Kerala’s governance crisis is often framed as a failure of intent or integrity. In reality, it is a failure of accumulation. Rules pile up faster than they are questioned. Permissions multiply long after their original risks have disappeared. Departments operate inside regulatory jungles that nobody remembers planting. The result is a system where compliance has replaced judgment and survival has replaced performance. This is not corruption in the classical sense. It is regulatory obesity.
Every serious NRI who has tried to interact with Kerala’s administrative machinery understands this immediately. What takes days elsewhere takes months here, not because officers are incapable, but because the system is burdened with layers of obsolete controls. Many of these rules were written for a different economy, a different technology stack, and a different political reality. Yet they persist because deleting a rule is riskier than creating a new one. In Kerala, addition is rewarded. Deletion is punished.
The NRI Regulatory Deletion Authority begins with a radical but necessary premise. Governance reform cannot happen only by adding schemes, portals, committees, and laws. It must also happen by subtraction. Deleting regulations is not administrative housekeeping. It is economic reform, institutional reform, and cultural reform rolled into one.
This authority is not designed to rewrite rules or modernize procedures. Its mandate is far narrower and far more disruptive. Identify regulations, approvals, reporting requirements, and compliance rituals that no longer serve a defensible public interest and recommend their outright deletion. Not consolidation. Not digitization. Deletion.
The authority is constituted as a temporary but recurring statutory body with a fixed life cycle, typically three years per term. Its members are predominantly NRIs who have worked in lean regulatory environments such as advanced manufacturing hubs, global financial centers, healthcare systems, logistics networks, or digital governance frameworks. Their value lies not in ideology, but in exposure to systems where speed and accountability coexist without regulatory paralysis.
Each year, the authority selects a limited number of sectors for deep regulatory audits. These are not academic exercises. The audit traces every approval, clearance, certificate, inspection, and reporting requirement involved in executing a real-world activity. Setting up a small factory. Expanding a hospital. Starting a logistics operation. Deploying a renewable energy system. The authority follows the process as an applicant would, documenting friction, duplication, ambiguity, and discretion points.
For every regulation identified, the authority answers three questions. What original risk was this rule designed to mitigate. Does that risk still exist in the same form today. If the rule were deleted entirely, what measurable harm would actually occur. If harm is hypothetical, unquantifiable, or already mitigated elsewhere, the rule is marked for deletion.
The output of this process is a public deletion list. Each item includes the rule’s origin, its current operational cost in time and money, the opportunity cost it imposes, and the justification for deletion. Most importantly, it includes an estimate of the cost of delay caused by the rule. Lost investments. Deferred projects. Talent exits. These are no longer invisible consequences. They are quantified and named.
The government is not compelled to accept all deletions automatically. However, it is compelled to respond. For every recommended deletion, the relevant department must either accept the deletion or publicly justify its retention. Silence is not permitted. Inaction is recorded. The political cost of maintaining a bad rule becomes explicit rather than hidden.
This mechanism changes bureaucratic incentives without confrontation. Officers who know that rules will be periodically examined for deletion begin to defend regulations on merit rather than habit. Over time, the culture shifts from risk avoidance to risk reasoning. Doing nothing becomes a decision that must be explained, not a default that goes unnoticed.
The authority itself is designed to avoid capture. Members rotate. Sectoral audits are time-bound. No individual or group gains permanent control over regulatory architecture. Conflict-of-interest disclosures are mandatory. Members cannot simultaneously advise private firms operating in the audited sectors. The authority’s power comes not from enforcement, but from exposure.
There is also a deeper political logic at play. Most governments struggle to remove rules because deletion angers small but powerful stakeholder groups. A statutory deletion authority externalizes this risk. Political leadership can point to an independent, expert-driven process when removing outdated controls. Responsibility shifts from individual ministers to institutional logic.
For citizens and businesses, the impact is cumulative. Each deletion may seem minor in isolation, but together they shorten timelines, reduce uncertainty, and restore predictability. Entrepreneurs stop budgeting months for approvals. Professionals stop factoring bureaucratic exhaustion into career decisions. The system becomes breathable again.
For NRIs, this authority offers a uniquely appropriate mode of engagement. They are not asked to fund projects, manage politics, or navigate local hierarchies. They are asked to do what distance enables best: compare, question, and simplify. Their lack of dependence on local favors becomes an asset rather than a liability.
By 2047, Kerala will either drown in its own regulatory sediment or emerge leaner through conscious subtraction. No digital portal, single-window system, or new policy will succeed if the underlying rules remain bloated. The NRI Regulatory Deletion Authority attacks the problem at its root. It accepts a hard truth that Kerala has long avoided. Progress does not always come from doing more. Sometimes, it comes from the courage to delete.
