Back when I was growing up in 1990s’ Kerala, among the films I remember watching were Varavelpu and Mithunam. Both told the story of the protagonists’ struggles to start new businesses. In Varavelpu, Murali tries to start a bus service; in Mithunam, Sethu tries to open a biscuit factory. They face union leaders with red flags, regulations upon regulations, and bureaucrats empowered by those regulations. Murali had to eventually give up his business and go back to the Gulf. The films captured a culture in which small business owners were not seen as job creators but as suspicious profit-seekers—they were petite-bourgeois figures.
Today they would be called entrepreneurs. Murali’s bus service and Sethu’s biscuit factory would be called startups. On WhatsApp, their stories would be forwarded from group to group. Young people would find inspiration in their hard work to create something new in Kerala. Politicians and pundits would praise them. Society would appreciate their efforts to create jobs. Clearly, the culture has shifted.
As politics tends to be downstream of culture, the communists moved from restraining the bourgeoisie to openly praising entrepreneurs. In a revealing turn, former industry minister P Rajeeve said, “We communists are not working in a communist system. We are working in a capitalist system.”
I grew up hearing the berating of ‘bourgeoisie’ all around me—in newspapers, at street rallies and during strikes at my college. “Down with the bourgeoisie! End the hegemony!” the communists would protest. Nobody I knew had a convincing counterargument.
But this story began long before my time. In 1957, Kerala elected a communist government, which quickly enacted policies that went with anti-bourgeois ideas. Land reforms rolled back feudal systems. Since then, leftists have managed to get elected in roughly every other election in the state. Congress-led governments, when they came to power, rarely enacted radically different policies despite being somewhat pro-capitalist in rhetoric.
These policies shaped the risk perception of private enterprises, although they were not the only reason for Kerala’s failure to industrialise at scale. In that climate, businesspeople feared unions, strikes and forced shutdowns. The brave ones, like Murali and Sethu, learned their lessons the hard way. Youth flocked to the Gulf. Students did not say “businessman” when teachers asked what they wanted to become. By the end of the 20th century, large-scale private industrial ambition in Kerala felt moribund.
Today, ‘bourgeoisie’ is being replaced by ‘entrepreneurs’—you find it all around on social media, college campuses and even in textbooks. Many students openly aspire to become entrepreneurs. Schools run ‘studentpreneur’ events. The LDF government celebrated 2022-23 as the Year of Enterprises and set out “to identify and handhold aspiring entrepreneurs”.
Decades ago, the leftists had set out to curb bourgeois interests. The contrast today is striking—from ‘fighting bourgeoisie’ to ‘handholding entrepreneurs’. The leftist parties in the state call this pragmatism. Such a shift is not unheard of—they have been noted for the communist regimes in Bengal and China. One could perhaps describe Kerala’s transformation as ‘socialism with Malayali characteristics’.
There have been signs of progress. Kerala was recently recognised as a top achiever under the Business Reforms Action Plan. Under the LDF, Kerala got its first startup unicorn: Open, a fintech platform. The LDF deserves credit for supporting a more open environment for private enterprise in more recent years. With entrepreneurship broadly accepted by society and administrative burdens easing, Kerala is now better positioned for a serious growth push.
Yet, the state’s manufacturing sector is thin, partly due to heavy constraints around land conversion and labour flexibility. The new government could consider easing those constraints. A common excuse—from the left to the right—is that Kerala has little land. But scarcity is not destiny. Taiwan had advantages that Kerala lacks. But with a comparable area, it built high-value industrial clusters while keeping planned industrial land below 1.5 percent of its territory. For Kerala, that scale is roughly the total area of Cherpu plus three neighbouring block panchayats.
The lesson is simple: Kerala does not need more land; it needs the will to use a small portion of it well. The government may wish to explore coastal reclamation for industries after strict environmental-impact review. It could also consider modernising labour regulation to enable fixed-term contracts, clear notice and severance rules, and portable benefits. Any such reform would need to balance economic growth with environmental safeguards and worker protections.
Sethu and Murali would cheer on the ongoing transformation in Kerala. Their contemporary is Sandeep in the 2025 film Hridayapoorvam, who runs a cloud-kitchen chain seemingly without interference from union leaders or regulatory officers. It is fitting that Mohanlal played all three characters—the same star, a different Kerala.
Ajith Chakkedath | Commentator on culture, politics and economics based in the US
(Views are personal)