Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as the education minister on Saturday afternoon. Soon, the organisers were asking everyone at Jantar Mantar to pack up and go home.

Vipin, a law graduate from Shegaon, Maharashtra, had a different word for what had just happened. A “ceasefire”. “This is only one chapter of a war that has been completed.”

The month-long sit-in over the NEET paper leaks had drawn students, lawyers, doctors, blue-collar workers and parents to the centre of Delhi. Along with Pradhan's resignation, the Cockroach Janta Party, which organised it, said the government had agreed to withdraw police cases against students and compensate the families of those who died by suicide.

Almost everyone at the site called that a win. But pressed on what came next, they had a longer list: an apology from the Delhi Police, accountability from the home minister for the July 20 crackdown, compensation and reform for all exam aspirants — and beyond that, jobs, free education, and a change in politics.

The first step, not the last

Pranita, 23, a journalism graduate now looking for a job, had come back to the ground despite having been tear-gassed on July 20. “It’s only the first step,” she said of the resignation. “Going forward, we shouldn’t treat this as just another incident that fades away.”

For her, the paper-leak scandal was inseparable from a larger crisis: graduates like her, degree in hand, still unable to find work that matched their qualifications. “It’s not just about education. It’s also about the job market.”

Sheetal Shukla, 23, a NIFT student from Rohini who had shown up almost every day since the sit-in began said “this is the first step of the stairs” and “we haven’t even scratched the surface”. But, “PM Modi was posting at 12 in the night to communicate with Gen Z. I think it’s huge that he even acknowledged,”........

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