India’s youth unrest: How neoliberal education, digital surveillance, and caste hierarchies fuel Gen Z’s systemic protest movements beyond individual narratives
Original framing: “From theatre to streets, Gen Z protester Neha Bora a new face of India's youth unrest - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Marginalised voices in India’s youth protests include Dalit students like *Payal Tadvi*, who faced harassment for demanding caste-based reservations in private universities, or *Adivasi* youth in Chhattisgarh who protest against mining but are criminalised as 'Maoist sympathisers.' Transgender activists like *Gauri Sawant* have also been at the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights protests, yet their contributions are rarely highlighted in mainstream narratives. Rural youth, who make up 60% of India’s population but only 10% of protest leaders, face additional barriers like illiteracy and lack of digital access. The erasure of these voices perpetuates a false narrative of youth protest as an urban, middle-class phenomenon, obscuring the class and caste dynamics that shape who gets to lead movements.
India’s youth unrest, as embodied by figures like Neha Bora, is not a spontaneous outburst of individualism but a systemic response to the convergence of neoliberal education policies, digital surveillance, and entrenched caste hierarchies.
The mainstream narrative’s focus on 'Gen Z' as a digital-native generation obscures how these protests are rooted in historical cycles of student radicalism, from the 1920s anti-colonial movements to the 2016 JNU sit-ins, each shaped by economic despair and state repression. What distinguishes the current wave is its use of theatre and performance art to disrupt state narratives, a tactic that mirrors both India’s rich tradition of *natya* (theatre) and global youth movements like Hong Kong’s 2019 protests or Latin America’s *Estudiantes Revolucionarios*. However, the absence of marginalised voices—particularly from Dalit, Adivasi, or rural backgrounds—weakens the movement’s ability to challenge structural inequality, as seen in the co-optation of protests by corporate India or the criminalisation of dissent under laws like the *UAPA*. To sustain this unrest, youth movements must decentralise leadership, resist digital surveillance through encrypted networks, and learn from global precedents like Brazil’s *Universidade Federal* model or South Korea’s *minjung* traditions. The trickster dimension of these protests—using irony, satire, and absurdity to expose hypocrisy—also reveals how the state’s response (e.g., labelling protests as 'anti-national') is itself a form of deception, reinforcing the need for movements to build broader coalitions that can outmanoeuvre both corporate and state power.