BJP underestimates youth power at its own peril

As calls for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan reverberate across the nation and youngsters including teenagers hit the streets, one can’t help recalling a saying by Greek philosopher Plutarch that “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited.” Has the BJP-led NDA government knowingly or unknowingly, ignited a nationwide storm by refusing to act against Pradhan when his exit was needed most, and thus triggered waves of anger and frustration among a generation hard hit by unemployment?

An inappropriate remark by the Chief Justice of India that unemployed youth are like cockroaches, led to the birth of the Cockroach Janta Party, led by research scholar Abhijit Dipke, a couple of months ago. The CJP made the resignation of Pradhan a rallying point to muster support particularly among youngsters, who had already suffered enough after being forced to write the NEET-UG exam twice because of the government’s inability to ensure a leak-proof exam. The Modi government shockingly stuck to its guns and refused to do anything about Pradhan, maybe because it did not expect the protest to gather the kind of momentum it has now.

All that is now history; almost every youngster is now talking about the protest with the wielding of lathis and teargas on a rally to parliament on Monday, leading to screaming headlines nationwide and in the global media. Their stage at Jantar Mantar has been removed and activist Sonam Wangchuk, the spearhead of the protest, along with Dipke has been shifted to hospital; but that has not deterred the young from thronging protest sites against what they feel is a brutal reaction to an absolutely fair demand. After all, there are many minsters who have quit in the face of anger over lapses and scandals involving their ministries.

The redoubtable V.K. Krishna Menon resigned as India’s Defence Minister in 1962, following severe political pressure and criticism over India’s military unpreparedness during the Sino-Indian War. He took responsibility for the ‘lapse’ and so did Lal Bahadur Shastri over railway accidents at a time when politicians did not mind taking the high moral ground to ensure their image remained clean. No longer does that happen in a country where political defections are bring engineering day and night to muster majorities.

Unmindful of the charges being flung at them, there are politicos who stick to their chair, for power is not easy to let go for all the benefits it brings. But going by the spontaneous reactions the CJP protest is drawing, one feels the last word has not been said on a movement which has been able to send the jitters across the ruling hierarchy-something even the national opposition has been unable to achieve till now.