In Ranchi, a young man who has cleared prelims multiple times but never seen a final appointment list lies on a stretcher, his body weakened by nine days without food. Around him, women wipe tear-gas from their eyes while still clutching faded admit cards that represent years of unpaid labour, postponed marriages, and family land sold for coaching fees. In Delhi, only weeks earlier, teenagers in cockroach masks danced, cried, and refused to leave Jantar Mantar until a union minister stepped down. Two cities, two governments, one unbroken human demand: stop treating our futures as disposable.

The temptation to turn this into Ranchi versus Jantar Mantar is almost irresistible for those who traffic in binaries. Because Hemant Soren’s JMM-Congress government rules Jharkhand, while the BJP holds the centre, some would like us to believe one protest was pure and the other contaminated. That framing is not analysis; it is an insult to the young people who have spent the best years of their lives preparing for examinations that keep springing leaks, selling seats, and vanishing results. Accountability is not a one-time password that works only against the party you dislike; it is the daily, unglamorous insistence that power must answer for broken promises—every time, everywhere, without exception.

Look closely at the faces in Ranchi. Many are not Gen Z. They are........

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