Kerala’s political party culture has developed an unusually tight grip over narrative control. Parties do not only compete to govern; they compete to define what counts as success, failure, progress, and even realism. Over time, this has produced a governance environment where perception management increasingly substitutes for institutional correction. The system becomes skilled at explaining outcomes rather than improving them.
One manifestation of this is the strategic use of comparison. Kerala is frequently compared upward when it helps narrative positioning and downward when it helps justification. Health indicators are compared with developed countries to claim moral and policy superiority, while infrastructure, employment, and industrial outcomes are compared with poorer states to lower expectations. This selective benchmarking allows parties to claim success without confronting full-spectrum performance. Comprehensive, peer-level comparison—against states with similar human capital and fiscal constraints—is rare because it exposes uncomfortable gaps.
Narrative control also reshapes how crises are handled. Kerala has faced repeated shocks over the last decade: floods, pandemics, fiscal stress, migration volatility. Each crisis is followed by intense narrative consolidation. Political parties move quickly to frame response efforts as proof of competence and compassion. While crisis response has often been commendable, the post-crisis learning phase is weak. Independent reviews, institutional redesign, and accountability mechanisms are overshadowed by story closure. Once the narrative stabilises, deeper reform loses urgency.
This culture affects bureaucratic behaviour as well. Officers learn that alignment with dominant narratives is safer than flagging inconvenient truths. Reporting becomes cautious. Metrics are softened. Problems are framed as externally imposed rather than internally fixable. Over time, information quality degrades. Decision-makers operate on curated reality rather than raw signals. This reduces the system’s capacity to detect early warning signs of failure.
Kerala’s approach to public sector innovation illustrates this pattern. Pilot projects in digital governance, local planning, or service delivery are launched frequently and publicised extensively. However, few are subjected to rigorous evaluation or scaled systematically. Once the pilot serves its narrative purpose, attention shifts elsewhere. Innovation becomes episodic and performative rather than cumulative. The state appears busy experimenting but struggles to institutionalise learning.
The political party culture also shapes media incentives. Media outlets are deeply embedded in party ecosystems, either through ideological alignment or economic dependence. Policy journalism is often replaced by political commentary. Data-driven investigation is limited. As a result, public debate focuses on intent, personality, and alignment rather than on system design, cost structures, or long-term impact. Citizens receive abundant interpretation but limited diagnosis.
This narrative dominance affects citizen expectations as well. Voters become habituated to symbolic reassurance. Announcements, inaugurations, and statements provide emotional closure even when material change is slow. Over time, tolerance for underperformance increases as long as narratives remain coherent. This lowers pressure on parties to invest in slow, unglamorous institutional work such as maintenance, standardisation, and process reform.
The education and skills ecosystem again offers a revealing example. Kerala produces a large number of graduates every year, yet many struggle to find suitable employment within the state. Political narratives frame this as a consequence of national economic conditions or global shifts. While these factors matter, they do not fully explain the mismatch between education outputs and labour market needs. However, acknowledging internal design flaws—curriculum rigidity, weak industry linkage, poor vocational integration—would require narrative disruption. Parties therefore prefer external explanations that preserve internal coherence.
Narrative control also distorts accountability timelines. Short-term outputs are highlighted aggressively, while long-term outcomes remain vague. A road inauguration is visible; road durability after five years is not. A welfare scheme launch is celebrated; its fiscal sustainability over two decades is rarely discussed. Political parties optimise for narrative immediacy, not lifecycle performance. This gradually erodes asset quality and institutional credibility.
Another subtle effect is the weakening of plural expertise. When narratives are centralised, alternative frameworks struggle to gain legitimacy. Economists, urban planners, systems engineers, and demographers often operate at the margins of political decision-making. Their inputs are selectively used to support pre-decided narratives rather than to shape decisions from the start. This reverses the natural order of evidence-based governance.
As Kerala approaches 2047, narrative dominance will become increasingly risky. The challenges ahead are slow-moving, data-intensive, and resistant to symbolic resolution. Climate adaptation, ageing, fiscal restructuring, and productivity enhancement cannot be managed through explanation alone. They require early problem recognition, uncomfortable transparency, and continuous recalibration.
Vision Kerala 2047 requires a political culture that treats narratives as provisional, not sacred. Stories should follow systems, not replace them. Parties must be willing to let data disrupt comfort, allow institutions to speak inconvenient truths, and accept that credibility comes from correction, not coherence. Without this shift, Kerala risks becoming a state that explains itself eloquently while falling behind quietly.
