It’s been quite something to watch India’s student protests, which started this summer and have continued, off and on, into the fall. So far, they’ve forced the resignation of a minister and put Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the back foot — a rare occurrence.
It’s tempting to compare these demonstrations to the youth protests currently roiling Europe. But there’s at least one important difference: Young people make up a much larger share of India’s population than they do in Europe — which is one reason these protests have been so powerful. (When I read about them, my mind actually went to the student protests of 1968, which took place when the West itself had a youth bulge and which ended up reshaping Western societies profoundly.)
Today, I write about why the youth movement has Modi nervous — and whom he’d rather face off against instead.
A fight he knows how to win
This time, Modi was prepared.
As India braced for another round of Gen Z protests in New Delhi this month, the government swiftly barricaded a large area of the city center and deployed tens of thousands of security forces to stop crowds like those that had gathered during the summer from mobilizing.
But as my colleagues Mujib Mashal, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar reported, the police did allow one large gathering to go ahead: the one staged by the Congress Party and its alliance partners. Led by India’s opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, they were able to march to the Supreme Court, where they raged against the prime minister’s strongman tactics and efforts to chip away at India’s democracy by removing millions of names from voter rolls.
Why would Modi’s government go to such enormous lengths to crack down on protests by a youth movement but let one by the opposition go forward? It might seem like a puzzle, until you appreciate — as Mujib points out — that it’s part of a strategy that Modi has adopted in the aftermath of this summer’s protests.
Modi is deliberately trying to make the ongoing demonstrations less about the youth movement that unleashed them, and more about his traditional opposition.
Because that’s a fight he knows how to win.
The devil you know
When young people first took to the streets this summer to protest against a botched university entrance exam and an education system they said was failing them, the government was caught by surprise.
Modi tried to contain the protests, first with police batons and tear gas, then with social media videos trying to connect with Gen Z, in its own style. It didn’t work. In the end, he had to sacrifice his education minister.
It was a rare political climb-down for a leader who has been in power for 12 years. The protesters went home, for a while at least. But, as Mujib writes, they were also emboldened.
India’s youth movement is a headache for Modi, and he’s been struggling to find a workable playbook. Partly that’s because India has a lot of young people: more than 40 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people are under 25. And partly it’s because the youth movement has cut across traditional political divides in India, making it much harder for Modi and his allies to box in and demonize.
It’s no coincidence that this movement first galvanized around the issue of dysfunction in India’s higher education system — specifically, leaked entrance-exam questions, Mujib told me. The sense that access to the university system is rigged — a system that Indians have long been told is their ticket to a better life — cuts across typical political lines.
“The anger was over an issue that couldn’t easily be dismissed as partisan,” Mujib said. This, for Modi, is something new. One detail that stood out to me: Many of the young protesters this summer said they came from middle-class families that support Modi’s party, the B.J.P.
The Congress Party, by contrast, is very much a known quantity. Modi has never lost an election against a rival from the Congress Party. His party beat Congress three times in national elections. And the man leading the losing side was always the same — Gandhi, who is still in charge today.
Mujib interviewed more than half a dozen senior members of Modi’s coalition to talk about the B.J.P.’s strategy in the face of these protests.
Modi’s approach is two-pronged, Mujib explains: First, quash any protests that could feel like a continuation of the Gen Z protests over the summer, which, by all accounts, unsettled his grip on power.
And second, allow the rallies of traditional opposition parties to go ahead, framing the fight squarely against a foe that Modi has repeatedly beaten at elections and is confident of beating again.
So far, Mujib writes, it seems to be working. Efforts to detain the leaders of the cockroach movement have slowed its momentum; meanwhile, Congress is planning its own rally for Nov. 1.
