Kerala’s governance culture has mastered one skill above all others: forgetting. Policies fail, opportunities slip away, industries choose other states or countries, and talent quietly exits. Yet almost nothing is formally examined, recorded, or owned. Failure dissolves into collective amnesia. Committees change, ministers rotate, files move, and the system resets without memory. This absence of institutional recall is not accidental. It is structural.

The idea of an NRI Policy Failure Tribunal begins by asserting that progress is impossible without memory, and memory is impossible without accountability. This tribunal is not a court in the legal sense. It does not issue punishments or prosecute individuals. Its function is diagnostic, archival, and reputational. It exists to answer a single question repeatedly and publicly: what exactly went wrong, and who allowed it to go wrong?

The tribunal is constituted as an independent statutory body with a clear mandate to investigate major policy failures that resulted in economic loss, talent exit, industrial non-entry, infrastructure collapse, or long-term strategic disadvantage to Kerala. Its members are predominantly NRIs with deep operational experience in public systems, industry, finance, infrastructure, healthcare, technology, and urban governance. Distance is not a disadvantage here. It is the source of neutrality.

Cases brought before the tribunal are not random grievances. They are structured submissions backed by evidence. An NRI entrepreneur who abandoned a manufacturing project due to regulatory paralysis. A healthcare professional who left because procurement systems made quality care impossible. A logistics firm that bypassed Kerala ports despite geographic advantage. Each submission must demonstrate opportunity cost, timeline, decision points, and institutional actors involved.

Once admitted, a case is investigated rigorously. Files are requisitioned. Officials are called to testify, not in adversarial hearings but in recorded explanatory sessions. Decision trails are reconstructed. Deviations between stated policy and actual execution are mapped. The objective is not to humiliate individuals but to expose systemic failure modes. Where rules conflicted, where discretion was abused, where fear replaced judgment.

All findings are published as public reports. Names are not hidden behind abstractions. If a decision was taken by a department, the department is named. If a rule blocked progress, the rule is quoted. If indecision caused loss, the timeline of delay is shown. The language is factual, restrained, and unambiguous. There is no rhetoric. The embarrassment comes from clarity, not accusation.

This transparency produces an immediate cultural shift. Officers begin to realize that silence is no longer safety. Doing nothing becomes as visible as doing something wrong. The incentive structure subtly changes. It becomes safer to take a reasoned decision than to indefinitely defer one. Policy inertia, long Kerala’s default mode, is exposed as a risk rather than a shield.

The tribunal’s reports also function as a living archive of governance intelligence. Over time, patterns emerge. Repeated failures around land acquisition, environmental clearance ambiguity, overlapping jurisdiction, or union interference become undeniable. Reform is no longer a matter of ideology or opinion. It becomes a response to documented recurrence.

For NRIs, this tribunal provides something that has been missing for decades: a formal channel to convert frustration into structured input. Instead of social media rants or private cynicism, they engage through evidence and process. Their distance from local power networks allows them to speak without fear of retaliation. Their credibility forces the system to listen, even if reluctantly.

Politically, the tribunal is uncomfortable but valuable. Governments may not like its findings, but they benefit from inheriting clarity. Incoming administrations no longer have to pretend ignorance of legacy failures. They can selectively adopt recommendations, repeal harmful rules, or redesign departments with documented justification. Accountability shifts from blame to correction.

Critics may argue that such a tribunal demoralizes officials. The opposite is more likely. Good officers are suffocated by systems that protect mediocrity and punish initiative. A transparent failure record distinguishes between individual negligence and structural sabotage. It gives ethical officers evidence to push back against irrational constraints.

The tribunal does not operate endlessly on the past. Its scope is time-bound. Cases older than a certain threshold are archived unless they have ongoing impact. The focus remains on learning, not vendetta. Closure is as important as exposure.

By 2047, Kerala will not lack policies. It will lack the luxury of repeating mistakes. Regions that progress are not those that never fail, but those that refuse to forget failure. The NRI Policy Failure Tribunal institutionalizes memory. It forces the state to look at itself without myth, sentiment, or denial. And once failure is named clearly, reform stops being abstract and starts becoming inevitable.