For 25 unbroken years, Narendra Modi has been in power: first as the top elected representative of the prosperous Indian province of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. And then as the Prime Minister of the world’s most populous nation, preaching to over 1.4 billion people from his pulpit in Delhi.
For more than a decade, Modi has wielded absolute control over the country, controlling the political narrative through a pliant media and clever manipulation of social media.
He has used the coercive power of the state and the sophistication of technology to create shock and awe.
More recently, a stunning election victory in West Bengal swept a powerful incumbent out of power, and added to his air of invincibility.
But an unexpected and powerful movement led by students has broken the spell.
The subject of the seven-week-long sit-in – a broken education system, epitomised by repeated leaks of question papers, and a shrinking job market – was potent enough.
But it needed youth power, triggered by the unexpected appearance of the satirically named Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), to light the fire that spread rapidly across the country to far-flung towns and even villages.
The events of July 20, when the might of the state was unleashed on students marching to Parliament House, a stone’s throw from New Delhi’s 18th-century monument Jantar Mantar, the protest site, just made it easier.
As horrific images of students bravely facing a baton charge, tear gas, water cannons and, in a few cases, even receiving pellet gun injuries, resulting in 79 among them needing hospitalisation, filled the internet, anger spiralled.
Finally, on July 25, the Modi government buckled under pressure, and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, whose resignation had topped the list of students’ demands, was forced to step down.
But this was not triggered by security concerns, the line the government pushed publicly.
Rather, it was “the erosion of political capital of the ruling party caused by the burgeoning, organic crowds at Jantar Mantar,” and the “critical and unsavoury social media chatter”, the daily newspaper The Hindu pointed out.
The next day, the government announced a high-powered Task Force under technocrat Nandan Nilekani to fix the examination system.
But it was too little, too late, especially as it is apparent that it is the entire public education system that needs a thorough overhaul.
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Anger unleashed
But what makes this moment different? After all, this is not the first protest that the Modi government has faced.
In 2015-16, a nationwide student stir erupted after ‘lower-caste’ scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide when Hyderabad University abruptly stopped paying his monthly PhD fellowship stipend; simultaneously, protests over free-speech and sedition at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University hit the headlines.
In 2019-20, there were nationwide demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that discriminated against Muslims.
In 2020-21, hundreds and thousands of farmers imposed a year-long blockade along the borders of New Delhi, forcing the Modi government to completely repeal three controversial agricultural reform laws, the first real setback to the government.
But this moment is different. The impetus comes from the bottom, with students from lower-income backgrounds dominating the protests and with many among them erstwhile staunch Hindutva votaries.
But, simultaneously, the potency of the cause has united people across caste, class and religious lines, breaching the age barrier. Sikh and Muslim places of worship threw open their doors to injured students, offering them food and shelter.
For more than a decade now, the Modi government had successfully manipulated the narrative to portray previous protests as representing specific small sections of society – low-caste Dalits during the Rohith Vemula protests, “anti-national” Left-leaning students during the JNU stir and Muslims and “urban Naxals”, a pejorative term for big city left-of-centre intellectuals, when the anti-CAA protests broke.
It did not work this time. Despite the government’s best efforts to paint the current youth movement as “anti-national” and even “foreign-funded”, virtually everyone in India personally knows a “cockroach” — someone affected, or one likely to be affected, by the failing academic ecosystem.
Lawyers of the country’s top court publicly declared support for the students; doctors have come forward to offer help.
