Delhi saw one of its largest ever student protests on Monday. The obvious comparisons are to the December 2012 protest, which erupted after the brutal gangrape of a paramedical student in a moving bus, or the 2011 protest, which galvanised around the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption agitation. Barring the farmers’ protests of 2020, which were largely led by various farmers’ unions in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and did not really electorally hurt the BJP, the latest protest also marks the biggest popular protest against the current government.

What is one to make out of the chain of events and the after-effects they will possibly have? Here are four things which can be said.

1. The most important differentia specifica of these protests is the following. They are the first truly large protest to happen when the BJP is in government rather than the opposition. This rules out any organised tailwinds to the protest by the umbrella organisations of the Sangh Parivar, which enjoys a significant organisational premium vis-à-vis political entities in large parts of the country and definitely the national capital. No other organisation, especially the ones on the left – as was claimed by the chief of the BJP’s information wing– can even claim to have such a mobilisation capacity in the national capital. The only conclusion which is left to be drawn is that the participation was truly organic and perhaps spontaneously catalysed by the decision to hospitalise Sonam Wangchuk using the police, and then try and prevent the march to Parliament.

2. What makes these protests truly remarkable from the government’s perspective is the latter’s failure to preempt their magnitude. The previous edition of........

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