<\/p>\n
Keralam takes pride in literacy, political awareness, and public debate. But when it comes to leadership renewal, the state still looks oddly stuck. Every election brings talk of change, progress, and a \u201cnew Keralam\u201d, yet many of the same ageing political faces continue to dominate the field.<\/p>\n
Some of the senior political leaders often discussed in this context include Pinarayi Vijayan, aged 80, K. Sudhakaran, aged 77, G. Sudhakaran, aged 75, and Ramesh Chennithala, aged 69. These numbers are not insults. They are simple facts, and they raise a valid democratic question – how long should the same generation continue to occupy the front row of active electoral politics? :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}<\/p>\n
There is nothing wrong with experience. In fact, experience matters in public life. But democracy cannot become a closed waiting room where one generation keeps holding the top seats indefinitely while younger leaders are told to wait endlessly. A healthy political system needs both experience and transition.<\/p>\n
This is not about disrespecting senior leaders or denying their contribution. It is about asking a basic democratic question: when will political parties seriously create room for the next generation to lead? In most professions, there comes a stage where leadership shifts, direct control reduces, and mentoring becomes the natural role. Politics in India often behaves as if none of that should apply to power. That is not healthy, and it is certainly not modern.<\/p>\n
Keralam, of all places, should be leading this discussion. The state often presents itself as progressive, educated, and politically mature. Then it should also be mature enough to debate a retirement age, or at least a practical upper age limit, for holding top executive and electoral roles. Senior leaders can still remain in public life as mentors, advisers, thinkers, and party strategists. They do not need to vanish from politics. But they also do not need to remain permanent candidates forever.<\/p>\n
The bigger issue is not age alone. It is stagnation. When the same leaders, same networks, and same power centres keep returning, political innovation suffers. Younger voices struggle to rise. Internal party democracy weakens. Fresh thinking on employment, technology, environment, mobility, urban planning, and public health gets pushed aside by old-style power management.<\/p>\n
The future of Keralam cannot be shaped only by leaders whose political instincts were formed in the battles of the 1970s and 1980s. Today\u2019s Keralam is dealing with brain drain, unemployment, climate stress, an ageing population, traffic pressure, waste management failures, and a rapidly changing digital economy. These challenges require energy, adaptability, and a leadership culture willing to hand over space, not merely hold on to it.<\/p>\n
If political parties truly believe in democracy, they should prove it inside their own structures first. A retirement age for active electoral politics would be a sensible reform. Not as punishment. Not as disrespect. But as a necessary step toward leadership renewal.<\/p>\n
Because a \u201cnew Keralam\u201d cannot be built forever by the same old faces alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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