Youth's rebellion in India

Although in recent years the rate of growth of India's population has slowed down which means that it is ageing, the proportion of older people – those above the age of 25 – has increased. Notwithstanding that, the youth still account for a sizeable proportion of the population. India's young population – 367 million between ages 15 and 29 – is the largest Generation Z cohort in the world. If the youth are restive as they are at this time, it means serious political problem for the country. The youth, not seeing a good economic future for themselves, have taken to the streets of major cities and are protesting. Young adults, especially those who have attended colleges and earned degrees, are frustrated. Nearly 40 per cent are unemployed, according to the State of Working India 2026 report published by the Azim Premji University.

The anger of the protesting students intensified after the July 20 show of force by the police, who were called to the student assembly points by the government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The youth had come out to protest the way entrance examinations were being held. Under the Indian education system, entrance into institutions of higher learning is by passing of entrance examinations take by hundreds of thousands of young people.

While the Modi government was preoccupied dealing with the problems created for the domestic economy by the war in Iran, it emerged that the questions to a national medical college examination had been leaked and sold to the students who had the resources to buy them. Not passing the entrance examination meant unemployment for those anxious to enter the well-paid workforce. At the forefront of the protest is the Cockroach Janta Party, CJP, a movement that takes its name from an insult made by the chief justice of India who called the young people of India, "cockroaches". The CJP was founded just after the government ordered millions of students to retake the entrance examination. The CJP took up the cause of the agitating youth in India.

Amit Basole, an economist and lead author of the State of Working India report, noted that the young in India have always been disproportionately unemployed. But their number has greatly increased in recent years along with the debt their families have incurred by borrowing to pay for their education. "It's a systematic failure. If the government is not responsible, who is?" asked a 22-year old business graduate protesting in Delhi. Agitation by the unhappy youth had spread to other large cities. The students demanded that Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resign immediately. This he did on July 25 saying that he was deeply pained by the demands of the youth agitating against the education policies of the administration of which he was a part.

Pradhan is an important member of the coalition that governs India. Before resigning, he was dismissive of the protests. In a social media post, he accused opposition parties of exploiting students to "manufacture disruption", and in a June interview he referred to the student protesters as "the B-team of terrorists". That comment only strengthened the resolve to remove him from the cabinet headed by Modi. According to two journalists writing for The New Your Times, "The students' victory could motivate them to push their demands further. Aside from education, the CJP is also asking the government to consider its far more sweeping agenda, including judicial reforms and gender quotes for Parliament." The demand for increasing the presence of women in the legislature would please an important segment of the large Indian population.

This is not the first time that the Modi government has had to confront a popular movement. The first time was when the Sikh farmers marched on New Delhi, the Indian capital, to protest the government's move to allow capital from outside the state of Punjab to buy properties in the state. The farmers feared job losses if capital came from outside the predominately Sikh state to buy properties in their area. They feared commercialising the state's economy. The Sikh peasants got politically organised and marched towards the Indian capital. The government, headed even then by Modi, removed the law that would have permitted outside capital to invest in Punjab. A popular movement then succeeded – and has seen another success in July 2026.

And even though students' street protests ended with the resignation of the education minister, the rage against the country's education system is one of the most serious challenges yet to the 12-year leadership of Prime Minister Modi. The trajectory of India's swelling youth population is projected to slow by 2030 which means that the country has short time to take advantage of its demographic dividend. Access to education system remains unequal. There is an exodus from government schools into private institutions which the poor can't afford.

The success of popular movements outside the established political system raises questions about the durability of the structure of politics in the country. Bhartiya Janata Party, the BJP, headed by Modi, a Hindu nationalist, is currently engaged in making India a Hindu country, disregarding the fact that the country has the world's third largest Muslim population, after Indonesia and Pakistan. India's 200 million Muslims are deeply concerned about the government decision to make them second class citizens.

The BJP is considering changing the name of the country from India to Bharat. India was given that name by the country's British rulers who used the name of the Indus River which was then the longest river in the country they governed. Partitioning India in the states of India and Pakistan left the Indus River in Pakistan. It made sense to drop that name from the country the BJP now governs. However, changing the country's name to Bhart would not solve what the British called their "Musalman problem". India not only has a large Muslim population, two of its immediate neighbours are majority Muslim countries – Pakistan and Bangladesh. It has poor relations with both. It played an important role in creating the state of Bangladesh in December 1971 by splitting Pakistan's two wings, East and West Pakistan, into two countries, but now it has uneasy relations with Bangladesh. At this time, it is engaged in pushing back the citizens of Bangladesh back to their country. They had smuggled themselves into India in search of jobs that were not available in their country. India is also hosting Sheikh Hasina, the deposed Bangladeshi prime minister, who was given the death sentence by her country's court for permitting the military to fire on protesting students.