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.<\/p>\n
These policies shaped the risk perception of private enterprises, although they were not the only reason for Kerala\u2019s 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 \u201cbusinessman\u201d when teachers asked what they wanted to become. By the end of the 20th century, large-scale private industrial ambition in Kerala felt moribund.<\/p>\n
Today, \u2018bourgeoisie\u2019 is being replaced by \u2018entrepreneurs\u2019\u2014you find it all around on social media, college campuses and even in textbooks. Many students openly aspire to become entrepreneurs. Schools run \u2018studentpreneur\u2019 events. The LDF government celebrated 2022-23 as the Year of Enterprises and set out \u201cto identify and handhold aspiring entrepreneurs\u201d.<\/p>\n
Decades ago, the leftists had set out to curb bourgeois interests. The contrast today is striking\u2014from \u2018fighting bourgeoisie\u2019 to \u2018handholding entrepreneurs\u2019. The leftist parties in the state call this pragmatism.\u00a0Such a shift is not unheard of\u2014they have been noted for the communist regimes in Bengal and China. One could perhaps describe Kerala\u2019s transformation as \u2018socialism with Malayali characteristics\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But this story began long before my time. In 1957, Kerala elected a communist government, which quickly enacted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[28,323404,323405,323406,323407,323408,158,261262,323402,323401,323403],"class_list":["post-754572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-dhoomakethu","tag-dhoomakethu-first-look","tag-dhoomakethu-poster","tag-dhoomakethu-release-date","tag-dhoomakethu-trailer","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-neymar","tag-nikhila-vimal","tag-sajin-gopu","tag-sudhi-maddison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}