Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi
There are moments in history when governments appear almost invincible. They command the machinery of the state, control the police and administrative apparatus, enjoy parliamentary majorities and exercise considerable influence over institutions that shape public opinion. Political opposition may appear fragmented, intellectuals hesitant, institutions submissive and ordinary citizens increasingly powerless. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that political authority, however formidable, is never beyond challenge. Sometimes the most unexpected challenge comes not from established politicians or organised opposition parties, but from young men and women who abandon their classrooms, gather in university corridors and eventually occupy the streets.
What makes these movements particularly fascinating is the enormous imbalance of power between those who govern and those who protest. On one side stand the institutions of the state, supported by laws, administrative structures, security forces and political patronage. On the other are students, unemployed graduates, young workers and ordinary citizens, frequently possessing little beyond their numbers, determination and capacity for collective action. Yet the balance sometimes changes with astonishing speed. A demonstration dismissed as a minor disturbance becomes a nationwide agitation. A police crackdown intended to suppress dissent produces wider public anger. A university protest becomes a political movement, and a government that appeared unassailable suddenly finds itself compelled to defend its legitimacy.
This pattern is not new, but it has acquired fresh intensity in the present moment. What is especially striking is the contrast between the willingness of sections of the younger generation to confront authority and the caution, accommodation or silence visible among sections of established society. At a time when some institutions appear increasingly reluctant to question those in power, young people have continued to raise uncomfortable questions about education, employment, constitutional rights and democratic accountability. The history of student unrest is therefore not merely a history of youthful rebellion. It is also a history of the limits of political power, and of the capacity of ordinary people to challenge its excessive exercise.
The student uprising in Paris in May 1968 remains one of the most striking illustrations of this phenomenon. What began as protests against university regulations and the authoritarian character of educational institutions developed into a much wider confrontation with the French political establishment. Students occupied universities, erected barricades and confronted the police. When the authorities attempted to suppress the demonstrations, public sympathy expanded and millions of workers joined strikes. Factories were occupied, transport was disrupted and the government of Charles de Gaulle faced a profound crisis. De Gaulle, one suspects, had not anticipated that a dispute over dormitory visiting hours would eventually threaten his government. The students did not overthrow the French Republic, nor did their movement produce the political revolution some participants anticipated. Nevertheless, May 1968 exposed the vulnerability of apparently stable institutions and transformed debates about education, authority, gender, individual freedom and social hierarchy.
The movement formed part of a worldwide wave of youthful mobilisation. American students protested against the Vietnam War and racial discrimination. In West Germany, young activists questioned authoritarian traditions. In Mexico, students demanding democratic reforms faced violent repression, culminating in the Tlatelolco massacre. In Prague, students and young intellectuals participated in the movement for political liberalisation, although the Prague Spring extended far beyond the universities. These movements were neither ideologically identical nor equally successful. Yet they demonstrated that students could transform apparently local grievances into wider political questions. University campuses became laboratories of political thought, while the streets became arenas in which the legitimacy of established authority was contested. The young were not merely demanding a place within the existing order. Many were asking whether that order deserved to survive unchanged.
That question has returned with renewed urgency in the present decade. In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina had governed continuously since 2009. Her administration commanded the state apparatus, and opposition parties had faced extensive restrictions. Yet in 2024, a movement that began with student opposition to quotas in government employment developed into a nationwide uprising. The initial demands concerned fairness in recruitment. But the government’s response, particularly the violence accompanying attempts to suppress the demonstrations, broadened the agitation. What had begun as a dispute over employment opportunities became a confrontation over political authority and accountability. In August 2024, Hasina resigned and left the country. Student leaders subsequently participated in discussions concerning the political transition. The uprising demonstrated the capacity of students to mobilise wider sections of society, although the difficulties of the subsequent transition also revealed that removing a government and establishing durable democratic institutions are very different undertakings. Toppling a regime, it turns out, is considerably easier than governing one.
Nepal witnessed a similarly dramatic development in September 2025. Protests against restrictions on social media rapidly expanded into a wider movement against corruption, nepotism and limited economic opportunities. Young demonstrators questioned the privileges enjoyed by political elites while ordinary citizens struggled with unemployment and insecurity. The government’s attempt to suppress the demonstrations resulted in deaths and intensified public anger. Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli resigned, and an interim administration subsequently took office. In Serbia, students organised sustained protests following the deadly collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, a movement that eventually culminated in the ousting of President Aleksandar Vučić in parliamentary elections. In Kenya, young people played an important role in the demonstrations against proposed taxation in 2024. In Indonesia, student and youth protests have raised questions concerning economic inequality and political privilege.
These movements differ considerably in their political objectives and consequences. Their importance lies not in proving the existence of a single worldwide revolution, but in revealing recurring tensions between younger generations and institutions perceived as insufficiently responsive to their aspirations. The new generation has also acquired means of mobilisation unimaginable to its predecessors. A demonstration can be organised through a mobile telephone, filmed within seconds and transmitted across the world. Images of police action in one country can generate sympathy and discussion among young people thousands of miles away. But technology alone does not explain the phenomenon. Beneath these movements lie years of accumulated grievances concerning employment, education, inequality, corruption and the concentration of political power.
The Indian story of student unrest finds an unexpected echo across Europe, where the same combustible mix of neglected institutions, squeezed futures and a political class seemingly deaf to both has produced a continent-wide convulsion. What began in France over broken classroom boilers has spiralled into something considerably more existential. The French eruption began in mid-September 2026 with almost comically modest demands. High schoolers in the Paris suburbs wanted working heating, substitute teachers who actually spoke the language they were hired to teach, and toilets with doors. Within weeks, the dispute had metastasised into a nationwide confrontation involving students, trade unions and the resurrected gilets jaunes, with some 550,000 people taking to the streets on 17 October alone. The interior ministry counted nearly 2,400 arrests and almost 1,000 injured police officers, while a 15-year-old lost a hand to a police stun grenade. The imagery was stark: burning barricades in Lille, looted shops in Paris, and the 143-year-old town hall in Limoges reduced to a charred shell. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu offered a billion euros for education; students demanded ten. President Macron condemned the “sowers of chaos” while conceding that intelligence had failed to anticipate the scale of the unrest. One Lille organiser, aged sixteen, explained the logic with unnerving clarity: “If everything is burning, the government can’t ignore us.”
The Italian variant arrived with its own theatrical flourish. Students occupied high schools across Rome, draping banners reading “School, not barracks” from the windows. By late October, thousands had marched through Milan, Rome and Turin, with some briefly breaching the Colosseum itself, a gesture that would have impressed even the most ambitious tourist. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government responded by deploying soldiers in Milan and approving a sweeping security decree. The Italian grievances mirrored the French but with a distinctly Mediterranean twist: crumbling classrooms with falling plaster, soaring rents, and a defence budget expanding while education funding shrinks. As one seventeen-year-old in Athens put it, referring to his school’s peeling walls, “It’s not acceptable for classrooms to be dangerous.” In Madrid and Barcelona, the protest took a different physical form: tent camps. Hundreds pitched themselves in Puerta del Sol and Plaça Catalunya, demanding rent freezes and an end to evictions. The trigger was the eviction of an 87-year-old woman after her rent rose by 230 per cent, a figure that manages to be both absurd and entirely unsurprising to anyone who has glanced at a European housing market recently. In Lisbon and Porto, protesters carried a slogan that captured the predicament of an entire generation: “I want to move out from my parents before I’m 50.” It is difficult to satirise a housing crisis that has already satirised itself.
Brussels saw thousands of teenagers hurling firecrackers and road signs at police, with twenty-one detained including thirteen minors. In Greece, students in Athens’ Exarchia neighbourhood protested the contrast between military spending and the state of their classrooms, while fishermen and farmers blocked ports and highways. Albania experienced outright riots in Tirana, with thousands building burning barricades and demanding the prime minister’s resignation. What unites these disparate eruptions is not a single organisation or ideology but a shared diagnosis. As the International Sociological Association’s president observed, young Europeans “do not just feel like they do not have a place in politics, they feel they are not being heard at all.” A twenty-year-old in Bordeaux articulated the logic of the ballot box with brutal simplicity: “We don’t believe in it anymore.” The European movements are also watching each other. Italian students adopted the slogan “do as in France,” while Spanish organisers fielded enquiries from across the continent about how to build a tent camp. The Jolly Roger pirate flag has become a shared emblem, which is at least a more cheerful symbol than a burning town hall.
The European eruption sharpens the point. What began in France over broken classroom boilers spiralled within weeks into a nationwide confrontation involving students, trade unions and the resurrected gilets jaunes, with some 550,000 people on the streets on 17 October alone. The students’ demands were not merely expensive; they were systemically expensive. France is not a poor country forced into austerity by international creditors. Public expenditure exceeds 57 per cent of GDP, tax collections run at roughly 44 per cent, and the fiscal deficit sits near 5 per cent. Yet the money still falls short, and the reason is pensions. The French retire at 62 while most Europeans retire at 67; pensions replace about 70 per cent of working wages; life expectancy is 82.5, and those who reach 60 can expect on average another 26 years. Because the system is pay-as-you-go rather than fully funded, an ageing population means fewer taxpayers supporting more pensioners for longer, compressing the funds available for schools and universities. The students asking for working heating are asking a state that has already promised its money to its grandparents.
Beneath the fiscal squeeze lies a second fracture. About 9 per cent of the French population is foreign-born, and a much larger share are the children of immigrants, mostly from former African colonies. Some have risen to the heights of French academic and artistic life; many have not, and live in underfunded districts where poverty and crime are entrenched and reinforced by brutal, racialised policing. A rallying cry of the protesters has been “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres”—literally, “In the name of God, it is the darkness.” According to one account, the phrase began when a police operative tried to infiltrate a protest group by prefacing his request for information with “Bismillah.” Protesters seized on the amateurishness of the attempt and turned the phrase into a slogan, mocking both the infiltration and the racialised policing it betrayed. It is a small detail, but it captures something the boiler-repair framing misses: humour, linguistic ingenuity and shared mockery are themselves forms of power available to those who have little else. As pointed out earlier, Italian students occupied high schools with banners reading “School, not barracks,” some briefly breached the Colosseum’s vicinity, and in Madrid and Barcelona hundreds pitched tent camps demanding rent freezes. Brussels saw teenagers hurling firecrackers at police; Tirana saw burning barricades. What unites these eruptions is not an organisation but a diagnosis, captured by a twenty-year-old in Bordeaux: “We don’t believe in it anymore.”
India possesses its own long tradition of student participation in political movements, and the contemporary Gen Z mobilisation belongs to that history while possessing distinctive characteristics. During the struggle against colonial rule, students abandoned classrooms to join nationalist demonstrations, boycotts and campaigns of civil disobedience. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–22 and the Quit India Movement of 1942 witnessed extensive student participation. Independent India experienced equally significant mobilisations. The Nav Nirman movement in Gujarat and the Bihar movement of 1974, subsequently associated with Jayaprakash Narayan’s call for Sampoorna Kranti, demonstrated the capacity of students to challenge established political authority. These movements contributed to the wider political confrontation preceding the Emergency of 1975. Universities were not simply centres of learning. They were also spaces where competing visions of India’s future were debated.
Today’s young people have grown up in a world of expanding educational opportunities and increasingly uncertain employment prospects. They have been encouraged to acquire qualifications and aspire to professional success, yet many confront unemployment, recruitment delays, examination irregularities and the declining accessibility of quality education. Their frustration is not confined to economic insecurity. It extends to questions about political representation, constitutional rights, institutional accountability and the relationship between citizens and the state. A generation that has been encouraged to aspire is increasingly questioning why the institutions responsible for fulfilling those aspirations appear unable or unwilling to respond.
One of the most visible figures in this mobilisation is Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), a doctoral researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a theatre practitioner. Bora’s political journey is revealing. Their early involvement in theatre helped develop an interest in social questions. The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019–20 provided an important political turning point. Subsequently, years of campus organising, distributing pamphlets, addressing meetings and participating in demonstrations prepared Bora for a larger public role. During the demonstrations at Jantar Mantar over alleged examination irregularities, Bora participated in protests demanding accountability from the Union Education Ministry. The movement subsequently broadened into questions concerning electoral processes, political representation and the exercise of state authority.
Bora became a familiar presence at demonstrations, sometimes addressing protesters from behind barricades, sometimes being carried away by police personnel, and sometimes reappearing at another location after attempts to prevent gatherings. In October 2026, Reuters described Bora as one of the most visible faces of India’s youth unrest. When police prevented protesters from reaching Jantar Mantar, Bora urged them to regroup elsewhere. Even after detention, Bora insisted that the movement would continue. What makes Bora particularly interesting is not simply the dramatic imagery of confrontation with the police. It is the insistence that political mobilisation emerges from years of accumulated grievances rather than sudden excitement. Speaking to Reuters, Bora observed that fear could spread through society, but hope could spread as well. The remark captures an important psychological dimension of collective action. When people see others questioning authority despite the possibility of arrest or intimidation, their own sense of helplessness may diminish. Bora has also resisted attempts to portray the movement as the achievement of a single charismatic personality, a refreshing departure in a political culture where individual leaders are frequently elevated above the movements that sustain them.
If Neha Bora represents the organisational spine of the movement, Neha Singh Rathore represents its soundtrack. A Bhojpuri folk singer and political satirist who describes herself as Gen Z, Rathore rose to national prominence through her UP Mein Ka Ba series, which took aim at governance failures, unemployment, inflation and paper leaks with a sharpness that conventional commentary rarely musters. When she spoke about the Gen Z protests at Jantar Mantar, she did so with the clarity of someone who had already spent years absorbing the cost of asking questions: police complaints, legal notices and a steady stream of online abuse. Her support for the movement was neither uncritical nor performative. She described the Cockroach Janta Party as a reaction to what many young people felt was the public humiliation of their aspirations, while cautioning that youthful enthusiasm could be both a movement’s greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability to manipulation. It is the kind of observation that comes from experience rather than distance.
What makes Rathore significant to the story of Gen Z mobilisation is the role she illustrates: the cultural amplifier. Student organisers build the infrastructure of protest – the hunger strikes, the legal aid, the negotiations. But movements also need voices that carry beyond the barricades, into WhatsApp groups and family gatherings and the wider public imagination. When a viral video emerged from Jantar Mantar showing a young woman being mistreated, Rathore’s response was immediate and unsparing, connecting the incident to a broader pattern of hostility toward women who dare to question authority. She asked why those accused of attacking student protesters were not being sent to the border to defend the country instead. It was the kind of remark that would be reckless from a politician and is merely honest from a folk singer. Her presence in the movement also complicates any tidy narrative about who belongs to Gen Z and what they want. Rathore is not a student leader, nor does she claim to be. She is a cultural worker who has made a career of translating grievances into songs that travel further than press releases. When she appeared alongside Rahul Gandhi at a youth outreach event, she spoke about the harassment and legal pressure she had faced for raising social and political concerns, and about what genuine respect for women would look like in a society that punishes those who ask questions. The contrast with the students fasting outside Jantar Mantar is instructive: different platforms, different methods, same underlying insistence that accountability is not an unreasonable demand. The students provide the courage; the singers provide the language that carries it further.
The growing attention surrounding Bora and Rathore should not obscure the contribution of the young people working alongside them. Danish Ali, Joint Secretary of the JNU Students’ Union, and Anjali, associated with AISA’s Delhi University unit, have been prominent participants in the agitation. Both have appeared alongside Bora during demonstrations and public discussions concerning the treatment of protesters. Danish participated in the hunger strike and has spoken about the years of patient organisational work underlying Bora’s emergence. Anjali’s experience illustrates another dimension of the movement. During the demonstrations, Anjali reportedly suffered a leg injury following police action. Yet the injury did not end her participation in student politics, a reminder that commitment is not measured in comfort. Other organisers, including AISA general secretary Prasenjeet Kumar, N. Sai Balaji and several young activists associated with other student organisations, have also contributed to the movement. The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, has added another distinctive element. Emerging through satire, digital communication and youth mobilisation, its organisers have worked with AISA on particular demands while retaining their own identity. The role of other hunger strikers and volunteers should also be recognised. The Jantar Mantar agitation was sustained not only by speeches but by prolonged fasting, coordination, publicity, legal assistance and the everyday work of maintaining a protest. These contributions remind us that movements are rarely the achievements of a single individual, however prominent that person may become. The face seen on television represents a much larger network of organisers, volunteers and supporters.
The power of the present youth movement becomes particularly visible when we turn from Jantar Mantar to India’s university campuses, where the conflict is often not over the overthrow of governments or even the replacement of university administrations. It concerns something more fundamental: the right of students to organise, elect representatives, express disagreement and participate in decisions affecting their institutions. The protests at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University in December 2019 remain important landmarks. During the demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act, police entered Jamia’s campus, and students at both institutions reported serious injuries and excessive force. The incidents generated widespread concern and brought students from JNU, Jadavpur and other universities into solidarity demonstrations. These events revealed how quickly a university protest could become a national controversy. They also raised questions about the relationship between academic autonomy, policing and the constitutional right to peaceful assembly.
The most recent developments at Jamia Millia Islamia are particularly revealing. In October 2026, students began an indefinite hunger strike demanding the restoration of their elected Students’ Union, whose elections had not been held since 2006. The demand was hardly revolutionary in itself. They wanted an institution through which students could participate in university affairs, raise grievances and negotiate with the administration. Yet the response produced a confrontation of remarkable intensity. Students alleged that security personnel assaulted and forcibly removed hunger strikers in the early hours of 17 October. Some protesters were detained, while others faced suspension and rustication orders. The administration maintained that disciplinary and security measures were necessary, but student organisations questioned both their proportionality and their legality. As the agitation continued, the university shifted teaching online and restricted access to the campus. Police and paramilitary personnel were deployed around the institution. Students reported being prevented from entering, while others attempted to cross barricades and campus walls to reach their fellow protesters. By 26 October, the confrontation had become even more serious. According to The Indian Express, more than 700 security personnel were deployed and over 40 students were briefly detained. The administration issued a notice ordering protesters to vacate their protest site, warning of possible disciplinary action. The images of security personnel surrounding a university while students demanded an elected union raised an obvious question: why should a dispute over democratic representation require such extensive security arrangements? One might reasonably ask whether the barricades were protecting the university from the students or the students from the university.
The administration was eventually forced to issue an order promising elections within fifteen days of the approval of a new Students’ Union constitution. It also announced the withdrawal of suspension and show-cause notices and an inquiry into the conduct of security personnel. But the students pointed out that the order contained no definite deadline for approving the constitution. It also included conditions concerning public apologies and the removal of allegedly defamatory statements. The dispute was therefore far from resolved. Among those who continued the hunger strike were Ebin Basil and Rehan Khan, whose determination had become an important feature of the agitation. Their position was that an assurance without a clear and enforceable timetable did not adequately meet the students’ demands. What is particularly striking is that the students continued their agitation despite detentions, disciplinary proceedings, restricted campus access and the physical strain of prolonged fasting. Their demands concerned representation and accountability, but the methods used to contain the movement transformed the dispute into a wider debate about academic freedom and the use of coercive authority.
Jamia’s experience is not an isolated episode. At Aligarh Muslim University, students undertook a prolonged agitation in September and October 2026, including an indefinite hunger strike, demanding the restoration of Students’ Union elections and changes in the university’s proctorial administration. The movement eventually resulted in an announcement restoring elections after eight years. Aligarh possesses a particularly important tradition of student politics. From the debating culture of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College and the Siddons Club to the later Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union, the institution has long served as a training ground for public speaking, political debate and civic participation. Its history has not been free from factionalism or political interference. Yet these problems cannot automatically justify the indefinite suspension of representative institutions. The agitation at Aligarh was significant because it demonstrated that students could sustain collective pressure over an institutional demand. The eventual administrative concession showed that negotiation and protest could produce results without necessarily involving a change in government. Allahabad University, Lucknow University and Banaras Hindu University have also witnessed recurring protests over student representation, educational policy, examinations, recruitment and campus facilities. At Jadavpur University, student politics has long been associated with questions of academic autonomy, democratic rights and broader social movements. The use of police or disciplinary measures varies across these institutions, and it would be inaccurate to describe every confrontation as identical. Nevertheless, allegations of excessive force, arbitrary disciplinary action and restrictions upon peaceful assembly have repeatedly accompanied campus disputes. The central question is whether universities regard student representation and dissent as legitimate parts of academic life or as disturbances to be managed through administrative control. For those of us who have spent decades teaching in universities, the question is especially important. Education is not simply the acquisition of degrees or the preparation for employment. It involves learning to question, reason, disagree and participate responsibly in public life. A university that teaches constitutional democracy while denying students meaningful opportunities for representation risks creating a contradiction between its intellectual purpose and its administrative practices, a rather awkward position for an institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth.
The recurring confrontation between young protesters and security forces deserves serious historical attention. Governments possess legitimate responsibilities to maintain public order, protect citizens and regulate demonstrations. Universities likewise have responsibilities to safeguard students and ensure that academic activities continue. But these responsibilities do not eliminate the right to peaceful dissent. The use of coercive authority must remain proportionate, lawful and subject to independent scrutiny. When peaceful protesters are met with excessive force, preventive detention or arbitrary disciplinary proceedings, the consequences can extend far beyond the immediate demonstration. Such actions may discourage participation, weaken confidence in public institutions and transform relatively limited grievances into wider political controversies. The recent experience of Jamia illustrates this danger. A demand for elected representation became a prolonged confrontation involving police deployment, hunger strikes, detentions, administrative notices and restrictions upon campus access. The same tension is visible in the demonstrations associated with Neha Bora and other young organisers. Repeated detentions did not necessarily end the protests. Instead, they sometimes became part of the movement’s public narrative. This does not mean that protesters are exempt from legal obligations or that every allegation against the authorities is necessarily established. It means that the exercise of state power, particularly against peaceful political activity, requires careful justification. A constitutional democracy must be capable of distinguishing between disagreement and disorder. It must also recognise that the presence of dissent does not, by itself, signify a failure of governance.
Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of the present mobilisation is the contrast it invites with the behaviour of sections of established society. Universities, professional organisations, cultural institutions and public intellectuals possess resources, experience and institutional standing that students often lack. Yet their responses to controversial public questions are sometimes marked by caution, silence or accommodation. Such behaviour can arise from different circumstances. Individuals may fear professional consequences, institutional retaliation, financial insecurity or damage to their careers. Others may genuinely disagree with the protesters or prefer quieter forms of engagement. Silence, therefore, cannot automatically be equated with submission. Nevertheless, there is a legitimate question about the responsibilities of those who possess institutional influence. When students risk disciplinary proceedings, interrupted education or detention to raise public questions, what responsibilities fall upon teachers, intellectuals and professional bodies whose very work depends upon freedom of inquiry and expression? This contrast becomes particularly significant within universities. Students may have much to lose. Their degrees, scholarships, accommodation and future employment can all be affected by prolonged confrontation. Yet some continue to participate despite these risks. The courage displayed by such students deserves recognition without suggesting that confrontation is the only legitimate form of civic engagement. Equally important are the quieter contributions of teachers, lawyers, journalists and citizens who defend due process, investigate allegations of abuse and provide opportunities for dialogue. The strength of democratic society depends not upon one generation alone, but upon the willingness of different generations and institutions to uphold the principles they profess.
The word revolution is frequently invoked when young people fill the streets. But history requires us to distinguish between political upheaval, institutional reform and deeper social transformation. The students of Paris in 1968 did not overthrow the French government, yet their movement contributed to lasting changes in social attitudes. The temptation to read every youth eruption as a prelude to progressive renewal should be resisted. The disruptions in France do not automatically deliver the country to Marine Le Pen, but neither do they automatically produce a new republic liberated from neoliberalism. Macron may well become one of the most unpopular figures in recent French history as he contains the protests, yet he remains the most articulate and credible liberal-democratic leader France has. The headline writer who invoked Fahrenheit 451 understood the stakes: the fear is not that students are burning books, but that a state which cuts school maintenance, apprenticeship programmes and university funding while spending ever more on pensions and defence is quietly extinguishing the institutions that make democratic citizenship possible. The students of Bangladesh in 2024 helped bring down a long-established administration. Nepal’s youth mobilisation precipitated a political transition in 2025. In India, the 2026 demonstrations have brought educational opportunity, student representation and electoral accountability into renewed public discussion. Across Europe, the French prime minister survived a confidence vote while students demanded ten times his education budget, Italian students occupied the Colosseum’s vicinity, and Spanish youth erected tent camps in the heart of Madrid. These are different kinds of achievements. Their long-term consequences cannot be measured by the size of demonstrations alone. Revolutionary change also raises difficult questions. Can movements that challenge arbitrary authority create institutions that respect disagreement? Can youthful energy be translated into lasting improvements in education, employment and public accountability? Can organisations that mobilise through protest also negotiate, compromise and govern responsibly? The answers are not predetermined. Nor should youth itself be romanticised. Young people can mobilise for democratic rights, but they can also support exclusionary or authoritarian causes. The historical significance of a movement depends upon its principles, methods and consequences rather than the age of its participants. Nevertheless, the present wave of youth activism reveals an important shift in political participation. Many young people no longer regard public affairs as the exclusive domain of established leaders or political parties. They are claiming the right to question decisions affecting their lives, whether those decisions concern university elections, recruitment procedures, public expenditure or constitutional institutions.
The spectacle of young people challenging established authority is not entirely new. What is new is the speed with which their movements can communicate, organise and acquire international visibility. A student protest in Delhi can be watched in Dhaka, Kathmandu, Paris or London within minutes. The experience of one movement becomes part of the political imagination of young people elsewhere. French students burn barricades; Italian students raise banners; Spanish students pitch tents; Indian students fast outside Jantar Mantar. The methods travel faster than the grievances, but the grievances are never far behind. Yet the ultimate test remains unchanged. Can the energy of protest be translated into durable institutions, accountable leadership and greater opportunities for participation? Can movements that challenge arbitrary authority avoid reproducing it within their own ranks? Can the desire for fundamental change coexist with respect for democratic procedures and the rights of those who disagree? These questions will determine the longer historical significance of the present wave of youth mobilisation.
For the moment, however, the participation of Neha Bora, Neha Rathore, Danish, Anjali and numerous other young activists has become part of India’s contemporary political story. So have the hunger strikes at Jamia, the struggle for student representation at Aligarh and the recurring demands for institutional accountability at Jadavpur and other universities across the country. Their experiences differ, and not every participant belongs to the same organisation or shares the same political outlook. But collectively they illustrate the continued importance of youth participation in public affairs. The recent events at Jamia are particularly instructive. Students demanding an elected union encountered extensive security measures, detentions and disciplinary proceedings. Yet they continued to organise, negotiate and insist upon a definite response. Their determination does not settle every question about the movement’s demands or methods. It does, however, challenge the assumption that young people are politically indifferent or incapable of sustained collective action.
The power of Gen Z lies not in its ability invariably to overthrow governments, but in its capacity to challenge decisions that appear beyond question and to insist that institutions remain accountable to those whose lives they govern. The young do not always make history in the manner they intend. Their victories may be incomplete, their movements divided and their hopes disappointed. Yet the history of modern societies would have been profoundly different had successive generations of students always accepted the world exactly as they found it. And perhaps that is the enduring significance of the present generation. At a time when sections of established society appear hesitant to question power, these young people are demonstrating that civic participation need not wait for age, office or permission. They are not merely waiting to inherit the future. They are demanding a voice in its making.
The deeper question in the end, however, is not why the young are angry but why they have been given so much to be angry about and disillusioned. The answer lies in the long ascendancy of a governing logic that has spent four decades treating citizens as consumers, public institutions as cost centres and education as an investment expected to pay for itself. Neoliberalism promised that opportunity would follow effort, that qualifications would guarantee security and that the market would distribute rewards fairly to those who worked hard enough. For a generation raised on that promise, the arithmetic has simply failed. They have been encouraged to accumulate debt for degrees that no longer guarantee employment, to compete for housing they cannot afford and to enter labour markets that offer flexibility to employers and precarity to everyone else. The result is not apathy but disillusionment of a particular kind: a generation that still believes in the promise, and is furious that the adults who made it have quietly abandoned it. This is why the protests in Paris, Dhaka, Kathmandu and Delhi share a common grammar despite their different languages. They are not merely demanding better schools or fairer recruitment. They are questioning a settlement that has turned the future into a commodity and then priced it beyond the reach of those expected to inherit it. The young are dissatisfied because they were promised a world that the neoliberalism of their elders never intended to deliver, and disillusioned because they have now noticed the gap between the rhetoric and the receipts. Whether they can close that gap is the political question of the coming decade.
