Growing unemployment and anger over the integrity of the education system pose serious challenges to premierSecurity personnel detain India's Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi as he stages a sit-in protest calling for prime minister Narendra Modi's resignation. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Michael Stott in New DelhiWed Jul 22 2026 - 12:08 • 5 MIN READ“Hit me, sir, hit me!” yells Bharat, a young protester, as about a dozen riot police surround him and beat his head and body with truncheons.His defiance in the face of overwhelming force, filmed during Monday’s big student protests in Delhi, has gone viral in India. Dozens of other reels on social media showed protesters, some as young as 16, sobbing as they are beaten and tear-gassed by police.Commentators said the unexpected size of the protest, with tens of thousands on the streets and the backlash generated by the police crackdown, posed a growing political risk to prime minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A hitherto popular leader fresh from a string of election victories, Modi is now faced with an unexpectedly strong youth protest movement that has emerged from his middle-class voter base. This raises the question of whether India will see a repeat of the Gen Z protests that challenged governments in neighbouring Bangladesh and Nepal.Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, head of the India practice at the Eurasia political risk consultancy, says the demonstration “has put the BJP on warning, the Modi government on warning”. While the government was unlikely to suffer big defeats at the polls any time soon, “the sweeping [election] victories that they used to get before, that will become increasingly more difficult”.The protests, led by the upstart “Cockroach” movement, began after the leak in May of exam papers for a national entrance exam to medical college, which forced the exam to be cancelled.They continued at a low level for weeks but escalated at the weekend when Sonam Wangchuk, a popular activist on hunger strike in support of the students, was forcibly removed by police from the main protest site and taken to hospital. Tension rose further on Tuesday, when national opposition parties weighed in to support Monday’s protests.Indian police personnel detain a protester in Mumbai on Monday. Photograph: Divyakant Solanki/EPA