Kerala’s chief minister, V.D. Satheesan, came in like a breath of fresh air after the decade-long reign of Pinarayi Vijayan, the communist who behaved like a king. If Vijayan was distant and often menacing in manner, Satheesan is approachable and found charming enough by Gen Z to have been named “the pookie chief minister” by them. But the scale of his victory, taking the Congress close to a majority on their own in the legislature, reveals him as a man of determination and grit. Given his popularity, the Congress “high command” had no choice but to accede to his appointment as chief minister, though all indications were that they would have preferred a Gandhi-family loyalist.After coming to power, he has engaged with the press in a way that Vijayan did not, and far beyond what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done in his 12 in office. Interestingly, in his interviews and his earliest speeches in the state’s assembly the new chief minister has identified himself as a Nehruvian. This is unusual among Kerala’s congress chief ministers. They may have displayed a devotion to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi when they were prime ministers but are not known to have identified themselves as Nehruvian, which comes with an allegiance to certain principles and a definite world view. It is particularly good for Kerala to have a chief who, at least indirectly, refers to ideals in politics. After E.M.S. Namboodiripad and Achutha Menon, Kerala’s politicians have long been shorn of any goal other than the advancement of either their social group or family. So, by claiming to be Nehruvian, Satheesan has harked back to a time in Indian politics when there was at least a stated commitment to the greater common good. Nehru had identified this good to be a prosperous, democratic and progressive India.Also read: From Taking on Pinarayi to Self-grooming, V.D. Satheesan’s Journey to Kerala’s Top PostFor Satheesan to be Nehruvian he must show himself to be taking Kerala in that direction. He has five years ahead of him, but his first salvo, the revised budget presented on June 19, has disappointed. He has shown himself to be either wary of change or without the vision to break with the past. Having with much fanfare instituted a review of the public finances of the state, and then tabled a white paper on the same in the assembly, he has shown no stomach for the fiscal adjustment needed to stabilise them. The revenue deficit, identified in this report as the source of fiscal stress and potentially destabilising, has hardly been trimmed.On the contrary, the effective revenue deficit as share of the state’s domestic product for 2026-27 equals the average for the previous four years, and is much higher than what it was in two of them. There was scope for ending some consumption subsidies at least till such time as the finances recover. There was also scope for raising property taxes in a state with a substantial presence of luxury housing, some of it uninhabited as the owners are in employment overseas.Persistent revenue deficits have contributed to high public debt in Kerala, second only to Punjab’s. The economic significance of this can be reduced by “growing out of debt”. But this will not be easy. For decades Kerala’s economic policy has been “distributivist” as opposed to “productivist”, with the budget viewed as a conduit for cash transfers. This has left little for capital investment, which may be seen in the lack of equipment in government hospitals and poorly maintained buildings that pass for government schools. This is in stark contrast to what happened in India in the fifties, when agricultural growth and manufacturing surged due to the policies of the central government of the time. Nehru had written of the pressure on his government to distribute money through the budget, but held on to spending public funds on capital projects as that would produce higher levels of income in the future. Admittedly, there was little human development, but it may be said that both health and education were state subjects then, and India had some powerful chief ministers at the time.Kerala chief minister V.D. Satheesan greets state home minister Ramesh Chennithala, right, and others during the budget presentation for 2026-2027 of the UDF government in the Kerala legislative assembly, in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on June 19, 2026. Photo: PTI.Nehru was clear that given the low level of per capita income in India, the economy would have to grow. He had a clear idea of how to do it, and the Nehru-Mahalanobis Strategy succeeded spectacularly. Satheesan has only just begun, and deserves to be given time to reveal his plan. But it must be said that so far he has not provided even the outline of a strategy, while claiming that his policies will deliver growth and development. Growth would matter not only for debt but also employment generation. What the chief minister has done so far is to announce some schemes for distributing public moneys. This is not Nehruvian by any means.While it may not have a plan for Kerala’s economy, the revised budget does set some goals. Among them is for Kerala to become an educational hub. It is not clear if this statement recognises the crisis of Kerala’s educational sector. Long reconciled to migration for studies at the post-graduate level, the state is now battling with lagging enrolment at the undergraduate level. This is entirely related to poor instruction.The state has struggled with this for long. A large section of its undergraduate colleges are run by caste or religious groups, which receive public funding but refuse to enforce teaching standards. Indeed they cannot, for having sold the lectureships they do not fund, they have no locus standi to demand performance from the teachers. State governments in the past have refrained from taking the bull by the horns, as caste and religious groups matter for electoral outcomes. If Satheesan wants to make a difference he cannot continue with the practice. He has shown himself to be adept at the politics of gesture by proposing a tribal university in Wayanad, a region with a high presence of tribals. While the tribals, a group with little political clout in the state, deserve every support to develop their capabilities, it is not clear that a designated university is the answer. Universities by definition are sites of universal knowledge and access, and forming one for any particular group would be a contradiction in terms. As a democrat averse to patronage, an internationalist transcending identity politics and founder of the IITs and IIMs – centres of excellence with universal access – Nehru is likely to have been horrified by Satheesan’s pitch.Finally, we come to secularism. Nehru did not speak much about it, as it was a given in his vision for India. However, when asked by Andre Malraux, a man of letters and statesman, of the challenges for his government, he had mentioned “a secular state in a religious country” as one. Satheesan, it would appear, is less troubled by such thoughts. He has publicly refused to have any truck with Kerala’s caste-based organisations but has actively aligned with the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) to form the government. Nehru had thought of the demand for Pakistan as communal, and very early in the formation of the state had advised his partymen in Kerala to avoid such an alliance. He is likely to have been saddened by their opportunism. Pulapre Balakrishnan is Honorary Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.