History is often remembered selectively. Those who hold power today, particularly those whose political journeys were shaped by the movements of an earlier India, would do well to remember not only what brought those movements to the surface, but also what the establishment failed to hear before they did.

Indira Gandhi’s triumph in 1971 was one of the defining moments in India’s political imagination. It transformed the balance of political power and strengthened the authority of the Prime Minister to an extraordinary degree. Yet barely three years later, in early 1974, an agitation in Bihar over rising prices, unemployment and corruption grew into a much larger political movement. Under Jayaprakash Narayan, it acquired the moral vocabulary of “Total Revolution”. By 1977, it had helped transform the political landscape of the country and ended the Congress’s uninterrupted rule at the Centre.Many who exercise influence in India today were either participants in that era or were politically shaped by it. After half a century, it is worth asking whether India is once again sending signals that deserve to be heard.

This is not to suggest that another 1974 is upon us. History does not repeat itself so neatly. India today is a very different country: its economy is larger, its population younger, technology has penetrated almost every aspect of daily life, and its social and political landscape is considerably more complex. Yet beneath the surface of political stability, anxieties are becoming increasingly visible, particularly among Generation Z.

Their protests may be scattered and their grievances may appear disconnected. They have no obvious political leader and no common vocabulary. But they possess something earlier generations did not have to the same extent: the ability to connect instantly, amplify local grievances and transform individual frustrations into a shared national conversation.

The young people of the 1970s found in Jayaprakash Narayan a moral reference point capable of transforming anger into purpose. He did not merely echo their grievances. He gave them a language through which those grievances could be understood as part of a larger national crisis.

Generation Z has no comparable figure today.But it has questions.Questions about employment and opportunity, education and healthcare, merit and fairness, corruption and accountability, housing and economic security, and the widening distance between aspiration and achievement.For now,........

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