5 min readJul 24, 2026 07:08 AM IST
First published on: Jul 24, 2026 at 07:08 AM IST
The horrific scenes of young Indians being teargassed and thrashed while protesting the corruption of education in Delhi has galvanised youth across the country to seek accountability, dialogue and reform. They deserve all three.
Only a dozen years ago, we talked about India’s potential demographic dividend given its increasingly young population. We now face the grim truth that that opportunity was squandered. According to ILO estimates, unemployment in the 15-24 age group was as
high as 17.2 per cent in 2025, up from 15 per cent in 2024. Unemployment amongst women with advanced education was as high as 21 per cent in 2024. How we slid from potential demographic dividend to lost generations is a story for economists to tell, but neither the Union nor state administrations can evade responsibility, certainly not a government in its third term.
Instead of consulting our myriad educationists on how to fix the problem of educational rot — are nationally conducted examinations even desirable or feasible in a country of our physical and demographic size? — this administration resorted to the heavy-handed law-and-order approach that has become all too familiar. The Enforcement Directorate was directed to arrest those accused of fraud and seize their assets, a task that is still ongoing. But no commission of inquiry has been established to investigate the systemic flaws of the education system, which is being increasingly controlled by the Union administration.
Nor has the education ministry held widespread and non-partisan consultations on how to improve education in a country characterised by both the poor quality and the poor spread of learning, especially in its Hindi-speaking states. Worse still, there has been no serious study of how education can be tied to employment.
Now, the same heavy-handed approach has been deployed against young protesters, with an added and deeply troubling twist. The Union administration’s initial response was stony silence. Days passed, but the administration did not respond to the many calls for dialogue with the protesting students, including by an editorial in this newspaper. When a meeting did finally take place between two representatives of the Cockroach Janta Party and Union Health Minister J P Nadda, it was a full month after the dharna began and it was inconclusive.
Even while the meeting was ongoing, the Delhi Police attacked the youth marching to Parliament and those still at the protest site. Judging by the reams of footage flooding the internet, the police used electrified lathis known as shock batons, tear gas and even pellet guns, which are banned in most democratic countries but allowed in the “rarest of rare” incidents in India. By what stretch of criteria can a student protest qualify as “rarest of rare”?
Shockingly, too, we saw commandos in civilian attire beating up students with no intervention by the uniformed police. Why was this allowed?
Police excesses are not rare in our country, but they have increased exponentially over the past decade. In 2024, we saw firing on protesting farmers and in 2019 we saw forcible crackdowns on students protesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. During the same period, we saw armed confrontations between the Assam and Mizoram police and the Haryana and Punjab police — a development that was indeed rare in India.
Instead of inquiring into the excesses of July 20, the Delhi Police indulged in a smear campaign. Protesters were accused of masquerading as students and being fronts for the Opposition; unnamed sources even floated a theory of Pakistani involvement. One can only wonder: If
Pakistan can so successfully muster a lakh or more to march in India’s capital, what on earth has the Union home ministry been doing?
Ludicrous as these accusations are, they point to a deeper malaise. Police reform has been on the anvil for decades now. Successive commissions, from 1978 to 2006, have made eminently sensible as well as eminently feasible recommendations for reform that have mouldered on the home ministry’s shelves. The time to dust them off and implement their recommendations — the most important of which seek to insulate the police from political diktat — is now.
What happened on July 20 will only lead to greater anger amongst all Indians. Yet if there was ever an issue that demands bipartisan consultation and public policy formulation, it is the future of our young. Whether our economy and society progress or falter depends on them, and they demand answers. As one young woman tellingly remarked: “No taxation without accountability.” Young India has risen. It is for old India to listen — and change.
Kumar’s latest book is The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy, 1947-2024
Large crowds had gathered at the Parliament Street-Tolstoy Marg crossing, with the gathering swelling towards Connaught Place in central New Delhi. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal) 
Share
