
people of Kerala built
locally planned and
context-specific projects
that focused on the
emancipation of exploited
and marginalised
communities, including
Adivasis, Dalits, and
coastal communities. The
campaign set in place a
culture of democratised
social policy and nourished
a dense network of public
institutions and
cooperatives \u2013 all of which
were crucial for the EPEP.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">When
he announced the end of
extreme poverty in Kerala,
Chief Minister Vijayan
presented the EPEP as a
continuation of this long
trajectory. He highlighted
several initiatives that had
paved the way for the
programme, including the
universalisation of the
Public Distribution System,
which provides subsidised
food and fuel, and long-term
efforts to eradicate
landlessness and
homelessness, including the
LIFE Mission, which has
provided homes to well over
400,000 families across the
state. To these we can add
other pillars of Kerala\u2019s
model \u2013 state schemes that
have expanded public health
care, food distribution,
educational assistance, and
employment opportunities,
and indeed the cooperatives.
Together these initiatives
have transformed social life
in Kerala and strengthened
the character of its left
movement.</p>
<div
class="single-post--content--media-block single-post--content--image"
style="text-align:center; margin:3em 0;">
<div id="attachment_132462"
class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-132462"
class="size-large wp-image-132462 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Studies-Kerala_Cover_Web-1024x745.jpg"
alt="" width="1024"
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Studies-Kerala_Cover_Web-1024x745.jpg 1024w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Studies-Kerala_Cover_Web-300x218.jpg 300w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Studies-Kerala_Cover_Web-768x559.jpg 768w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Studies-Kerala_Cover_Web.jpg 1320w"
sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" border="0"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true">
<p
id="caption-attachment-132462" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Abhinav
VK Satheesh (Young
Socialist Artists), <i>Workers
from Kerala\u2019s
Cooperatives</i>,
2025.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Our
<a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3d3c8f7339&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">study</a>
with the UL Research Centre
provides a window into the
various cooperatives that
have played a key role in
the democratisation of
Kerala\u2019s economy. Formed in
1998 as part of the state\u2019s
poverty eradication mission,
Kudumbashree, which means
\u2018prosperity of the family\u2019
in Malayalam, is now the
largest women\u2019s mutual aid
network in the world. It is
built around a
transformative idea: if
women at the household and
community level build their
confidence and capacity to
assess economic life, then
the locus of development can
shift from patriarchal
institutions towards working
women\u2019s needs. Collective
farms, community kitchens,
cooperative skill
development initiatives, and
other forms of joint
enterprise have allowed the
women of Kudumbashree to
increase their income and
build power in both public
and private life.
Kudumbashree\u2019s emphasis on
solidarity rather than
competition and on
collective rather than
individual entrepreneurship
sets it apart from
market-centric
poverty-alleviation
strategies. Recently, the
government of Kerala
announced a <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=af5fb8a9ac&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">Women\u2019s
Security Scheme</a> based
on the necessity of
recognising the value of
unpaid household work.
Eligible women between the
ages of 35 and 60 will
receive \u20b91,000 per month.
Such an initiative is part
of the overall attempt to
transform patriarchal
property relations in
Kerala.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Kudumbashree
is part of a wider ecosystem
of cooperatives that sustain
Kerala\u2019s fight against
poverty. Taken together,
these initiatives are
powerful examples of how, in
Marx\u2019s words, \u2018hired labour
is but a transitory and
inferior form, destined to
disappear before associated
labour plying its toil with
a willing hand, a ready
mind, and a joyous heart\u2019.
They show that cooperatives
are not only safety nets for
the poor but also vehicles
for democratic planning,
technological advance, and
social dignity.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">These
include:</p>
<ul>
<li
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><b>The
Uralungal Labour
Contract Cooperative
Society (UL).</b>
Founded in 1925 in
northern Kerala as a
mutual aid society for
construction labourers
facing caste-based
exclusion, UL has grown
into one of Asia\u2019s
largest workers\u2019
cooperatives, employing
tens of thousands in
major infrastructure
projects. It shows how
worker-controlled
enterprises can deliver
complex public works
while expanding social
protection and
collective welfare for
its workers and the
surrounding community.</p>
</li>
<li
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><b>Kerala\u2019s
network of credit
cooperatives.</b> More
than four thousand
credit cooperatives,
with tens of millions of
mostly working-class and
marginalised members,
operate as \u2018people\u2019s
banks\u2019 that reach areas
private finance will
not. By protecting
borrowers from
moneylenders, anchoring
land reform, and
mobilising local savings
\u2013 including during the
2018 floods and the
COVID-19 pandemic \u2013 they
provide the financial
backbone for poverty
eradication.</p>
</li>
<li
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><b>The
Kerala Dinesh Beedi
Workers\u2019 Central
Cooperative Society.</b>
Formed in 1969 after
private <i>beedi</i> (a
thin, hand-rolled
cigarette) factory
owners shut down their
workplaces rather than
implement new labour
protections, Dinesh
Beedi quickly became the
leading beedi producer
in southern India. It
secured higher wages,
social security, and a
rich cultural life for
its members, and later
diversified away from
tobacco to preserve jobs
in socially useful
production.</p>
</li>
<li
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><b>The
Sahya Tea Cooperative
Factory.</b> In
Idukki\u2019s hill country,
small tea growers and
agricultural workers
used the 15,000-member
Thankamany Service
Cooperative Bank to
establish their own
factory in 2017 and
break from \u2018Big Tea\u2019
monopolies. Processing
15,000 kilograms of
leaves a day and
employing more than 150
workers, Sahya secures
better prices for around
3,500 growers and
demonstrates how small
producers can move up
the value chain and
defend dignified
livelihoods.</p>
</li>
<li
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><b>The
Udayapuram Labour
Contract Cooperative
Society.</b> In Kodom
Belur, a remote
panchayat in Kasaragod,
villagers facing feudal
landlordism, corrupt
officials, and predatory
contractors organised a
labour cooperative in
1997. From just over two
hundred members it has
grown to nearly three
thousand worker-members,
including many Adivasis,
who now execute public
works on transparent,
fair terms and shape
local development
priorities themselves.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Taken
together, these cooperatives
\u2013 alongside Kudumbashree \u2013
show what becomes possible
when state policy, social
reform, and organised
workers converge. They do
more than soften the blows
of the market. They
reorganise production around
human need, deepen democracy
in the workplace and the
village, and offer a living
glimpse of associated labour
in practice \u2013 of possible
communism \u2013 even under the
harsh conditions of
contemporary capitalism that
make programmes like the
EPEP necessary.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Kerala\u2019s
poverty eradication story is
not without challenges. The
state is still within the
Indian Union and therefore
vulnerable to the
vicissitudes of
policy-making by the
right-wing government in New
Delhi. Like many parts of
the Global South, Kerala\u2019s
youth face high unemployment
and often migrate to the
Persian Gulf region and
other parts of the world for
work. Attempts to build new
<a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=13220494a8&e=d206d0a40d"
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moz-do-not-send="true">quality
productive forces</a> that
could allow the state to
leapfrog outdated industries
are held back by limited
access to tax revenues
collected from the state by
the central government.
Nonetheless, there are
ongoing attempts to overcome
these limitations and build
a more robust growth
paradigm for Kerala.</p>
<div
class="single-post--content--media-block single-post--content--image"
style="text-align:center; margin:3em 0;">
<div id="attachment_132522"
class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-132522"
class="size-large wp-image-132522 img-responsive mcRssImage"
src="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/WhatsApp-Image-2025-05-02-at-3.23.36-PM-768x1024.jpeg"
alt="" width="768"
srcset="https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/WhatsApp-Image-2025-05-02-at-3.23.36-PM-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/WhatsApp-Image-2025-05-02-at-3.23.36-PM-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/WhatsApp-Image-2025-05-02-at-3.23.36-PM-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/WhatsApp-Image-2025-05-02-at-3.23.36-PM.jpeg 1200w"
sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" border="0"
style="max-width: 100%;width: 100%;padding-bottom: 0;display: inline;vertical-align: bottom;border: 0;height: auto;outline: none;text-decoration: none;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;"
moz-do-not-send="true">
<p
id="caption-attachment-132522" class="wp-caption-text"
style="text-align: center;margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><small>Navin
S. (Young Socialist
Artists), <em>Tailors
of Dinesh Apparels</em>,
2025.</small></p>
</div>
</div>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">In
February 2021, President Xi
Jinping announced that
nearly 99 million Chinese
people had lifted themselves
out of extreme poverty, the
last of the country\u2019s
impoverished. The country of
1.4 billion people did this
a decade in advance of the
date set by the United
Nations Sustainable
Development Goals for <a
href="https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=d5ab3037e0&e=d206d0a40d"
style="mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #007C89;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;"
moz-do-not-send="true">2030</a>.
Kerala achieved its goal a
year before expected.
Vietnam, another country
close to this achievement,
plans to end extreme poverty
by 2030. It is no surprise
that all three of these
projects are led by
communist parties, whose
commitment to human
emancipation drives them to
work to ensure that every
human being can live a
dignified life. Poverty
eradication is not an end in
itself but a part of the
long journey for human
emancipation \u2013 it is a
living social project, not a
set of boxes that must be
ticked off. As Kwame Nkrumah
said, \u2018forward ever,
backward never\u2019.</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Warmly,</p>
<p align="left"
style="margin: 10px 0;padding: 0;mso-line-height-rule: exactly;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;color: #202020;font-family: Helvetica;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;">Vijay</p>
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