India's powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi was handed a rare setback by the country's Gen Z youth over the weekend, forcing the resignation of the education minister after weeks of nationwide protests over exam leaks. And that can spell trouble ahead of next year's key state polls.
Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's departure Saturday handed a clear win to the youth-based satirical political movement Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which played a key role in the protests after amassing over 22 million followers on Instagram in a matter of days in May.
CJP's supporters have openly mocked Modi through raps, placards and graffiti, an almost unthinkable development only weeks earlier in a country whose politics has been almost fully dominated by Modi since he came to power in 2014.
"A large number of people who were at the protest may actually be his supporters – and that's quite different from other kinds of protests in the past," said Sanjay Srivastava, anthropology professor at SOAS University of London.
"What might be interpreted as a win is the fact that there is now a much wider cross-section of people questioning the government. A much wider cross-section has begun to question the idea that the ruling party is necessarily good for the country."
