India Student Protests 2026
India is facing student protests targeting the government in recent weeks. This articles is about dynamics of these protests and where they are headed. Spoiler alert - they aren't headed anywhere and won't change anything. But let's get into the details of these protests and what is actually triggering them. Some background first.
India is a failed State. Its political system has failed, its constitution based on parliamentary Democracy has failed, and every institution/structure/policy that originates from India's political system is thus a failure. That means India's legal & justice system is a failure, India's economic system is a failure, India's developmental model is a failure, India's bureaucracy and entire institutional set up is a failure and so on. And obviously just like these failures, India's education system is also a failure. Now I won't go into lengthy explanation on why India is a failed State and why its political democracy is a failed system. On that you can read my past articles where everything is covered in detail (1, 2, 3).
How India's education system is a failure? The failure emanates from broken elementary & primary education system which is a complete disaster in India, and this failure amplifies upwards to higher education and examination system. The present protests are triggered by leak of NEET exam paper but there are other factors which have been brewing under the surface (more on this below). The protests - any public protests - may superficially appear to be triggered by a certain event but the root cause of protests are usually combination of other things - things that lie dormant & simmering in background. The protests are like sudden violent explosion of repressed sentiments, usually triggered by some event which awakens people on the sense of injustice of the system.
About paper leaks. India is a thoroughly corrupted nation and paper leaks are quite common, more common than you think. Those with money & influence - government Babus, businessmen, politically connected people etc - buy their way into the higher education system & government employment which otherwise is hyper-competitive affair. And those with a lot more money & resources don't put their children into India's failed education system - they send their children abroad to foreign universities. The problem with NEET paper leak isn't really with the leak itself. It's the fact that NEET paper leak got so open that it became a public issue and also it converged with certain other developments that created a combustible situation. Otherwise, papers always leak in India but as long as their leaks don't create public outrage, all is well.
Children and failed education system of India
There is little point in elaborating all the shortcomings and failures of India's education system and its broken infrastructure. Numerous authors have written numerous books about it. For one, you can read India is Broken by Ashoka Mody. A vast majority of population is dependent on government schools and the failure begins with elementary & primary schools where standards of education is so debased that students hardly learn anything. They don't learn simple Math, Languages - especially reading, writing & comprehension skills etc. Private schools are costly and majority of population simply cannot afford them and even otherwise, although the standard of education is relatively better in Private schools, it still is far below the standards of developed & even many other developing nations.
So broken schools of India create thoroughly incompetent students. Then there's notorious policy of NDP - which came in 2009 - and although is now repealed in most States by 2024, however did immense damage to India's school system which was already greatly dysfunctional. By NDP (non detention policy), it doesn't matter if schools teach nothing to students and/or student learns nothing in schools, the students were automatically promoted up to 8th standard. So there was no incentive for student to learn anything in school and there was no incentive for teacher to teach anything to students. The teachers enjoyed their guaranteed government salaries and students enjoyed schools because they didn't have to make any effort for learning.
Here I like to assert that while the adverse impact of NDP is usually focused on government schools, the policy had an equally severe impact on private schools. Private schools are traditionally founded on providing a certain degree of competent education. But when government itself destroyed the education standards of nation, the standards of private schooling regressed greatly. Private schools started hiring sub-standard teachers and faculties for low wages to maximize profits. The school fee of private schools & profits of management went up & up, while the teaching standards & skills of students went down.
Cheating is widespread in government schools especially in North India. So while thoroughly incompetent students - after automatically gotten promoted by NDP - reach higher secondary classes, they can rely on cheating in examination halls to get through classes. But cheating alone wasn't sufficient to promote this dead lump of incompetent students in Indian education system so a further dilution of education standards was needed. This came in form of 'Rationalization' program where a large sections of curriculum were deleted from all subjects. But most notorious impact of this deletion came in Science and Mathematics curriculum of Class 11 and 12 (higher secondary level) of education. Many topics were deleted wholesale.
If NDP was a catastrophe of 2009 - 2024, the Rationalization scheme was catastrophe that began in 2023 and continuing. But there was a problem down the line. Although you can cover up the abject failures of school education system, the failure will simply reflect more catastrophically in higher education.
Youth, Entrance exams, Universities and worthless degrees
The government schools are worthless, the private schools although relatively better than government schools, are also worthless ..... and very costly. With school education system becoming worthless and university education requiring students to pass hyper-competitive entrance exams, where should students go to acquire actual learning which schools never provided? After all, if Rationalization program deleted key topics from higher secondary Science curriculum, the problem is that all deleted topics and much more are still part of critical JEE and NEET (entrance exam for national engineering colleges & medical colleges). Similarly, other entrance exams require students to learn all the critical topics even though they were deleted from school curriculum. The government could never square this circle.
Then students came to rely on private coaching industry which have sprawled throughout India - the last hope for students where they expect to get the learning to compete in Indian's competitive exam system. I wouldn't get into the nightmares of this slimy & destructive private coaching industry which only destroys & further degrades humanity of Indian students (1, 2).
Then problem goes two ways. First - either you acquire a decent cutoff in hyper-competitive entrance exam to get into State colleges. Since government hasn't invested in expanding higher education infrastructure, the opportunities (seats) are very limited in national & State colleges. On top of that, all these colleges still are grossly understaffed and underresourced. And to make matter worse, due to religious-nationalist drive of current government, even top colleges are promoting anti-Science quackery (1, 2, 3).
Second - you can get into private universities with less than decent cutoff qualifications. These private universities have sprawled across India. But great irony is that if government school systems were abject failures, most of private universities are abject failures in higher education. These universities have no standards, do not provide required skill-set, and in general do not create an employable graduate. You may be familiar with memes of Galgotia university. Such private universities provide worthless and dead end degrees to Indian youth.
The Youth and Economy without Jobs
Although you can conceal the vast failures of education system as well as higher education, you can never conceal the failure where everything will ultimately be reflected - your economy and labour market. On problems of Indian economy, you can refer to my past articles (1, 2, 3). The incompetent graduates are unemployable and no match to global peers. Indian companies comprising of human resources built out of India's failed education system are noncompetitive in global markets - they don't innovate anything. Indian companies are simply incapable to invest in R&D - which is heart of industrial economy - and hence lack creativity and technical advancements.
India is a junkyard economy and Indian companies only survive because of License Raj - the protectionist policies that sustain incompetent private sector of India. To give one example, try lifting protection barrier on Auto sector imports. China's EV companies will wipe out established Indian automakers easily because they produce cars & two-wheelers which are vastly superior and vastly cheaper than junk produced by Indian companies.
The problem is twofold. India's economy is poor and backward, thus have very low investment & consumer demand. This translates into low job opportunities and sub-standard wages. The sub-standard labour and sub-standard management produces incompetent private firms which do not have innovation, creativity & efficiency to compete in markets (they are heavily dependent on government subsidies, loan waivers, State contracts etc). The labour market which already is full of unemployable youth further squeezes the sub-standard workers who find difficult to secure employment. In simple terms - there aren't enough jobs to go around, there's gross mismatch between supply of labour and meager job opportunities in economy.
Here we have a bidirectional causality between failure of economy and failure of education system. A failed education system contributes to economic sickness. And failed economic system creates a feedback loop where demand deficient stagnant economy fails to create adequate amount of employment. I have already explained this dynamic of labour market, job opportunities and economic failures in detail (1, 2).
On Student activists
Let's recap the above mentioned topics. India's political system has failed, India's education system has failed, India's economic system has failed, India's entire institutional setup has failed. What is NEET paper leak? It's just one minor symptom of grave underlying fatal diseases. Who are these student protesters?
Many of these protesters are self-proclaimed disciples of Ambedkar and Indian constitution who flash miniature copies of Indian constitution with pride. Indian constitution is a failed project. India's parliamentary democracy is failed system. And anybody who venerates these failed concepts is a romanticist fool. If Ambedkar could come back to life and see what India has become today, he will resoundingly disown his own constitution.
These youth were born yesterday and don't understand the systemic failure of India - India is a failed State. For these youth, the failure of India emanates only from certain bad actors. Indian Prime Minister Modi is a punching bag these days. Youth mentality is that if Rahul Gandhi or Sonam Wangchuk becomes Prime minister, India will shine. Youth think that replacing bad actors with good ones is the solution. But it is not.
Let's talk about Congress party. Paper leak was an illegal act perpetrated by certain people who planned to bypass the hyper-competitive entrance exam system. An illegal act which can be prosecuted as per law. But what about policies and legislation that are created by government itself which are highly destructive? For example, the NDP - non detention policy - wreaked havoc on already dysfunctional education system of India. What was the accountability of politicians who created such destructive policy?
Today CJP activists team up with Congress party politicians and people like Kapil Sibal. But these were precisely the people who gave you NDP - a policy which was probably 100 times more destructive than NEET paper leak. NDP was not just a criminally negligent policy, it was intentional sabotage of India's school system, purely for short term political gains. And Kapil Sibal was Education minister who introduced this policy in 2009.
What have Student activists accomplished?
Students activists accomplished resignation of India's education minister. It's not unreasonable for activists to demand some accountability for paper leak and actually if there was an honorable person in charge of ministry (which is not the case in India), he should've resigned out of his own conscience. But India's ruling government, as we know, is made of arrogant scoundrels who never take accountability for anything. But does resignation change anything? It certainly does not in regards to all the deep seated structural problems of India.
And even otherwise, it's well known that India since 2014 is being governed by two men - Modi & Amit Shah. These men take all critical decisions and cabinet is basically a rubber stamp of puppets. When one puppet departs, another one replaces it. If you look at resignation letter of education minister, even this letter is not written by education minister himself as its language suggests (the letter talks about anti-national threat!). This letter was dictated by supremos Modi & Shah and minister just signed it without questioning. This is how affairs are conducted in the current regime and business continue as usual.
Ruling regime has doled out cosmetic decisions to demonstrate their seriousness. Tougher laws and fast track court for paper leaks? Recall that there have been fast track courts for sexual assault and death penalty provisions for criminals. Has it deterred crime against women? Didn't even make a dent and simply because India's entire justice system itself is a failure. Adding more laws to make this justice system work doesn't change anything.
Then there's the eyewash of exam reform committee announced by Prime Minister. The head of the committee is Nandan Nilekani - the architect of UIDAI system - a billionaire who is adored by both Congress & BJP party. Do you recall all the Aadhar data leaks, data of millions of people littered around internet and also sold for pennies by UIDAI third part vendors? This was the legacy of Nilekani. Here I like to point out a mistake by Student activists. While cosmetic measures won't change anything for India, but a clever move by activists could've been demanding the government to appoint at least two members of Civil society in exam reform committee. That way, Activists could at least be part of reform process in some capacity and keep government under pressure.
The Youth culture
Why Students have capacity to shake up political environment? To be sure, this shake up may not be constructive but the students do have this capacity of scaring the politicians in power. This can been seen not just in India but worldwide. The recently held protests by students in University campuses in America & Europe against Gaza Genocide, Climate change and pro-democracy protests in Europe are latest examples. There's a long history of Student protests. The anti-war student protests in America against Vietnam war, the student protests in France that ended De Gaulle's political career, the student protests in China & Tienanmen square of which nothing more needs mentioning, long history of anti-reservation protests in India. And the latest in India were 2019 anti-CAA protests which gave real headaches for ruling regime. Why student protests have a special place in political history?
Students are youth. For youth, anything is possible. Youth lives in world of endless possibilities and optimism for future. Along with optimism, youth have this feeling that the world, more or less, is a good place which will accommodate them if they work hard or at least give them a fair chance at life. And thus when something shatters this optimistic worldview of youth, triggers a sense of injustice that challenges their faith, they protest. As people age & get old, they lose optimism about future, they lose that special feeling of endless possibilities and they also get certain recognition that a lot of problems society faces are much deeply rooted and endemic of our systems. Thus older people lose that energy to challenge status quo.
Note that protests don't necessarily bring any real changes to political system. Protests are release valves in democracy where people, especially youth, releases their steam. That's all there to it. Recall the student protests about Delhi 2012 rape case where angry youth marched at India gates and clashed with the police. Later when things calmed down, many people realized that their protests only helped the opposition party BJP to capitalize on unpopularity of Congress regime. Similarly in 2011, spate of corruption scandals triggered IAC (India against corruption) movement where youth & Indian civil society challenged ruling Congress regime. Later when things calmed down, they came to realize that whole affair was largely created by BJP in which youth and civil society were just used as pawns.
Youth blind spot - Reservation system
The present generation of youth are born in post-reservation era. Reservation is extremely destructive system which was created by politicians for purely short term goals (refer my article). Populist politicians of various party stripes polarized society over ethnic & caste divisions and agitated for allocation of employment and higher education opportunities. Indian Liberals - the bastards of democracy - foolishly cheered for this monstrosity. The result was birth of India's reservation system which compromised the entire concept of educational system & job opportunities based on competence of candidates.
There were strong student protests against this monstrosity of reservation system in 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The outrage over reservation system actually galvanized the popularity of BJP in 1990s. It's interesting to note that Congress party - the mother of India's reservation system which has been a calamity for India's education - is now agitating over NEET paper leak. It's like coal mine calling the kettle black. Congress Party completely ruined India's education system and two most critical parts of ruining were creation of reservation system (Mandal commission 1980s to 2005) and NDP (in 2009).
The BJP which was anti-reservation party started to co-opt Congress reservation politics. The Caste census - a destructive exercise which will open another Pandora box of ethnic & caste polarization - was always opposed by BJP. Then suddenly it changed its position and adopted the idea. And now with Caste census taking place, the reservation will probably expand to 70% in near future.
Reservation system, NDP, Rationalization scheme etc are all disastrous policies created by politicians for purely short term electoral advantage. They have disastrous long term consequences of which politicians do not care about. But a more serious problem is youth, who after decades of protests against reservation system, decided to give up their fight. The last major anti-reservation protests were held in 2005 when Congress implemented OBC reservation in education.
The current generation of students are born in post-reservation era, for they have forgotten the past battles against reservation. This youth of today was born into this unfair education system and adapted to it fully. If you give a serious look at NEET paper leak protests, you will get recognition of how farcical the whole agitation is. Because the youth who're protesting against paper leak have tolerated much greater injustices and governmental failures and learned to ignore these giant failures. Such is the nature of these protests. And the Congress Party which has done the most damage to India's education system has aligned with youth in paper leak protests.
Other triggers of Youth protest - The cost of living crisis
There are other underlying factors behind youth protests that also needs to be looked at. The general problem is that there are no job opportunities in India and recently the cost of living has increased substantially due to internal as well as external factors. I have already mentioned my past analysis on Indian economy which elaborates internal factors behind India's economic failures but now there are external factors which are also emerging. Most notably is Supply shocks that are putting great stress on already failed & dysfunctional economy of India.
India is heavily dependent on non-renewable energy and with disruption of international Oil & Gas trade, India is prone to further economic instability. With economic instability, comes political instability. Few months ago, there were major Labour protests in industrial township of India over low wages. Indian workers' wages are abysmally low and now the supply shocks are creating strong inflationary pressures which further erodes purchasing power of labour. As usual, the government suppressed these protests and claimed that the protests were caused by foreign agents and anti-national forces. This is standard response of current government to every problem.
This cost of living problem and lack of job opportunities always lie in sub-conscious mind of Youth & students. And with culture of private coaching industry where students spend significant money for lodging (in Kota type cities) and private tuition costs, the cost of living problem is felt directly. And even after spending so much time & resources, there is a good possibility that student won't get seat in desired college. And pursuing half-decent college or even decent college is still no guarantee to a secure and stable employment.
In current times of Supply shocks, India is probably just one drought or one flood away from public protests. The protests emerge & re-emerge changing type or form because of the underlying cost of living crisis.
In Conclusion
The present generation of Youth is an abused child of Reservation, NDP, Rationalization scheme and other vast education policy failures of past decades. The youth don't have intellect, they only have emotions. They don't understand the deeply rooted structural problems of education system and India as a whole. They react in Knee-Jerk fashion to incidents like paper leak. The big picture is that the problem with India is not paper leaks.
Paper leak is just a symptom of broader failure of entire education system. And then, the problem is not even limited to India's failed education system because the failed education system of India is just a product of failed government. The problem is not just scoundrel politicians - as corrupt, incompetent & malignant they are - which make up the government. The problem is much bigger - the entire Political system of India & its democracy is a failure. Poor Youth publicly tout these small copies of Constitution at protests without knowing that India's constitution has failed. India is a failed country.
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