Kerala’s political parties are operating with tools, assumptions, and incentives designed for the 20th century, while the problems facing the state are unmistakably 21st century. This mismatch is no longer abstract. It is visible in how decisions are made, how leadership is selected, how accountability works, and how outcomes repeatedly fall short despite high awareness and participation.

Twentieth-century parties were built for mobilisation. Their core strengths were mass rallies, cadre discipline, ideological identity, and control over narrative. These made sense in an era of limited media, lower literacy, slower information flow, and centralized authority. Power had to be aggregated physically and emotionally. Parties were the only scalable mechanism available.

That context no longer exists in Kerala.

Today’s Kerala is highly literate, digitally connected, politically alert, and socially vocal. Information travels faster than party instructions. Citizens compare policies across states and countries in real time. Public debate happens continuously, not during election seasons. In this environment, the historic advantages of parties collapse, yet their internal structures remain unchanged.

The first proof of 20th-century thinking is how parties select candidates. Advancement is still driven primarily by loyalty, time served, factional balance, and cadre management. These are mobilisation skills, not governance skills. Modern governance, however, requires systems thinking, project management, financial literacy, regulatory understanding, and long-horizon planning. Parties systematically underweight these competencies because they are not rewarded inside party hierarchies.

The result is predictable. The assembly fills up with people skilled at surviving political ecosystems rather than managing public ones.

The second proof lies in how governance problems are framed. Parties continue to treat structural, technical challenges as ideological or emotional battles. Employment is discussed as slogans and schemes rather than labour-market design. Infrastructure is framed as spending achievements rather than lifecycle performance. Climate stress is addressed reactively rather than through probabilistic planning. These are not ideological questions; they are engineering, economic, and systems problems. Twentieth-century politics tries to solve them with speeches. Twenty-first-century governance requires models, data, and iteration.

Third, parties remain trapped in a grievance-intervention model of representation. The MLA is still expected to personally intervene, recommend, and bypass systems. This made sense when institutions were weak and access was scarce. Today, it actively prevents institutions from improving. Modern governance scales through rules and processes, not through personal discretion. Parties resist this shift because discretionary power is a key source of political control. This is a structural incompatibility with modern administration.

Fourth, accountability mechanisms remain primitive. Parties rely on episodic accountability through elections, narrative framing, and blame shifting. There is little culture of continuous performance review, transparent metrics, or outcome-based evaluation. In contrast, modern systems operate on dashboards, audits, benchmarks, and peer comparison. When governance becomes measurable, excuses lose value. Parties instinctively resist this because it exposes incompetence across ideological lines.

Fifth, party politics is still organised around identity consolidation rather than problem resolution. Ideology once helped societies choose direction. Today, Kerala’s problems cut across ideology. Drainage does not flood differently under different parties. Hospitals do not become efficient because of slogans. Roads do not last longer because of ideology. When outcomes converge regardless of party, ideology loses explanatory power. Parties then survive by identity reinforcement rather than delivery.

Sixth, parties are structurally slow. Their internal decision-making involves committees, consultations, approvals, and political balancing. This worked in a slower world. Today’s governance environment punishes delay. Climate events, economic shocks, and infrastructure failures demand rapid, coordinated response. Modern systems privilege speed with accountability. Party systems privilege consensus with delay. This is not a moral failure; it is an architectural one.

Seventh, Kerala’s assembly increasingly legislates without feedback loops. Laws and policies are passed, but post-implementation evaluation is weak. Twentieth-century governance assumed authority ensured compliance. Modern governance assumes uncertainty and demands continuous correction. Research-backed policymaking, pilots, and revisions are rare in party-dominated legislatures because they require admitting uncertainty. Parties prefer certainty in rhetoric, even when reality is uncertain.

Finally, technology has broken the party monopoly on political organisation. Communication, fundraising, mobilisation, and narrative building no longer require party infrastructure. Yet parties continue to behave as if they control access. This creates a lag between political reality and political structure. Assemblies that do not adapt to this reality will be bypassed in legitimacy, even if they retain formal power.

None of this argues that parties are evil or obsolete by decree. It argues that they are historically successful institutions that have failed to evolve at the pace required. Kerala’s assembly reflects this failure. It remains dominated by political generalists trying to govern specialised systems.

Modern governance requires different norms. Representatives who treat governance as a profession, not a performance. Legislators comfortable with data, uncertainty, and trade-offs. Continuous accountability rather than episodic theatre. Institutions strengthened rather than bypassed. Outcomes measured rather than claimed.

Kerala does not lack intelligence, awareness, or participation. It lacks a governance architecture aligned with contemporary complexity. Political parties, as currently structured, belong to a different era. The assembly, if it is to remain relevant by 2047, must move beyond mobilisation politics into managerial, evidence-based governance.

This is not the end of democracy. It is democracy growing up.

Kerala vision 2047 demands it.