THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A coconut plucker in Kerala earns more in 21 working days than what 28,000 state government employees take home as basic pay in a month!
While the plucker’s daily earning is Rs 1,400, the basic pay of 5.5% of the state’s 5.23 lakh employees is below Rs 30,000 a month, which comes to under Rs 1,000 a day. However, the latter comes with with pension, job security and allowances that the plucker will never have.
This wage rise did not happen overnight. A comparison of the price indices analysis reports of the department of economics and statistics for 2015 and 2024 shows coconut pluckers recorded the decade’s highest wage increase of 83% from an annual average of Rs 755 in 2015 to Rs 1,380 in 2024, outpacing carpenters, masons, paddy workers and every other agricultural and skilled labour category tracked in the report.
Shiva Narayan Marawi, a 36-year-old from Chhattisgarh who has been working as a coconut climber in Kerala for six years, says the pay is what drew him here. Back home, he was farming ragi and potatoes on his family’s five-acre holding when a Keralite contractor’s offer came through a friend.
“On the first day, when I looked down from the top of the tree, my legs trembled. However, after three days of training with the climbing apparatus, I never looked back. Today I have no fear – I am ready to climb trees of any height,” he told TNIE.
Shiva earns between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000 a day, gets work every day, and sees his earnings dip only during the heavy monsoon. He is part of a 25-member team from Chhattisgarh brought by the contractor.
The growing presence of migrant workers in Kerala’s coconut groves points to a larger lesson about skills and the dignity of labour, says Dr K Ravi Raman, labour studies expert and member of the Kerala State Planning Board.
“There is an infinite supply of labour from within the state for last-grade government jobs that require no particular skill. The migrant, by contrast, learnt a skill and now commands a premium. Malayalis must learn to acquire and enrich skills based on market demands. And equally, the question of dignity of labour is something they are yet to fully embrace,” he said.
Rs 2.2k-Rs 30k basic pay range for over 28k govt staff
According to the state government’s pay data for 2026-27 fiscal, 28,648 employees have a basic pay in the Rs 2,240-Rs 30,000 range. In March 2026, an employee at the Rs 25,000 pay stage living within corporation limits took home around Rs 36,250, including dearness allowance at 35% and house rent allowance at 10%.
A coconut plucker earning Rs 1,400 a day for 27 days would gross Rs 37,800, but without job security, pension or medical benefit.
Still, the numbers reflect how in Kerala’s labour market, physically demanding and risky work now commands wages that a significant share of salaried government employment cannot match.