Vasantha has no family. She was orphaned at a very young age. She is unmarried. Never had a steady income, she had occasionally secured MGNREGS gigs, and at times worked as kitchen help. A two-room house, made for her years ago by the panchayat in a three-cent 'poromboke' land, leaked so badly that she sat under nearby trees when it rained. And she has cancer.

Vasantha was 59 years old when, in the middle of 2021, Anchuthengu Panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram prepared the list of extreme poor. She was among the first to be considered.

Anchuthengu, a small coastal village just outside Thiruvananthapuram Corporation limits, is one of the poorest panchayats in Kerala. When the Extreme Poverty Eradication Project (EPEP) began, Anchuthengu was chosen for the pilot study, along with Wadakkancherry in Thrissur and Tirunelli in Wayanad. Identified as extreme poor in Anchuthengu were 234 families/individuals.

Anchuthengu panchayat president V Laiju picked the family of an AIDS patient and Vasantha as the worst off in the area. "The family of the AIDS patient was socially ostracised. On top of it she did not have any income and lived with her daughter and son in a decayed shack on encroached land," said Laiju.

The 3-cent land where the family lived as squatters was assigned to them and the Kerala NGO Union constructed a nice house for the family. A painted solid-looking concrete house changed the family's fate.

"Soon after, the daughter received a good proposal from Alappuzha. Being the daughter of an AIDS patient, we never thought she would get a nice alliance," said panchayat vice-president Lija Bose, in whose Puthen Nada ward the family lived.

In addition, to prevent relapse into extreme poverty, the family is regularly supplied medicines and provision kits.

Cabin in the woods
One way of eradicating Vasantha's extreme poverty was to reconstruct her porous-roofed crumbling house.

"It was the only thing she wanted," the panchayat president said. "The roof is leaky and water seeps in from the sides also. The contractors who did the job then kept the cement and steel to the minimum to maximise their pickings," Laiju said.

The reconstruction is being done for ₹2 lakh. The house is in Nedunganda ward, a hilly area in this largely coastal village.

To reach Vasantha's house one has to skate down a slippery mud path that cuts away from a lean concrete road going up. The house is like an isolated cabin in the woods. Not larger than a wayside urinal with two doors, it stands hidden inside a forest-like cluster of trees. Strained bamboo poles prop up the roof that has just been reinforced.

Rain-soaked welfare
There was a drizzle. A woman not more than 30 years was seen shouting at Saritha Biju, the Nedunganda ward member who was standing before the 'under reconstruction' house and talking to a mournful woman who looked more than 70. Vasantha is actually younger, only 63.

"How can anyone do this? They know there is no one here to speak up for her," the young woman said. Outside the house, in a wide arc, is the cause of her indignation.

The entire contents of Vasantha's house-- clothes, bags, papers, kitchen utensils, buckets, furniture and even an induction cooker-- are scattered, as if thrown out. Exposed to the rain, most of it were too drenched to be of any use. A blue tarpaulin has been carelessly thrown over some of these seemingly trashed items.

"What can we do if contractors behave like this," ward member Saritha said. "You should ensure that they do a proper job. They know it has been raining," the woman shot back. It was a day before that the construction workers dumped the household items outside.

Vasantha was silent, just a sad smile on her face. "This madam won't utter a word," the young woman said, glancing for a moment at Vasantha. "It rained inside her house all these years. So she is used to it," she said.

Bystander's absence
This young woman, who identified herself as Sunitha, lived some 50 metres away in an asbestos- and tarpaulin-roofed shack that looked far worse than Vasantha's. It is there that Vasantha now lives.

It was marriage that brought Sunitha to this place (Malavila Colony) five years ago. Vasantha was told that she had uterine cancer in 2018. But it was three years later, in 2021 and after Sunitha arrived as a newly-wed, that she went to the Regional Cancer Centre and got her uterus removed. "She offered to take me," Vasantha said.

Two years ago Vasantha developed a new vulnerability. "Without warning she gets thrown like she had suffered an electric shock. Usually I pull her out from under these shrubs here," Sunitha said. Once again she took Vasantha to RCC. "The doctor said the thing has spread its roots to her spine," Sunitha said. "There is nothing more to be done except chemo and a spinal injection every three months," she said.

Morning get-together
Other than a structurally-sound house, the panchayat's other priority is to keep Vasantha free of hunger. For this, she is daily transported in an autorickshaw to the 'pakalveedu' where elders in the panchayat gather till evening. There, they are given breakfast, lunch and evening tea. "The girls there pack me dinner also," Vasantha said.

Sunitha is against Vasantha' trip to the 'pakalveedu'. "She can fall down any moment. She already has some 45-50 stapler pins on her stomach. And the doctor has said that if she is injured again, the wound will never heal. So it is better for her to be near where I am," Sunitha said.

Before Sunitha could finish, Vasantha said: "But I like 'pakalveedu'. I want to go. I like the girls there."

There is a charged mother-adult daughter bond between the two; both seemingly exasperated with each other but inseparable.

Ward member Saritha said that the panchayat, as part of the EPEP project, wanted to remove Vasantha to a shelter home. "Vasantha chechi refused. She said she won't leave Sunitha," Saritha said. "She is anyway not my mother. I told them to take her," Sunitha said. "But it looks like she won't leave without seeing my blood."