Top News

Protests were about accountability. For that, India's Gen Z will have to keep asking hard questions

Scroll | August 2, 2026 11:39 AM CST

In a little over a month, the Cockroach Janata Party-led student movement that began as a joke held one of the world’s most immovable governments to a single demand and won. When Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as education minister on July 25, the students who had occupied Jantar Mantar wept and embraced. Abhijeet Dipke, who founded the movement, fell to his knees.

Since coming to power in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has rarely bowed to public pressure, and almost never to the young. The repeal of the farm laws in 2021 is remembered because such retreats are so uncommon.

But a victory of this kind is most vulnerable in the days just after it is won, when the crowds go home and the terms of the settlement are set by the side that conceded – in this case, the government.

That a leaderless, meme-driven mobilisation extracted a cabinet resignation, compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after the leak of the NEET question, and a promise to drop police cases against protesters is a genuine achievement.

But none of these concessions disturb the arrangement that produced the grievances in the first place. The examination system remains in the hands of the institutions that failed it, the...