Something has changed in India over the past fortnight. For a long time, criticising the BJP-led NDA government and its leadership was quite difficult, if not entirely unthinkable, for most people. But the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests made it possible in ways many people didn’t imagine. The moment it became realistic, the floodgates opened, and the protests against the government’s repeated failures to prevent leaks of national exam papers became an enduring portrait of democratic dissent against a host of issues that people were afraid to talk about earlier. In that sense, the CJP protests have done what the opposition parties have been unable to do for over 12 years: to force the government to climb down from its pride of power.

The CJP agitation that attracted a broader participation of a large number of students may have ended with education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation and other key demands of the students being accepted by the government, but what the movement captured is not just frustration over paper leaks but also the broader grievances against the education system, besides larger concerns over allegations of rising corruption, record youth unemployment, lack of accountability, and declining trust in democratic institutions. All attempts at ignoring, discrediting, and diverting tactics that the government employed against all earlier protests did not work this time; neither did the attempt to suppress it with police violence.

The overarching strategy to project strength—defined by never backing down, never explaining, and narrative building—may have been successful in the past, but........

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