The political tornado unleashed by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and taken up by the Opposition, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, is shaking up India. The moot question is whether it will galvanise a broad opposition movement that could affect the outcome of the crucial 2029 general elections.

Extraordinary as it is, the present storm closely resembles another phase in independent India's history and offers clues to where it could go in the days to come. It was the massive student movement that began in Gujarat in the west in the 1970s and soon spread to Bihar in the east. Like the present agitation, which began over a student-related issue, the NEET question paper leak, the earlier movement too erupted in protest against a hike in hostel fees at an engineering college in Gujarat in late 1973. Both began as non-political, spontaneous protests without conventional organisational structures. Both movements largely comprised students from urban middle-class backgrounds. Economic and social circumstances fuelled both agitations. The 1970s saw stagnant growth, inflation, and high youth unemployment. Despite high economic growth, unemployment and inequality have risen alarmingly in present-day India.

However, the two eras differ starkly on one important point: the roles of the dramatis personae. They have reversed. During the first era, Congress was in power and the target of protests, while the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) was the key Opposition party. The Congress party split in 1969, and the ruling faction, led by the formidable Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, swept the 1971 polls. Half a century later, the parties have exchanged places: the BJP, the BJS's successor, is in power, and Congress, still led by Indira’s family, leads the Opposition.

Another significant difference between the two eras is the role of the mass media. While the all-pervasive electronic media amplifies and carries every minute detail of the present movement live across the world, newspapers were the only mass medium during the 1970s.

The Gujarat student movement, which began in late 1973, had soon spread across multiple universities and led to violent clashes with the police. The Congress government of Chimanbhai Patel, an Indira loyalist, which enjoyed a huge majority in the Assembly, resorted to brutal repression through police firing, lathicharges and mass arrests. Nearly 100 people died in........

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