HOW KERALA ERADICATED EXTREME POVERTY

On November 1, the southern Indian state of Kerala announced that over four years, it had eradicated extreme poverty among its 36 million people. This milestone stands as the latest landmark achievement for a state that has stood out for decades across all metrics of human dignity, boasting India's highest Human Development Index, life expectancy, and literacy, among others.

What's the secret to Kerala's success? In a word: communism. In its very first election, the state brought to power India's first communist government in 1957, under the leadership of EMS Namboodiripad. It immediately set to work on a program of land reform, anti-caste affirmative action, and universal education and healthcare so ambitious that the central government in Delhi actually dissolved it. But the people of Kerala returned the communists to power again and again, especially in recent years, with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) governing continuously since 2016.

Over the course of four decades, the communist-led Kerala model slashed poverty from 60% to 11% by 2011 with broad-based universal policies. But the final push to eradicate the last vestiges of extreme poverty demanded a different, much more targeted approach. In 2021, the government mobilised hundreds of thousands of local officials and grassroots communities -- especially the mass women's organisation Kudumbashree -- to identify 64,006 families in extreme poverty individually. They used a multidimensional approach that identified four "non-negotiable" essentials: food, income, shelter, and healthcare. And they ensured every single one of those 64,006 families had long-term access to all four before declaring victory.

It's a model not for top-down clientelism, but bottom-up community empowerment, harnessing both the resources of the state and the political will of the masses. In that it drew abundant inspiration from China's incredible feat of eradicating absolute poverty by late 2020, meeting a self-imposed schedule even amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. But Kerala's communists equalled that achievement while facing an obstacle their Chinese comrades haven't confronted since 1949: a hostile and increasingly fascistic central government. For that reason, their accomplishment serves as a shining inspiration in its own right for liberatory projects across the globe.