NB: There have already been six student suicide cases like this one, in Nagpur. Lakhs of young Indians have seen their labours go to waste. It’s not just corruption and cynicism that affects our ruling establishment, but criminal irresponsibility. What a shame and tragedy. My heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased students. Students – please don’t let this burden crush your spirit and will to live, Seek comfort among your peers and families and friends. Life is precious: don’t ever forget that. God bless you all. DS
Suddenly political conversation in urban India is piqued by an awareness of ‘something’ changing on the ground, a reference to the emergence of decentralised pockets of resistance.
These spontaneous grassroots movements are socially and geographically fragmented. Yet they share a deep disillusionment with established institutions and political leadership. However, wary of them, political parties have not been able to respond to them positively.
Youth anger over NEET paper leaks, CUET technical failures, and CBSE evaluation controversies has carried dissatisfaction with the government into middle-class homes. Parents who invested heavily in coaching their children — sometimes shifting away from home in cities like Kota and Sikar — saw their investments vanish overnight because of examination irregularities. This has resulted in parents joining their children in protests.
The dehumanising remarks of the Chief Justice of India comparing youngsters (apparently on those with fake qualifications) to ‘cockroaches’ and ‘parasites’ have deepened public frustration. The comments triggered social media backlash and explosive support for the satirical Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), which accidentally tapped into growing youth disillusionment.
Simultaneously, a wave of industrial unrest has swept manufacturing hubs across northern India — from Manesar, Gurugram, and Faridabad to Panipat, Noida, and industrial centres in Uttarakhand. Driven by stagnant wages, rising living costs, and precarious employment, mostly casual, contractual, and gig workers staged spontaneous strikes, factory walkouts, and blockades.
Local administration has tended to treat the protests as a law-and-order issue, though some paltry wage concessions followed as in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Other expressions of public anger have received less attention, including Muslim protests against the Waqf amendment law, and environmental movements in Hasdeo Aranya, Bailadila, Raigarh, and the Aravallis, where ecological concerns intersect with tribal rights, land acquisition, and corporate control of common resources.
Lacking established hierarchy, no clearly defined leadership and disciplined cadre, these movements can easily just fizzle out or become chaotic, even anarchic. They can also facilitate the rise of a strong Bonapartist leader — a strong, charismatic individual who promises to redress public anger. For example, the India Against Corruption movement, notionally led by Anna Hazare in 2011, facilitated the rise of Bonapartist leaders like Narendra Modi nationally and Arvind Kejriwal, the populist technocrat, with nothing more than a municipal vision, in Delhi.
So far the leadership of 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke only reflects the power of algorithms used by digital volunteer-led networks to set a political agenda with no operational plan. But the viral energy of impatient youth is visible.
Similarly, contractual and casual workers facing acute economic distress due to low wages and high inflation may not have the patience to follow traditional conciliation procedures of the institutionalised trade unions. Desperate for immediate results, their actions will lead to volatile, localised walkouts, and spontaneous tool-down strikes independent of organised unions.
The absence of a robust alternative leadership in the current spontaneous protests invites the entry of the strongman. If the repetition of the rise of Modi and Kejriwal is to be avoided, political parties will have to find common cause with these movements.
There are successful examples from the past. The railway strike of 1974 led by George Fernandes dovetailed the railwaymen’s anger into the formation of the Janata Party alliance that resulted in the unseating of Indira Gandhi after the Emergency. The Bombay Textile Strike of 1982 led by the charismatic Datta Samant and his violent ways, spontaneously transformed into the Maharashtra Girni Kamgar Union. It even became a short-lived political force. The Maruti-Manesar strikes of 2011-2012 led to the formation of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union, which later allied with the All-India Trade Union Congress. More recently, the workers groups involved in the wild-cat strikes in Manesar, Gurgaon, Noida, and Uttarakhand have formed tactical alliances with the Samyukta Kisan Mocha and the All-India Kisan Sabha.
Political parties are essential actors if such alliances are to improve livelihoods, ensure transparent examinations, create jobs, and hold the state accountable. However, institutionalised political parties seem to be apprehensive of decentralised protests whose leaders cannot be easily identified.
They also like to control their political messaging tightly through their media departments and find it difficult to engage with campaigns driven by unpredictable online trends. They also fear that associating with the protests might expose them to public anger, while the government would dismiss them (and the protests) as politically motivated conspiracies. More fundamentally, parties are uncertain how these fluid, issue-based mobilisations fit into their electoral strategies built around caste, religion, and regional identities. This makes political engagement both risky and difficult.
If formal alliances with these protests are not possible, can political parties not work towards a tactical convergence — work in parallel for the same agenda? They could co-ordinate division of labour as the political parties are more effective in Parliament and other institutionalised forums while the decentralised movements get their strength from consolidating despair on the street. One puts pressure from the inside, the other from the outside.
Leader of the Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has cited real pain points on the ground — increasing economic distress, youth despair, governance gaps, and the fragility of the BJP’s alliances — to forecast that Modi will not remain prime minister a year from now. However, it can become more than hyperbole if there is real co-ordination with protests among the youth and the workers. Without trying to take control of the protests, the Opposition can instead help by amplifying the protest demands.
Silent institutional support to the workers and activists arrested in Manesar, Gurugram, and Noida, for example, would do more to earn public goodwill for the Opposition than the deliberate hands-off approach to the genuine issues being raised. The Opposition can help those arrested in the workers’ protests. If the CJP protests take off, then there will be more such arrests requiring assistance for bail, drafting petitions, and countering state action in other legal ways. Such assistance will ensure that the frontline activists in the protests survive as leaders even as the State clamps down.
This will allow the Opposition to tap into the political energy that Gen-Z and the working class possess. Tactical co-ordination will also allow the decentralised movements to retain their moral high ground and integrity, while having access to the protective shield of the institutionalised Opposition parties, their media reach, and their legislative muscle.
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After the truth-shower 