Zohran Mamdani and Pinarayi Vijayan: Two Poles, Two Aspirations- The Story of Kerala’s Poverty Eradication Program Where Ideology Matters- Not charity, not bounty; but justice
Kerala’s Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme (EPEP) exemplifies Jack Rothman’s locality development model, where community participation, consensus and social planning are foundational. It would not have been possible without the development architecture created since the late 1990s. But at the core of the programme is the attention given to the voiceless minority whose very disability is their silence.
While in the New York mayoral election campaign, Zohran Mamdani, a former foreclosure-prevention counsellor, lent voice to the homeless in New York, in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan made the announcement of extreme poverty eradication as one of the rally points for his third term. Both echo what French Revolutionary era thinker Thomas Paine argued in his seminal treatise, Rights of Man: “It is not charity, but a right; not bounty, but justice.”