If you have been paying attention to the news cycle from South Asia in the past month, you would have seen scenes from the Jantar Mantar student-led protests in Delhi.

What started off as a small protest against exam leaks for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), also known as NEET-UG, has evolved into a youth movement that is asking uncomfortable questions about policymaking and who benefits from it the most. The demonstrations have already led to the creation of a new youth-led political party, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). The stems from the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant’s comments about the protests back in May, when he dubbed the activists and youth on the street ‘cockroaches’ and ‘parasites’. 

The fact that a party has been born bearing the same name is very reflective of the overall mood at these protests. The vast majority of people participating in these demonstrations are young, and this is evidenced by the way their criticism of the government is both completely relevant and genuinely funny. Social media is full of reels that show the police and state enforcers using excessive force against the demonstrators, but even amidst the brutality, the youth has found a way to both stay committed to the cause and show that they find the state’s reaction to perfectly rational demands extremely ludicrous. I saw people dancing under the full force of the water cannon, jokingly asking the police if they ran out of tear gas and even playing tug-of-war against the police with the same rope that was meant to hold them back.

There are several lessons to be taken from India and its protests, which are strikingly similar to the ones in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka in recent times.

The first one is about the perceived apathy of the youth. We have heard the trope many times over, that young people generally do not care about politics as much (especially in South Asian countries) and this is why the vast majority of political leaders and policymakers are older.

Traditional political parties should take note of how easy it is to galvanise younger sections of the public when the right issues are under discussion. It is not that the younger generations do not care about which policies are implemented. It’s just that policies that states are busy implementing in these developing countries for economic and human development are simply not targeting them, which is why apathy appears to be the default setting for most sections of the youth. 

None of the existing ones actually represent them. For a country like India, where an estimated 65% of its population is under 35 (960 million people), this essentially means that a vast majority (or at the very least, a significant portion) is currently grossly underrepresented.

A very common misconception for younger generations is that even if they care, they lack the organisation and temerity to take on the state and demand change. The demonstrations in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka have proved otherwise.

The state should start actually listening to the youth of its countries; they often have clear ideas on how societies should be developed and improvements to policy that will bring about a more equitable future.

Governments currently in power the world over have substantial influence on social media; whether this is engineered or organic depends on the country in question. 

But their reach is nothing compared to the way online native generations can use digital tools to access a large audience base. They can make relatable content that is both informative and engaging, and very rarely can the state apparatus compete on this level. They speak the digital language better than anyone else because they have grown up speaking it and they hold the ear of their peers as well.

The past few decades have seen a rise in populist narratives. The use of social media in political messaging, the rise of misinformation and the clampdown in press freedom have all led to governments being able to dodge accountability, retain power and repress dissent while using friendly media outlets to shape the narrative however they want. This protest in India and the perspectives voiced by many in interviews and conversations show that the government’s attempts to mislead the people are often not as effective as they are perceived to be.

Policymaking has historically been the domain of the ‘experienced’ (read old). This must change as we contend with an increasingly unstable geopolitical system. The youth will inherit this world, but with every passing year, corporations and the lack of government oversight are making it more unliveable by the day, with those that will come after us barely having any say in important decisions. They are the most important stakeholders and yet they are the ones kept the furthest away from the policymaking table. 

Governments will have to adapt quickly, or be swept away. The Indian government will relent to the demands of the CJP; this is very clear. But while the resignation of the education minister and the other demands are important, what is equally (if not more) significant is that the youth of India now know that they have real power, and this is something that cannot be taken from them.