6 min readJul 27, 2026 07:19 AM IST
First published on: Jul 26, 2026 at 12:20 PM IST
There are glorious moments when the youth of the nation demonstrate that they are indeed the genuine trustees of posterity, to borrow Benjamin Disraeli’s phrase. A generation that has been catastrophically failed by their elders, who bequeathed to them authoritarianism, communalism, a failing education system, an administrative state marked by impunity, and an atmosphere of suffocating fear, decided to take their future into their own hands. They made a regime and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, intoxicated with fantasies of total power, look out of touch, small and ridiculous. By itself, the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan will not bring change. But India’s young have shown that the regime is vulnerable. We can still pull back from the abyss.
The movement was the product of an unlikely conjuncture. Protests against exam leaks are quite frequent in India. But it is an adage of politics that we discover power only in the doing of deeds and after the fact. An ill-considered word, “cockroach”, used by a Chief Justice of India who has been emblematic of the singularly bad judgment and institutional degradation that marks Indian public life, gave the young an unlikely political identity. Sonam Wangchuk went on a hunger strike, bringing more attention to the movement, and precipitating what seemed like a crackdown. AISA students led by Neha Bora and others continued the fast. The government’s repression only fuelled the movement further.
The issue of fairness and quality in education cuts across party lines, and is a source of consternation even among BJP supporters. Opposition parties, from the SP to the Congress, for once did the right thing — played second fiddle to a movement. All of them showed up, even if sometimes reluctantly. Mobilisers like Chandrashekhar and other organisations provided additional ground troops. The Cockroach Janta Party and Abhijeet Dipke outwitted the government on Instagram. The sheer youthfulness, creativity, and mocking power slowly began to draw out voices of celebrities and ordinary parents. These voices had all been suppressed or often been complicit for over a decade. And a movement was born.
The movement has lifted, at least for the moment, the pall of fear that diminished us. It has brought the scandal that is Indian higher education onto the political agenda. The resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan unleashes two dynamics. The farmers’ agitation had made the government withdraw legislation. But this is the first time that the government has acknowledged the need for taking responsibility and being held accountable. Responsibility and accountability had disappeared from our political lexicon. But the resignation has another potential. For the first time, a thought will cross the mind of other ministers that they might also someday be held accountable. They will realise that even PM Modi can, when it suits him, use them as sacrificial pawns. They will need to protect themselves.
Pradhan’s fault was not that he did not deliver. He delivered everything the Prime Minister seems to have wanted: Complete control of the RSS over India’s higher education. He subordinated education to ideology and mediocrity. He promoted greater centralisation of higher education, and gave fillip to a corrupt political economy of exams and testing. The government reduced the education budget as a share of GDP. No government in India has done well on higher education. The government stuck with him so long because he was succeeding by the metric they wanted him to succeed by. Every other minister should now think whether succeeding by the ideological metric of the RSS will protect them in the future.
The political fallout will be complicated. The government will now never recover its untrammelled authority; there will be internal confusion even among BJP supporters. The Opposition has hopefully realised that corroding the authority of the government with a broad front is far more important than their own petty differences. It will be interesting to see if coalition partners now hesitate more in supporting BJP’s far-reaching legislative agenda. But it is not going to be easy to stem the rot in Indian higher education. This government’s stated agenda does not look good: Rather than just fast-track courts for exam leakers, the entire NTA structure needs to be dismantled. The proposed Higher Education Authority Bill will centralise power even more. In education, personnel is policy, and it is hard to imagine this government putting together even a minimally competent, independent and empowered talent pool.
It always bears repeating: For this government, the loss of face, and the potential loss of power, is existential. It may have retreated for the moment, but it will almost certainly return with renewed determination, doubling down on repression, even if by stealth. It is to the Gen Z movement’s credit, and to the advantage of its novelty, that it proved difficult to delegitimise it through the familiar tropes of a “foreign hand” or the spectre of anarchy. Whatever disorder did occur was the consequence of the government’s actions, not those of the protestors. But citizens should expect more prohibitory orders on protest, more targeted harassment of individuals and institutions, and the continued incarceration of students such as Umar Khalid, whose prolonged detention remains a stark reminder of the communal and authoritarian core of this government’s vision for education.
At one level, this movement brings to light a background failure: There are no institutional channels left for policy feedback or accountability. The street is our only channel. These students reminded us what it means to be courageous citizens, not subjects. But citizenship alone will not suffice; we will also have to recover the ethics of our professions. Chief Justices will have to uphold the majesty of the Constitution, not hunt for cockroaches. Academics, who have too long abdicated their vocation, will have to reclaim the university. Politicians will have to rediscover the obligation to be responsive rather than demand submission. Otherwise, India will remain trapped in a grim dialectic: Repression answered by protest, tyranny interrupted by moments of extraordinary courage, but tyranny nonetheless.
The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express
An ill-considered word, “cockroach”, used by a Chief Justice of India who has been emblematic of the singularly bad judgment and institutional degradation that marks Indian public life, gave the young an unlikely political identity. 
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