A YOUTH MANIFESTO FOR THRISSUR
As Thrissur prepares for the crucial local body elections in December 2025, we face a pivotal choice: continue with business as usual, or choose a new path forward.
This Youth Manifesto is our collective vision for that path. Co-created by the young people of Thrissur through a series of public consultations, this document translates our collective hopes into actionable demands for the next municipal administration.
It presents a visionary yet practical roadmap across 15 sectors, from Democracy and Food to Learning and Waste Management, showing how our city can move towards wellbeing, justice, and ecological resilience.
This is more than a list of demands; it’s our proposal for a thriving, resilient, and joyful Thrissur.
Download the manifesto to see the future we want to build, and join us in making it a central conversation in the 2025 municipal elections.
The Malayalam version of the Youth Manifesto for Thrissur will be published here soon...
Our collective stand for Thrissur’s future
The world is experiencing a convergence of multiple, interconnected crises. A metacrisis whose effects resonate from the global to the local is also touching our very lives here in Thrissur. Across the planet, we witness ecological emergencies like biodiversity loss and climate catastrophes; socio-economic fractures of rising inequality and deprivation; political shifts toward authoritarianism that threaten pluralism; cultural homogenisation that erodes diversity; and a widespread personal experience of alienation and meaninglessness. These are not distant issues. We feel their compound effects in our city of Thrissur as well. This complex web of crises creates recurring instability, demanding a response that is both urgent and deeply systemic.
In this pivotal moment, a response is needed from every corner of society. While the challenges are global, the solutions need to be local. It is at the local level in our cities and communities that we can most effectively rebuild systems rooted in justice, sustainability, and wellbeing. The Thrissur Municipal Corporation, being the tier of governance closest to the people, holds a unique power and responsibility to lead this transformation by listening to and acting on local voices.
Rooting our response in community
Learning City Thrissur emerged in 2020 from the shared struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic, founded on the belief that a resilient future begins with a connected, civically conscious community. Through public gatherings and learning programmes, we have worked to reimagine our city by facilitating deeper connections, helping the people of Thrissur (re)connect with themselves, with each other, and with the rest of nature. We propose localisation as a vital strategy to build long-term resilience against crises that are deepened by short-term thinking.
A manifesto co-created by the youth of Thrissur
This Youth Manifesto is the direct outcome of that commitment. It is a collective voice of the youth of Thrissur, articulating the actions we demand from our local government. To build this vision, we engaged in a meticulous process of public consultation using the Alternatives Transformation framework developed through the Vikalp Sangam process. This approach, built on over a decade of work across India, envisions transformation through the core pillars of: 1) Social Wellbeing & Justice, 2) Economic Democracy, 3) Ecological Integrity & Resilience, 4) Direct and Delegated Democracy and 5) Cultural Diversity & Knowledge Democracy.
Guided by this framework, we asked how values like solidarity, dignity, interconnectedness, diversity, autonomy, joy, and respect for all life can be woven into the fabric of Thrissur in different aspects of life. The result is a thorough, hopeful, and practical vision for a city that commits to the wellbeing of its people and its environment.
This document is more than a list of demands; it is a roadmap for a thriving, resilient, and joyful Thrissur. We offer it as a vital contribution to all political parties, public institutions, and fellow citizens committed to building a city where every young person can envision a future full of hope, purpose, and possibility.
- Team Learning City Thrissur
Download the manifesto in English.
Download the manifesto in Malayalam.