For several days last week, the usually peaceful precinct of Shivaji Park turned into a boisterous space of resistance and slogans, police action and pushback. Thousands of young people, mostly students but others too, gathered there to join the protests against the NEET exam paper leak, the CBSE marks scandal and the general rot in the education system.

The low parapet of Shivaji Park offered a view of its vast brown ground and, equally, allowed the protesters to climb over it when the lathis came down hard. For a brief while, from the vantage points of apartments rising around it, Shivaji Park looked like the crucible of a coming revolution – which it once was.

Streets outside Dadar station, parts of Gokhale Road nearby, Ambedkar Garden in Chembur East, and streets in a dozen other spots across Mumbai, including the Reay Road area, were turned quite spontaneously but purposefully into protest venues by the young.

Azad Maidan, of course, had its share of protesters, thronging and raising slogans that showed resistance, irreverence and humour in equal measure. The areas reverberated with a politics rarely seen in Mumbai in recent years, especially by the younger generations.

They mocked those in power. They demanded accountability from Union ministers responsible for the mess. They enlarged the paper leak issue to include unemployment, corruption, justice and poor governance. They focused on job creation. They made graffiti and memes that caught the imagination of even their grandparents’ generation.

They unveiled a new grammar in the language of protests,........

© Free Press Journal