For decades, governance in Kerala has been evaluated through schemes launched, budgets allocated, and indicators published. Yet for most citizens, governance is experienced in a far simpler way—through monthly bills, expenses, and the anxiety of unpredictability. Electricity costs fluctuate. Healthcare expenses arrive suddenly. Transport and food costs rise quietly but steadily. Welfare exists, but comfort does not always follow.
Kerala’s real, unspoken crisis is not absolute poverty. It is cost-of-living uncertainty.
The Household Cost of Living Mission (H-COLM) proposes a fundamental shift in how public policy is designed and evaluated. It argues that stabilising everyday household expenses should be treated as public infrastructure—just as essential as roads, power lines, or water systems.
Instead of adding new subsidies or short-term relief measures, H-COLM reframes governance around one clear outcome: predictable, manageable monthly costs for households.
Kerala Vision 2047 – Household Cost of Living Mission (H-COLM)_
At the core of this approach is the idea that citizens do not experience the state through departments. They experience it through electricity bills, transport fares, medical expenses, and grocery prices. When these costs are volatile, trust erodes—even if macro indicators look strong.
H-COLM brings key household expense domains—electricity and energy, water and sanitation, public transport, food and essential commodities, and primary healthcare—under a single, outcome-driven governance framework. The goal is not price control, but volatility control. Predictability matters more than temporary relief.
A central instrument of the mission is the Kerala Monthly Living Cost Index, a transparent, publicly published measure of what it actually costs to live in Kerala, across regions and income bands. This index is not academic. It is designed to trigger policy action when household stress crosses defined thresholds.
What makes this approach electorally relevant is its immediacy. Voters may debate ideology, but they rarely debate whether life feels easier or harder month to month. A government that can credibly stabilise household expenses delivers relief that is visible, continuous, and widely felt—without relying on constant announcements.
Equally important, H-COLM is fiscally grounded. It does not depend on runaway spending. Instead, it consolidates fragmented subsidies, improves procurement efficiency, reduces downstream healthcare costs, and replaces reactive crisis management with anticipatory governance.
Kerala Vision 2047 – Household Cost of Living Mission (H-COLM)_
By 2047, a Kerala that treats household cost stability as a core public responsibility will see deeper outcomes—lower distress borrowing, better health choices, stronger local economies, and reduced forced migration driven by economic stress.
At Vastuta, we believe that the next phase of governance in Kerala must move beyond schemes and slogans. It must focus on lived comfort, predictability, and trust. The Household Cost of Living Mission is not a welfare expansion. It is a governance correction—one that aligns the state’s priorities with the everyday realities of its citizens.
