In terms of economy, the southern part is well off, there are few pockets of poverty. But poverty isn't as visible as rest of India https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/southern-comfort-indi...
Coming to the robot/contraption. Growing up in an environment with an average-sized coconut farm. The device is completely useless. The assembly time per tree, even if its 5 minutes, would take 5*200 trees -> 16 hours in just assembly. And this amount of trees get covered in almost 2 days of 6-hour labor in a season by manual labor. Also, coconut harvesting isn't just about plucking the coconuts, but also involves cleaning the top. Picking the right coconut to be plucked etc. In that aspect, the robot would do more harm to the farmer. Though the cost of labor is high, a serious farmer is going to convert a portion of his yield into oil, which gives a decent margin. Also, this won't be the only crop they depend on. My family had a rubber plantation along.
Labour shortage is a real issue and it isn't economically profitable for someone with about 20 trees or so. But this device under the current design solves only one problem, i.e plucking and solves it very badly.