Something seems to be changing since the Jantar Mantar sit-in became a movement that forced the Narendra Modi government to listen, and bend. If that change is not just a short-lived excitement that fizzles out before the next election comes, if it is to go beyond the selfie-style vertical videos starring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, or the curated stage of Rahul Gandhi’s “Chhatron ki Goonj” that makes space for his young audience’s stories, or the Instagram duel between Congress and BJP — what would it be? Is there a new politics of the young that will survive, after young protesters’ voices, amplified by social media, have faded?

The question, really, is this: Is the students’ movement that speaks of education and jobs carving out new common ground and new solidarities, smudging the lines of a divided politics?

That question has a back story.

In the journey of a large and diverse nation, two tendencies have coexisted imperfectly — one, that breaks down the whole into its constituent parts, and the other that puts parts together to construct a new whole.

The first effort is necessary so that all the parts feel seen and heard, so that the weaker among them are not shouted down by the dominant, and so that inequalities and injustices are not papered over in the name of an artificial unity. The first-past-the-post electoral system, which offers a powerful incentive for a catch-all politics, makes the second effort — of connecting the dots and adding up — a strategic necessity. But softening the fault-lines and stitching together more enveloping imagined communities is also a political imperative. It addresses the people’s yearning for wider circles of belonging, which sits alongside their need to be acknowledged and addressed........

© Indian Express