The road that branches off the Thiruvalla-Kozhencherry State Highway towards Kumbanad in Pathanamthitta district in Kerala wears an air of permanent stillness.
The heavy flow of vehicles and chatter of the highway quickly give way to an uncanny stillness. Behind ornate gates stand sprawling houses shaded by towering trees, their balconies empty, windows closed, and courtyards overrun by weeds.
On gates, compound walls and electricity poles, weather beaten flex boards announcing deaths ripple in the wind. Elsewhere in central Travancore, they merely announce deaths. But in Kumbanad, they seem to chronicle something far larger. Together, they tell the story of a village slowly outliving the generation that built it.
“You won’t believe this, but among all these houses in this entire neighbourhood, there is only one child, a three-year-old one. Now and then, the young boy comes out onto the terrace and calls out, ‘Appacha’, to me. That is one of the greatest joys of my life these days,“ says Brigadier (retired) Varghese Jacob, an octogenarian.
Like the countless parents in Kumbanad, Varghese too returned home after retirement while his children built their lives elsewhere. His two sons are living away from their hometown.
A sprawling vacant house near Kumbanad that has been put up for sale. Hundreds of such large houses across Pathanamthitta remain on the market as many second-generation expatriate families have chosen not to return or settle in the district.
| Photo Credit:
LEJU KAMAL
A few kilometres away, Joseph Mathew Kulathungal has watched the same story unfold over half a century. “The population of this village has more than halved over the decades. Who knows, one day it might even disappear from the map altogether,” he fears.
“It is almost like a clock ticking away. Either our village becomes a ghost, or we will become ghosts,” he laments.
Joseph, who left India in 1969 for Uganda, returned to the area in 2000. “Every time I came back, fewer people were living here,” he recalls.
His life traces the arc of a migration story shared by generations of Syrian Christian families across the lush plains between the Pampa and the Manimala rivers. Grand houses built with money earned overseas have fallen silent as succeeding generations chose to remain abroad, where they built their careers and lives.
Creepers have climbed compound walls, tiled roofs have disappeared beneath thick vegetation, and provision stores that once bustled with customers have slowly surrendered to the wilderness. One of Kerala’s most prosperous regions has thus become a settlement of ageing parents waiting for children who seldom return.
Dwindling numbers
The consequences are impossible to miss.
The anganwadi in Ward 12 of Koipuram panchayat, where Kumbanad falls, has just 11 children.
Enrolment at Koipuram Government Higher Secondary School, once among the largest schools in the region, has plunged from nearly 2,500 students two decades ago to around 80, according to Sharanya Vijayan, a civic representative from the region.
Private schools are battling the same decline.
For nearly a century, villages such as Kumbanad stood at the heart of one of Kerala’s most remarkable migration stories. Generation after generation left first for other parts of the country, then to the Gulf countries, and eventually to the United States, Canada, Europe or Australia. Their earnings transformed an agrarian landscape, funding schools, hospitals, and churches while filling the countryside with sprawling houses that became enduring symbols of prosperity.
Unlike northern Kerala, where migration was to the Gulf region and remained largely Gulf-oriented, Pathanamthitta witnessed successive waves of migration that eventually produced one of the State’s largest Western diaspora. Today, however, that cycle has broken.
The migrants remained overseas while their children built lives there. Increasingly, even the wealth that migration once poured into districts such as Pathanamthitta is beginning to flow back.
Peelipose Thomas, a veteran politician, recalls that a study conducted by the Reserve Bank of India a few decades ago had identified Kumbanad, Chavakkad and Varkala as the three regions receiving the highest foreign remittances. “However, Kumbanad stood apart with 80% of the deposits never withdrawn as families which earned it had already settled overseas.”
English education pays
Schools established by the Christian Missionary Society and the rapid expansion of higher education after Independence produced generations of English-educated youth ready to seize opportunities abroad. Migration rewarded those aspirations, fuelling a construction boom through the 1980s and 1990s and palatial houses in the region became monuments to this success.
“Migration from Pathanamthitta district began during the inter-World War period, when people first moved within Kerala in search of land and work. Later they migrated to Indian cities and, after Independence, increasingly overseas,” points out Varughese George, a veteran politician and a former member of the Kerala State Planning Board.
“Earlier, some cooperative banks even offered loans to obtain Gulf visas. Many who first migrated to the Gulf later moved directly to the United States or Canada instead of returning home,” he notes.
According to Varughese, the arrival of missionary institutions such as the Brethren Mission in Kumbanad helped reshape local aspirations by expanding access to education and exposing communities to Western ideas and culture. As families prospered overseas, remittances financed the rapid expansion of Pentecostal denominations such as the Indian Pentecostal Church and the Brethren Church, which reshaped the region’s social geography.
Several institutions, jokingly called Kumbanad University, had sprung up in the region offering diploma programmes in several trades, which helped thousands secure jobs abroad.
Ginu Zacharia Oommen, social scientist, notes the “liberalisation of United States immigration laws in 1965 unlocked unprecedented opportunities for skilled migrants from Central Travancore, mostly comprising Kottayam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha and Idukki districts which brought back wealth and reshaped the life and culture of the region.”
A sprawling vacant house near Kumbanad that has been put up for sale. Hundreds of such large homes across Pathanamthitta remain on the market as many second-generation expatriate families have chosen not to return or settle in the district.
| Photo Credit:
LEJU KAMAL
“The children raised abroad gradually lost the emotional bond their parents had with their homeland and don’t want to maintain these houses. They come here for family functions, stay for a couple of weeks and leave.”
Ageing population
The consequences are etched all across Pathanamthitta district. Official estimates suggest that more than 61,000 houses in the district remain unoccupied for most of the year, averaging nearly 1,000 locked houses in every local body. Eraviperoor panchayat alone has 2,632 such houses.
A 2025 report by the Department of Health paints the picture of a district growing old at remarkable speed. Nearly 19% of Pathanamthitta’s population is above 60 years of age, while only 6.8% is below six. The district’s Total Fertility Rate has fallen to 1.3, the lowest in Kerala and far below replacement level.
“The most obvious impact is the steady population decline, which could eventually affect the number of Assembly constituencies in the district. Church leaders have already expressed concern over this,” notes Ginu.
Economic impact
Social scientists feel that the story is not just about migration, but about economic and demographic decline too.
S. Irudaya Rajan, Chairman of the International Institute of Migration and Development and a migration studies expert, observes that the locked houses are merely the most visible markers of a much deeper shift. “The abandoned houses are the most visible manifestation of a demographic shift that has been unfolding quietly for decades. Every young person who leaves in search of higher education or better opportunities abroad also takes away the district’s future. What is left behind is an ageing population, empty classrooms, and villages slowly losing the critical mass needed to sustain their economy, institutions and community life,” he notes.
The Kerala Migration Survey 2023 captures that transformation in numbers. The number of emigrants from the district has fallen from around 1.41 lakh a decade ago to 1.01 lakh, while return migrants have declined from 54,537 in 1998 to 40,921 in 2023. Although remittances per household have increased, the district’s share of Kerala’s inward remittances has dropped from 7.2% to 4.3%.
For the first time, the survey also estimated Kerala’s outward remittances at ₹43,378 crore, nearly one-fifth of inward remittances. The finding signals a profound shift. Money, like people, has begun to flow out.
Irudaya Rajan notes that at least 5% of Pathanamthitta district’s elderly now lives alone, while another 10-15% lives only with their spouses as their children are settled overseas.
Joseph Mathew Kulathungal, 80, and his wife, Jolly Mathew, 72, at their residence in Kumbanad, Pathanamthitta, Kerala. The couple returned from Uganda in 2000 after spending three decades in that country.
| Photo Credit:
LEJU KAMAL
The changing priorities of expatriates are becoming all the more evident in their financial decisions as well.
“When the Kerala State Financial Enterprises launched Pravasi Chitty in 2008 for the expats, we received an overwhelming response from the Gulf countries, but it received very little participation from those settled in the West. They no longer want to invest their savings in a land to where they do not intend to return,” feels Peelipose Thomas.
Varghese Alexander, a senior chartered accountant based in Thiruvalla, observes that there is a definite decline in inward remittances, while outward flows are increasing, impacting the local economy, particularly the real estate market.
As the district enters this new demographic phase, it is confronted with a question no previous generation had to grapple with: what remains after the migration wave has finally run its course?
For Irudaya Rajan, that question defines the future of the central Travancore region. “Kerala is no longer losing its human capital alone but its assets accumulated through generations as well. Expatriate families from districts such as Pathanamthitta are now influencing housing markets abroad with investments financed by the sale of ancestral properties here.”
“First the people left. Now their assets are leaving too. That may well be the dead end of a century-long migration story,” he notes.
As the sun sets, sitting on the portico of his house, Varghese Jacob waits for his favourite young neighbour to appear, to call him Appacha, once again. A call that connects him to his life and land, which is fast disappearing.
