When Kerala Industries Minister P. Rajeeve met the media in Kochi over the weekend—ahead of the Invest Kerala Global Summit 2025 (IKGS) to be held from February 21 to 22—he was a cross between a humourist and data-cruncher. He bowled googlies, too. Like the time he asked the assembled journalists if they knew about a sarpanch being murdered in another state, allegedly after a tussle at an industrial site. “Let alone murdering a sarpanch, threatening one would fuel prime-time news for days in our state,” he said.
The reference was obviously about the murder of Santosh Deshmukh, sarpanch of Massajog village in Beed district—"a district that has witnessed more than 300 murders in the last five years”. Rajeeve wanted to highlight that conflict in industrial sites was a national phenomenon.
Rajeeve said that the Left Democratic Front government was aiming for “inclusive industrialisation” that would not be restricted to one place or one industry. He said that his ministry had a practical approach to deals signed at IKGS and was looking at a pragmatic 60 per cent conversion rate. He pulled up the dashboard from Kerala’s Year of Enterprises project to bolster his points.
What surprised many was his grace to previous ministries when he said that Kerala had been becoming industry-friendly over many decades and by way of example he highlighted that 24 per cent of India’s total turnover of medical devices come from the state. The minister was also chuffed that Vande Bharat trains across India would soon have Made in Kerala floors and doors.
He also profusely thanked Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for his kind words about Kerala, shared publicly during the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.
Rajeeve also mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the state’s Year of Enterprises project was picked as the best practices model at the national conference on micro, small and medium enterprises. The conference was chaired by the prime minister.
The elephant in the media room was, of course, Shashi Tharoor’s guest column in The New Indian Express titled “Changing Kerala: Lumbering jumbo to a lithe tiger”. Rajeeve said that Tharoor’s statement was based on facts. In the column, Tharoor had asked for an “Investor Protection Act, so investors can be assured their capital will be safe except for normal business downturns”.
When THE WEEK asked Rajeeve if this was a practical suggestion, the minister said that he was yet to get a draft from Tharoor about what the parliamentarian had in mind. On the face of it, the suggestion does not seem to be a practical one as it would be tough to build a legal framework to protect enterprises from financial failure.
To address the growing migration of youth from the state, Rajeeve is proposing 10 campus industrial parks spread across the state. “The vision is to have industry and education sharing a campus,” he said. “For what the student does in the industry, he should get academic credits from the college, and for the part-time work he does at the industry, he should get wages.”
