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Last Thursday, as weeks of mass protests against the leak of a medical school entrance exam paper continued to rock India’s capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi uploaded his first-ever selfie video to Instagram.

“Friends,” he began in English, before switching to Hindi and pledging to take action against those responsible for the leak through “fast-track courts.” In another selfie video the following day, he thanked the “youngsters” who responded to his first video “late at night.”

Last Thursday, as weeks of mass protests against the leak of a medical school entrance exam paper continued to rock India’s capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi uploaded his first-ever selfie video to Instagram.

“Friends,” he began in English, before switching to Hindi and pledging to take action against those responsible for the leak through “fast-track courts.” In another selfie video the following day, he thanked the “youngsters” who responded to his first video “late at night.”

Both videos were instantly lampooned by their intended audience. Instagram creators made fun of Modi’s long pauses and his chosen camera angle that made him look as if he was ringing a doorbell and posted satirical videos taking his characterizations of them as “friends” quite literally. There were also more pointed videos that stitched his attempt at camaraderie with images of police in New Delhi beating up protesters.

On Saturday, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, acceding to the protesters’ main demand and handing them a significant, if largely symbolic, win. The protests were officially called off by organizers, and the thousands of mostly young people who had flooded the streets of New Delhi cleared out.

Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have long used social media very effectively to build the prime minister’s carefully curated public brand, control the national narrative, and go after political dissent. But the protests, led and attended largely by India’s Gen Z, appeared to be a rare wake-up call for Modi and his government and the first time in a long time that they felt they had missed a trick. In a cabinet meeting over the weekend, Modi reportedly asked his ministers to start using Instagram more and build their presence there.

But the BJP’s first attempt to do so on Tuesday—a heavily produced and scripted video featuring young people talking about the protests in a gym before a slightly older trainer steps in and tells them that the Modi government is actually building a foundation for their future—was skewered in the comments. “At least hire GenZ to write the [propaganda] meant for them?” one comment read, with another adding that “bjp’s gen z advisors have never spoken to a gen z” and a third saying “their Gen Z advisors are also 60 or 65 years old.”

While larger questions remain on what comes next, and deeper debates around addressing gaps in India’s education system and employment pipeline are still ongoing, the youth-led protests succeeded in extracting at least a measure of accountability from a leader who has built his public image on being unassailable and above reproach. The relatively narrow goal of getting the education minister to resign helped coalesce a wide cross-section of people from different walks of life, according to half a dozen protesters whom Foreign Policy spoke to, and helped create a bigger tent than a movement representing a specific political agenda might have.

And they mobilized through memes, Reels (short-form Instagram videos), and humor—in the process exposing a deep generational divide between India’s youth and the country’s elected leaders.

“We didn’t just share news articles. We made memes, Reels, and short videos to explain the issue in 10 seconds. … That’s how it reached people who don’t usually follow politics,” said Isha, a 24-year-old theater artist from Delhi who took part in the protests and who only uses her first name. “Social media made the protest feel like a conversation, not a lecture,” she added. “That’s why it went viral so fast.”

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke takes part in a protest over education reform in New Delhi on June 6. Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty........

© Foreign Policy