Perhaps the most significant achievement of the recent Gen Z protest in Delhi is the breach it has opened in the climate of fear and submission. Equally, it has exposed the Modi government’s vulnerabilities. A regime that positions its obduracy as resolve — ‘resignations do not happen in this government’ — was forced into an embarrassing retreat.

The ‘world’s largest political party’, backed by its formidable IT machinery, suddenly looked comical and ineffectual, both online and on the ground. Even the damage-control exertions of the ‘non-biological’ prime minister, jerked out of his preferred 8.00 pm television slot to try his hand at Instagram reels, backfired and became more fodder for gags and memes.

The larger Hindutva project has also suffered a tremendous blow. Both the Modi government and some top functionaries of the RSS were ticked off by Parivar patriarch Mohan Bhagwat, who laboured the point at a youth conference in Mumbai that the Gen Z protesters were “not anti-nationals”, that the government must engage in dialogue, i.e., avoid its usual ‘my way or the highway’ approach.

The Congress party, Rahul Gandhi in particular, had been raising students’ grievances for some time, but their efforts were not getting media attention, thanks to the long arm of the PMO. In fact, hoping it would take steam out of the Congress campaign, the government was initially quite soft on the Cockroach Janta Party protest. Its calculations hadn’t budgeted for the support the CJP would get from those not drawn to ‘party politics’ but keen nevertheless to make common cause with a movement that gave voice to their own........

© National Herald