The nearly 60-page document, 'Novel Pathways to Nava Kerala', using which Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has egged on the Kerala unit of the CPM to explore the possibilities of neoliberal-sounding concepts like cesses, surcharges, user fee and public-private-partnership (PPP) has, by all accounts, received overwhelming support from CPM delegates at the State Conference in Kollam. The only job left now is to persuade the people of Kerala to buy into 'Pinarayi's manifesto.'

Pinarayi himself took the first step. He marketed the Nava Kerala document that received rave reviews at the State Conference, in typical Marxian terms, as an act of rebellion.

"Our land has to progress. The living standards in Kerala have to be raised to the levels of high-income and upper-middle-income countries. In this pursuit, lack of resources should not stand in the way. We have to fight the cruel and discriminatory attitude of the BJP-led Centre. Keep denying us our rightful share all you want, but we will not remain silent. We will not accept defeat. We want to grow, we want to progress," Pinarayi said in a rabble-rousing style at the mass public gathering at Ashramam grounds in Kollam, which marked the conclusion of the four-day conference.

If the Centre is unwilling to give Kerala money, Pinarayi said Kerala would find its own resources. The mythical defiance of the underdog was Pinarayi's selling point. He was also the knight in shining armour. "We will accept any investment as long as it does not hurt Kerala's interests. If there is anything harmful, we will reject it," he said.

But the knight's rhetoric does not match reality. If Kerala's interests were paramount, what prompted Kerala Water Authority to grant record-quick consent to Oasis International's ethanol plant in a water-scarce village in Palakkad without even conducting field visits?

Why were questions related to pollution not asked when the Adani Group announced at the Invest Kerala Summit that it would invest heavily in cement manufacturing in Kerala?

The Chief Minister, however, seemed intoxicated by his own rhetoric. Unlike before, Pinarayi said Kerala was ready for big-ticket investments. "Earlier, Kerala was woefully short of basic infrastructure. Now, in the last nine years, Kerala has changed drastically. This is what we saw at the Invest Kerala Summit," he said.

The celebrations have begun, the CM seemed to suggest. "We are the most investment-friendly state in the country," he said. Pinarayi seemed oblivious of the warning sounded by the Draft Political Resolution adopted by his party in Kolkata this January. "The pursuit of the ‘ease of doing business’ has meant the dismantling of environmental regulations, permitting projects in hitherto protected areas and weakening regulatory agencies and mechanisms," it says. The draft's rebuke is aimed at the BJP, but it comes Pinarayi's way too.

Perhaps why CPM politburo coordinator Prakash Karat, who lashed out at the neoliberal policies of the BJP and the need to combat them at the concluding event in Kollam, was curiously silent about the contents of Pinarayi's Nava Kerala document. Significantly, Karat said that the first Pinarayi government had "pioneered and pursued an alternative path of development". Clearly a reference to the unique public infrastructure funding model, KIIFB, and the Kerala Social Security Pensions Limited, a company formed to pay welfare pensions on time.

"It is because of these innovative models that this government, in its second term, has come under attack from the centre. You cannot see any other example of a totally partisan and cruel approach of the centre toward the people of a state," he said. But if Karat thought that the latest Nava Kerala document also contained the Left alternative, he did not say so.

Pinarayi, too, did not mention the controversial aspects of his document. Cesses, fees and surcharges were left out of his public speech. Instead, he spoke of educated Malayalis who had made it big abroad and the need to find ways to encourage them to invest in Kerala. He also wanted Kerala to think up projects that could persuade individuals to part with their savings left idle in gold and other banking instruments.

Cooperative sector was another goldmine, he said. "we can use the money parked in cooperative bodies to boost the agriculture sector," Pinarayi said.

The CM's speech on March 9 evening might have been free of provocative monetisation techniques, but his government has already given consent to impose what is called 'digital cost' on top of the usual fees charged for online certificates, licenses, and building permits. The Pinarayi Manifesto has become operational.