Punjab and Kerala: Distant States, Parallel Faultlines

At first glance, Punjab and Kerala seem like polar opposites. One lies in the lap of the north, the other embraces the sea in the far south. One thumps to the dhol, the other flows with the chenda melam. Their languages, diets, and climates could not be more different. And yet, if India were to map its internal contradictions and exceptions, Punjab and Kerala would both light up, not for their similarities in appearance, but for how they have each charted unique trajectories that set them apart from the rest of the country.

They are not model states, nor mirror images. They are outliers, born of resistance and shaped by circumstance, whose internal rhythms often run contrary to the national beat. Over the past few months, as I immersed myself in Kerala’s social and political history, having already spent months studying Punjab, I began to see parallels that were hard to ignore. I began spotting echoes. And the deeper I listened, the louder they got.

A History of Saying No

Kerala and Punjab have long stood apart from the political mainstream, not just in terms of how they vote, but also in terms of how they think about power, identity, and the state. Kerala’s political outlier status was cemented in 1957, when it elected the world’s first communist government through democratic means. This wasn’t just a leftward lurch. It was the culmination of a deeply rooted culture of reform that had started decades earlier. The temple entry movement, the anti-caste struggles led by Sree Narayana Guru, and the rise of trade unions had all created fertile ground for a politics of redistribution, dignity, and grassroots empowerment. Even today, Kerala’s voters oscillate between the Left and the Congress-led coalition, but the ideological centre of gravity remains defiantly progressive.

Punjab’s story is different, but no less rebellious. It wasn’t communism that defined its political identity, but peasant assertion, religious pride, and grassroots mobilisations. From the Ghadar movement to the rise of radical farmers’ unions and Dalit rights organisations, Punjab too had its own anti-establishment streak. In the post-Green Revolution era, it became India’s granary, but also a state where economic success masked deepening inequalities. The 1980s brought the trauma of militancy and Operation Blue Star, leaving behind a wounded public memory and a permanent caution against centralized authority. That caution continues to shape political behaviour in Punjab, where voters remain deeply sceptical of Delhi’s overtures, no matter who is in power.

In both states, there has always been a strong instinct to say “no” to orthodoxy, to domination, to conformity. It’s not just resistance for resistance’s sake. It’s the outcome of long-lived experiences with exclusion, conflict, and the state.

When Dreams Wear a Passport

In both Kerala and Punjab, the question for many isn’t whether to migrate. Rather, it’s where to go. Migration isn’t a trend here. It’s a worldview. In Kerala, the Gulf boom of the 1970s and 1980s transformed the state’s economy, bringing in remittances that funded schools, roads, homes, and entire villages. Migrants became patrons, heroes, and breadwinners for not just their families, but often for their entire communities.

In Punjab, migration has always been a powerful social force, but its geography pointed West. Every third Punjabi family has someone abroad in countries like Canada, the UK, the US, and Australia. The reasons are many- stagnating agriculture, lack of white-collar jobs, aspirations for upward mobility, and a deep psychological desire to escape a system that often feels rigged. In Doaba and Majha regions, you’ll find gleaming mansions standing empty, children growing up with one or both parents away, and IELTS coaching centres outnumbering libraries.

What’s striking is how both states have externalized their internal disillusionment. When the local economy doesn’t absorb your aspirations, you look outward. When politics doesn’t deliver dignity, you reinvent it elsewhere. Migration becomes the pressure valve and in doing so, it transforms both the places people leave and the places they go to. Remittances are only the economic tip of the iceberg. Migration here is also about identity, imagination, and escape.

The Welfare Debt Trap

It’s often said that Kerala and Punjab “look” prosperous. But while both have pockets of visible development, the similarities are more aesthetic than structural. Kerala consistently ranks at the top across human development indicators, such as literacy, life expectancy, public health, and gender outcomes. Punjab, in contrast, does better than many northern states, but its literacy, health infrastructure, and social indicators fall significantly short of Kerala’s benchmarks. Yet in both states, there’s a sense of development that you can feel on the ground through cleaner towns, better connectivity, and a more assertive citizenry. There is an impression of prosperity that often masks deeper economic and structural stresses.

But beneath this developmental narrative lies a slow-moving fiscal storm. Kerala and Punjab consistently rank among the most debt-burdened states in India, with debt-to-GSDP ratios that breach prudent thresholds and leave little room for fiscal manoeuvres. The reasons are different, but the structural trap is the same, and that is a combination of populist politics, mounting welfare commitments, and weak revenue bases.

In Kerala, the stress comes not from failure, but from the cost of success. Its globally praised welfare model, rooted in public healthcare, education, and social pensions, demands sustained spending. Add to that ambitious infrastructure projects, and the result is a state where interest payments now eat up a growing share of the budget, often at the cost of other critical services. The state has acknowledged this challenge and responded with a mix of fiscal consolidation measures, efforts to boost tax and non-tax revenues, and controlled austerity. But the balancing act remains fragile.

Punjab’s story is more sobering. After Arunachal Pradesh, it holds the dubious distinction of having the highest debt burden among Indian states. Years of agriculture-centric subsidies, ballooning pension obligations, and low economic diversification have eroded its fiscal health. The Green Revolution’s gains have plateaued, while its costs in the form of soil degradation, water scarcity, and rural distress have only grown. In response, Punjab introduced the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, aimed at curbing fiscal deficits and limiting debt growth. It also initiated attempts to rationalise subsidies, expand its tax base, and generate alternative revenue streams, though results remain mixed.

In both states, politics has long rewarded short-term waivers over long-term reform. The consequences are now becoming harder to hide. Budgets are stretched, interest obligations are rising, and funds for core sectors like education and healthcare are increasingly squeezed.

It’s a silent crisis felt most by the young who, despite being educated and globally exposed, often find themselves trapped in states that can no longer afford to dream big.

No Entry for the ‘Right’

For over a decade now, the BJP has redrawn India’s political map, storming bastions, absorbing regional forces, and asserting a majoritarian narrative built on Hindu nationalism, centralization, and a Hindi-speaking cultural imagination. But Kerala and Punjab have remained stubbornly unmoved.

In Kerala, the BJP has never held more than one seat in the State Assembly, and even that solitary win in 2016 was lost in the 2021 elections, leaving it with zero representation in the Vidhan Sabha. While the 2024 Lok Sabha elections saw the BJP make its first-ever breakthrough in Kerala by winning Thrissur Parliamentary Constituency, this success still stands as an exception rather than a trend. The state’s secular political fabric, high political awareness, and empowered minority communities have kept the Hindutva narrative from taking root in any meaningful way.

Punjab presents a different but equally firm resistance. Here, the scars of 1984, the shadow of the Khalistan movement, and the central government’s handling of Sikh issues and the farmers’ issues continue to cast long memories. The BJP’s alliance with the Akali Dal fractured post the 2020 farm laws protest, a movement that began in Punjab and became a national uprising. The Hindutva narrative, with its implicit majoritarianism, struggles to find resonance in a state where religious identity, particularly Sikh identity, is deeply entrenched and wary of assimilation.

The result is that both states remain electoral outliers in Modi’s India, voting for Congress, Left, AAP, or regional outfits, but rarely for the saffron flag.

Governments on a See-Saw

This resistance to central narratives also manifests in electoral behaviour. For decades, both Punjab and Kerala were textbook cases of anti-incumbency. Kerala voters flipped governments with almost mathematical precision. UDF one term and LDF the next, until Pinarayi Vijayan broke the pattern with a re-election in 2021, a political moment considered historic for the state.

Punjab, too, has been allergic to political complacency. No government has enjoyed repeated mandates easily. Even in 2012, when the SAD–BJP alliance managed a rare re-election, a break from the state’s tradition of anti-incumbency, it came with a reduced margin and growing public fatigue. Congress’s return in 2017 rekindled hope but fizzled out amidst infighting and unkept promises, paving the way for AAP’s landslide in 2022. In barely a decade, Punjab’s electorate handed three different parties the reins, each time with the promise of change, and each time with the silent warning that patience would not be eternal.

This volatility is not chaos. It’s consciousness. It reflects a political culture that doesn’t accept inevitability or where voters aren’t afraid to press the reset button, again and again.

Culture as Resistance, Not Decoration

And yet, for all their restlessness and disillusionment, both states remain deeply expressive. Kerala’s cinema is not just art. It’s journalism, philosophy, critique. Malayalam films are brave enough to dissect caste, patriarchy, political corruption, and the hypocrisies of society with empathy and precision. Punjab’s culture, too, is explosively expressive through music, satire, and poetry. It might not be politically nuanced all the time, but it’s emotionally honest. The longing in Punjabi songs, the sarcasm in its memes, and the rage in its rap act as cultural safety valves for a generation torn between dreams and dead ends.

In both states, culture isn’t just ornamentation. It’s a form of speaking back to authority, to history, to despair.

Epilogue: Two States, One Instinct

Punjab and Kerala don’t just stand apart from India’s mainstream. Instead, they stand as reminders that there is no one way to be Indian. They reject the idea of political inevitability. They disrupt the myth of national uniformity. They insist on dreaming in their own languages, loving in their own terms, and dissenting in their own idioms. Yes, they are economically strained, politically fragmented, and demographically anxious. But they are also alert, self-aware, and unafraid of their contradictions. They don’t seek validation from the Centre. They know they are the centre of their own worlds.

In an India that often mistakes obedience for stability, Punjab and Kerala offer something rarer- informed resistance. And maybe that’s what makes them most alike. Not their geography, not their faiths, not even their histories, but their sheer refusal to be anything other than themselves.