Over the past three weeks, schoolchildren have walked out of their classrooms, marched to government offices, locked school gates, sat on roads and demanded answers from officials. Their demands are basic. They want teachers and basic amenities — fans, lights, desks in classrooms, edible food and clean drinking water, functioning toilets — and, in one case, a proper road to school. Protests have been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra…

What initially looked like a series of local eruptions, seemingly inspired by the recent Gen Z protests, has begun to look like the beginning of another mass mobilisation, this time with Gen Alpha in the vanguard.

The students of Sarvodaya Inter College in Kishanpur, Uttar Pradesh, were among the first to get national attention. Four Class 12 students who had participated in the Jantar Mantar agitation in June-July went back home and organised the school protest. One of them, Ankur Sonkar, said he had come away from the Delhi protest with a simple lesson: fight for your rights.

On 11 August, around 200 children and their parents from Hamirpur’s Chandupur village took a Tiranga Yatra to the district Collectorate, 5 km away. Their complaint? There was no paved road to their school — they had to wade through mud every rainy season.

In Gaya, 40-50 students from Simuara Middle School walked nearly 4 km to the SDM’s office, demanding midday meals that were fit to eat, fans that worked, benches you could really sit on… In Rajasthan’s Barmer, students locked school gates until officials promised to employ three teachers to fill vacancies. In Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara, students protested the poor quality of hostel food. In Maharashtra, students raised issues of toilets, water and teacher........

© National Herald