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Chapter 4 of 11 · Kerala’s time bank

What the pilot was reported to do

By · Sources checked

The October 2025 launch report describes a website coordinating everyday assistance, including transport, cooking, shopping, cleaning and companionship. It says volunteers would record service hours and view them through their accounts; expansion was contingent on the pilot. These are reported features and plans at that date, not independently checked usage figures. [K2]

An older person with a cane and a helper stand beside a route between two homes.
Illustrative service journey, not an observed visit or participant portrait. Reported process follows below. [K3]

Onmanorama’s November 2025 account adds the local organisation behind the website: K-DISC, Alive Foundation, the panchayat, police, an auto-taxi union and a senior citizens’ collective. Its reported service journey is shown below. A one-time password (OTP) marks the start and end of assistance. It describes basic assistance rather than medical support, and says the panchayat would decide noncash incentives. [K3]

Reported pilot process

  1. 01

    Register

    Participants register; volunteers undergo police verification.

  2. 02

    Request & match

    A request reaches nearby volunteers using service and location preferences.

  3. 03

    Accept & assist

    A volunteer may accept or refuse.

  4. 04

    Record & review

    OTP start/end timing, credited hours and two-way feedback.

What if no suitable volunteer accepts?

Proposed evaluation question: retain the unsuccessful request and its reason. The reviewed reporting does not establish how this branch performs.

Process attributed to Onmanorama’s pilot account, not independently observed. [K3] Future redemption is a separate service request, not an automatic result of issuing a credit.

That is enough to describe the intended service journey. It is not enough to assess how reliably the journey was completed.

I did not find an independently accessible evaluation in the reviewed sources reporting completed exchanges, unsuccessful requests, waiting times, credit redemptions or participant outcomes. That is a limit of this research, not proof the programme has no internal data.

A launch report tells us an experiment has begun. A working-service assessment needs to follow people through it: the person who got help, the person whose request went unanswered, and the volunteer who eventually tried to use the credit.