After the recent protests in Nepal by Gen Z that toppled its government, the global commentaries are raising the question: why aren’t India’s youth taking to the streets?

As Nepal’s Gen Z had managed to bring down a government within two days, observers in Western capitals rushed to draw comparisons with calm in India. Across all these Western media coverages, the undertone was unmistakably similar — India’s young citizens are either disenchanted or forcibly silenced as they are not coming out on streets. The question that has been repeatedly asked by the Western media is how could 370 million digitally connected, energetic young people stay quiet while their neighbours erupt in rebellion!

This line of reasoning is not only too simplistic; it reflects a new colonial construct. The same Western lens that once portrayed the “East" as mysterious now depicts it as perpetually unstable. This new form of neo-orientalism associates political maturity with the violent protests on the streets; if there is no unrest, it implies stagnation and not a resilient democracy!

The recent BBC piece questioning why India’s Gen Z is not taking to the streets is a manifestation of this tendency. It draws parallels between India and smaller countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, and Madagascar, suggesting that the absence of mass uprisings signals a lack of youthful energy or civic courage. The problem isn’t nastiness, it’s method. Comparing India to these states is to misunderstand how democracies operate at a larger scale. Nepal’s protests erupted after a sudden social media ban and amid a fragile coalition government that survives on thin legitimacy. India’s federal and electoral architecture, by contrast, disperses discontent across 1.4 billion people, 28 states, and thousands of local governments.

The design of Indian democracy doesn’t suppress anger; it channels it. Protests in India rarely topple governments because institutions, courts, elections,........

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