Opinion | Gen Z Can Topple A Minister. Why Can't They Enter Parliament?

Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation carries an irony that Delhi's political durbars should not miss. A politician whose ascent began in student politics has been forced out of the Education Ministry by students who had no party office, no famous surname, or invitation to the national high table.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) converted an insult into an identity and an examination scandal into a larger argument about fairness. The ruling NDA government first treated the agitation as a policing problem. It then negotiated, conceded the protesters' principal demands, and accepted Pradhan's resignation. Pralhad Joshi, another senior Cabinet hand, has been given additional charge of Education.

The resignation matters. But India must understand the larger message: young people should not have to besiege Parliament to be heard inside it. Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy put the argument in memorable political shorthand: India's youth should not merely march from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament; they should be enabled to move from sadak se Sansad, that is, from the street into the legislature itself.

Not Yet A Generational Transfer

The immediate official response has been administrative continuity: one veteran replaces another, at least temporarily. Yet the crisis was not merely about who occupied Shastri Bhawan. It was about the distance between those designing India's education system and those living through its examinations, coaching factories, paper leaks, delayed recruitment, and precarious passage from degree to employment.

The next full-time Education Minister should, therefore, be chosen with more imagination. So should the next minister responsible for information technology. These ministries govern the terrain on which Gen Z lives: education, artificial intelligence, data, online speech, platform work, skills, and employment.

In fact, many in the Congress and the INDIA alliance are now suggesting that a future Opposition-led government should entrust the education portfolio to a Gen Z leader.

Young Country, Old House

India possesses the world's largest Gen Z cohort. More than 500 million Indians, roughly 35% of the population, are between 10 and 29. Yet, only four members elected to the present Lok Sabha were identified as Gen Z. That is less than one per cent of a House whose average age is 56 and which is among the oldest Lok Sabhas India has elected.

The mismatch is not cosmetic. Representation influences what receives urgency.

India permits a citizen to vote at 18 but requires that person to wait until 25 to contest for the Lok Sabha or an Assembly, and until 30 for the Rajya Sabha or a Legislative Council. The argument is older than the Republic. In the Constituent Assembly, Shibban Lal Saxena had warned against excluding exceptional young Indians, while BR Ambedkar defended higher age requirements, particularly for the Upper House.

The founders made their judgment in the conditions of 1949. But does respect for their wisdom does not require every threshold to remain frozen for eternity? The world, after all, has evolved.

Singapore permits citizens aged 21 to contest parliamentary elections. Since its Prime Minister must command a parliamentary majority, a 21-year-old is theoretically eligible for the office. Singapore has not had a 21-year-old prime minister, but the relevant point is simple: its law does not declare political adulthood to end at the voting booth.

The Indian contradiction is difficult to defend indefinitely. A citizen can vote at 18, graduate soon afterwards, sit for the civil services at 21 and, in exceptional cases, acquire substantial administrative responsibility before becoming legally eligible to contest an Assembly or Lok Sabha election. The Republic is willing to trust a 21-year-old with the machinery of the state, but not yet with the possibility of securing a popular mandate.

Can Parliament Act?

Reddy has repeatedly proposed lowering the minimum age for contesting assembly elections from 25 to 21 and has spoken of an Assembly resolution urging a constitutional amendment. Telangana cannot make this change alone: Articles 84 and 173 prescribe the qualifications, so Parliament must act. But a state government can create the political pressure that makes Parliament act.

Reddy has announced that a special session of the Telangana Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council will be convened in the first week of August to adopt a resolution seeking 21 as the minimum age for contesting the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, and 25 for the Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils. The resolution is to be forwarded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union government.

The proposal retains a distinction between the directly elected Houses and the Upper Houses, while lowering both thresholds. It is more considered than a blanket demand to abolish every age qualification.

The argument draws deliberately on Rajiv Gandhi's decision to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 through the 61st Constitutional Amendment. The amendment's statement of objects argued that politically conscious young people should be allowed to become part of the political process.

Another Congress-era precedent comes to mind. Under PV Narasimha Rao, the eligibility age for offices in urban and rural local bodies, including mayoral and Zilla Parishad leadership positions, was lowered from 25 to 21. This helped create space for very young representatives in local government, including the election of a 21-year-old mayor in Thiruvananthapuram. younger candidates later. The unfinished step lies in Parliament and the assemblies.

But parties need not wait for a constitutional amendment. They can commit a meaningful share of tickets in every state to candidates below 35. They can open district and state organisations to credible internal elections, and place young legislators in portfolios with real authority rather than confining them to youth affairs, sports, and ceremonial responsibilities.

Open The Gates, Not Merely The Gallery

Lowering the candidacy age to 21 would be a start, not a cure.

Indian politics is expensive, dynastic, and organisationally closed. Without changes in campaign finance, internal party democracy, and candidate selection, lowering the threshold may simply allow younger members of established political families to enter four years earlier. A youthful surname is not a youth revolution.

Nor should the CJP be romanticised. A successful protest is not automatically a programme for governance. Virality is not organisation, and irreverence is not ideology. Young politics can be intolerant, impulsive, and vulnerable to manipulation, just as old politics can be cynical and complacent.

The answer is not to hand the Republic to one generation. It is to stop excluding that generation from meaningful power. Political parties should publish the age profile of their candidates, set measurable youth targets for tickets, and finance first-generation entrants who do not possess family wealth or an inherited constituency. Legislative fellowships should lead somewhere more consequential than research assistance. Parliament should debate lowering the age to 21 for the Lok Sabha and assemblies, while retaining a higher threshold for Upper Houses if it wishes to preserve their revisory character.

The CJP achieved what established politics had failed to do. A minister's resignation is evidence that young citizens possess political power even when the system denies them anything approaching proportional representation. But thought protests can remove a minister, redesigning an institution needs politics. The real tribute to those who came to Jantar Mantar would not be another speech celebrating their courage. It would be to open the doors through which power is entered. India trusted 18-year-olds with the vote in 1989. In 2026, it should begin trusting 21-year-olds with the possibility of office.

(Rasheed Kidwai is an author, columnist and conversation curator)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author