The Nava Keralam Citizens' Response Programme, an exercise to document the aspirations of the people and to assemble from this data a policy roadmap for Kerala, should have ideally been announced on May 21, 2021, during the first press conference that marked the start of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's second term.

But it has been made when the second Pinarayi Ministry is nearing its end. Not more than three functional months are left for the government, considering the model code of conduct that will be in place for the local body elections and then, for the Assembly polls next year.

This delayed declaration of a massive participatory exercise for the laying of a policy pathway all the way to 2031 can mean two things. One, a subtle show of confidence. The LDF is quietly telling the voter that it is certain of a third term in office. 

And two, apart from the usual smartly-worded ad campaigns with oversized images of Pinarayi Vijayan, the LDF government is exploring a never-before-attempted method to take its accomplishments to the public: Customised word-of-mouth campaigns. 

"Campaign ads, by nature, are one-sided and therefore unreliable from a voter's perspective. It can easily be misunderstood as bragging. But knocking on every door in Kerala and speaking to the family in private can feel very authentic," a top CPM leader told Onmanorama.

The Chief Minister, while announcing the Nava Keralam Citizens' Response Programme at his post-Cabinet sunset briefing on Monday, termed it as a "development and welfare study project". "This will provide a new strength and direction to Kerala's progress," he said.

Traditionally, the CPM draws up its policies through a series of subject-based seminars led by Left intellectuals as part of the two-day International Congress on Kerala Studies. The fifth study congress was held in 2024, but even the party had given it a low profile, unlike the fourth, which was held in January 2016, before the first Pinarayi Ministry came to power.

The Study Congress does not have the people's connect of the 'knock on the door' campaign. The plan is to use ward-level volunteers to knock on doors. "They will carefully listen to what people have to say and would document their opinions and suggestions. On the basis of this, a comprehensive study report would be prepared, and from this, a policy roadmap will be drawn up," the CM said.

But before listening to what the people have to say, these volunteers will brief the individual families on the various welfare and development schemes of the Pinarayi Ministry. "The volunteers will ask individual families to share their relationship with various development and welfare measures of the government. You cannot expect families to be aware of all the government schemes. So the volunteers will use the occasion to brief them about these, to fill the gap in their understanding of the LDF government. We get a chance to remove misconceptions, too," the top CPM leader said. 

Success stories in health and education, of Life Mission and of extreme poverty eradication are some the volunteers will compulsorily share with families across Kerala.

The volunteers will be selected at the ward level. Each ward will have four volunteers. They will visit houses, flats, other dwellings, educational institutions, health centres, business centres, labour-intensive work spaces, bus stands, auto stands, Kudumbashree units, clubs, libraries and any other collectives in a ward to collect details. 

Suggestions will also be sought from the voter. "This way they will feel like they have a stake in the coming government," the CPM leader said. The CM conveyed a similar sense. "The objective is to make the people part of the planning process. Such a democratisation of planning would be a first for the world," the CM said.

Since Kerala is famed for its decentralisation and its 'grama sabhas' where voters in an area sit together and decide local requirements, the CM presenting the bottom-up approach of the Citizens' Response Programme as novel sounded a bit amusing. 

The Citizens' Response Programme will be conducted in two months, from January 1 to February 28, 2026. A state-level advisory body with the Chief Secretary, two former IAS officers - K M Abraham and K Jayakumar - and IIM Kozhikode professor Saji Gopinath has been formed. This state-level committee will give its recommendations to the state government after vetting the various proposals collected and fine-tuned by the district- and assembly-level committees.