This Independence Day came close on the heels of a students’ movement that forced a powerful government to bend and became a liberating moment in its own right. The day after brings an occasion to stand on tip toe, look at what has moved, and what did not change.

Let’s begin with freedom’s heady freezeframe. Till the Jantar Mantar moment, a narrative was becoming a stranglehold. It went like this — Congress and the regional parties are in unchecked decline and the BJP, armed with a will-to-power not diminished by power, enormous resources and control over central agencies, is seizing and filling spaces vacated by Opposition parties. After the resignation of a Union minister in response to the protesters’ demand at Jantar Mantar, that story is becoming unfrozen. A third force has flashed on the public mind, putting both the main players on notice. Suddenly, the government, too, looks vulnerable, not just the Opposition. Democracy’s wet dog shake at Jantar Mantar is loosening democratic spaces.

Even though he did not mention the students’ movement by name, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s I-Day speech acknowledged it and sought to domesticate it. He profusely invoked “yuva shakti”, but asked that it be yoked to the national project. He described the young, the protagonists of Jantar Mantar, as the “labharthi” or passive beneficiaries. This is in line with the earlier recasting by his government of the rights-bearing citizen as the recipient of state largesse and as the performer of duties.

The PM identified the challenge before the nation — the threat posed by the “dimagi Naxal (one with a Naxal mindset)” well after the........

© Indian Express