India is currently witnessing its largest student-youth protest in over a decade—a movement that is promising to transform into a mass uprising as dissent spreads and intensifies across the country.
The mass protests began in June when students and youth, under the banner of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), staged a mass gathering in Delhi to protest corruption in the higher education system.
The CJP began as an online satirical response to the Chief Justice of India, who famously referred to unemployed youth as “cockroaches.” The movement reclaimed this insult as a badge of resilience and is now demanding accountability.
Its meteoric rise—amassing over 22 million Instagram followers—demonstrates the power of social media and its appeal to a generation that feels abandoned by the Hindu nationalist government and its crony capitalist allies. The movement gained further momentum when prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk joined a hunger strike in solidarity with the CJP’s demands.
His fast lasted over two weeks, until police forcibly moved him to a hospital on July 18—a move that only inflamed protesters further. Wangchuk vowed to resume his strike, viewing the government’s crackdown as an assault on peaceful dissent.
On July 20, New Delhi witnessed one of its largest protest gatherings in history, with some estimates placing attendance at over 200,000. The government responded with brutal force, teargassing and beating hundreds of marchers heading toward Parliament. Yet the police crackdown did not quell the movement; if anything, it intensified it, spreading the protests across the country and among the Indian diasporas.
In the late evening of 21 July, various farmers organizations joined the movement and the opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi was arrested at a sit-in outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence. The demands for accountability culminated in calling for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan who eventually resigned on 25 July.
Deadly Exams
India relies on centralized entrance examinations for admissions to vocational institutes in fields like medicine and engineering. These are among the most competitive tests in the world, with millions of aspirants vying for a tiny fraction of seats. Success in these exams is seen as a near-certain pathway to stable employment, which has made them the focal point of anxiety for countless students and families.
As competition has intensified, so has the cost and harshness of preparation, spawning a billion-dollar coaching industry. Numerous studies have documented the severe mental health toll these exams exact—many students have died by suicide under the crushing academic pressure. Families often drain their life savings, mortgage homes, and sell valuables to fund this training.
The 2026 medical entrance examination (NEET), scheduled for May, was canceled after papers were leaked. But following months of grueling preparation and enormous financial expenditure, the cancellation proved devastating: 12 students, aged between 17 and 19, took their own lives.
This was not an isolated incident. In recent years, leaks have plagued multiple government-conducted admission and eligibility tests. Earlier this year, widespread irregularities were uncovered in the central education board’s school-leaving examination. Yet, despite repeated failures, no one has taken responsibility for any of these calamities, least of all the lives lost.
Deeper Roots
While the corruption and mismanagement of higher education served as the immediate tipping point, the deeper roots of dissent have been growing for years. India faces a severe jobs crisis, with youth unemployment stubbornly high. The unemployment rate for those aged 15–29 stands at nearly 10%, and for urban graduates aged under 25, some estimates put it as high as 40% and 20% for those aged under 29.
Over the past half-decade, unemployment has reached historic highs. The public sector, once a robust generator of sustainable employment, has largely shrunk under the Narendra Modi government due to accelerated privatization. With sluggish industrial growth, this has created an acute jobs crisis that either drives young Indians to the Gulf or the Global North in search of work, or relegates them to precarious service-sector jobs with no social security, no job guarantees, and abysmal wages.
While the government has paid little attention to the growing discontent among the unemployed, the country’s elites continue to amass vast fortunes. Billionaires like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani have benefited from policies that have enabled them to monopolize entire sectors, exploit natural resources, and accumulate enormous capital.
Inequality has soared: the rich grow richer, the middle class shrinks, and the poor survive on the margins. In parts of India, socioeconomic indicators are some of the lowest in the world, with alarming rates of malnutrition, child mortality, and a healthcare and education system in malignant decay.
Electoral Autocracy
The protests laid bare the complicity of India’s mainstream media. The country’s television news landscape, in particular, is almost entirely owned by corporate allies of the Modi government. The media has abandoned its watchdog role, stopped raising people’s issues, and instead become an active instrument of the ruling regime, spreading misinformation and fueling a Hindu nationalist ecosystem that has exacerbated discrimination and violence against minorities and political opponents.
In covering these protests, the media has largely sided with the government, labeling demonstrators as “anti-nationals” and “foreign agents.” Consequently, like many recent global protests, this movement has become a self-organized social-media phenomenon, with communication to the outside world flowing through social media channels including Instagram and Facebook.
Observers have drawn parallels between this uprising and the recent Gen Z movements in neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh. Yet while the demographic similarities are evident, the Indian context is far more critical—if not diabolical. The Modi government has ruled since 2014, and in these 12 years, India has fundamentally transformed. Though electoral processes remain, the substance of liberal democracy—civil liberties, minority rights, and institutional checks on executive power—has been substantially eroded.
Democracy watch organizations now classify India as a “hybrid regime” or “electoral autocracy.” Power has become radically centralized around Modi, with an authoritarian style of governance marked by personalized, arbitrary decision-making and a sweeping disregard for constitutional restraints, particularly federalism. Every significant alternative power center has been systematically disempowered or captured, raising fears of an emerging “competitive authoritarian” system.
Key institutions—including the Supreme Court and the Election Commission—have seen their independence undermined. The government has used its parliamentary majority to “raze political institutions” to the ground. Recent elections, by many measures, cannot be considered free and fair; in the recently concluded West Bengal state elections, for instance, nine million people were omitted from the voters’ list, a move that ultimately helped the ruling party win the state. Hindu nationalist ideology has been prioritized over the Constitution, with minorities—especially Muslims—facing systematic persecution.
Decaying System
In this precarious situation, India appears to be heading toward a catastrophic future. Without urgent intervention, the country risks either a large-scale pogrom against minorities and political opposition, or a descent into civil war–like conditions. The world must pay attention—not as a distant observer, but as a stakeholder in the survival of democratic values everywhere.
The protests in India are not a momentary flare-up of student angst; they are a desperate cry from a generation betrayed by a decaying system. When meritocracy becomes a mirage, jobs vanish, and institutional accountability evaporates, the streets become the only remaining forum for justice.
The world cannot afford to look away, as India falls further into the grip of fascism, there may not be a better chance to rescue the democratic structure in the coming days. To ignore this movement is to condone the systematic dismantling of constitutional safeguards in the name of majoritarian rule. International solidarity is now needed more than ever with the students, youth, and the common Indians who are fighting the largest and oldest fascist organization in the world.
