Key sectors: education
Key risks: civil unrest, security force response
Risk development
On 25 July Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as India’s education minister, ending roughly five weeks of continuous protest in New Delhi. Hours later the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the youth movement behind the protests, called off its campaign after ministers agreed to drop police cases against protesters, to compensate families of candidates who died by suicide and to consider a five-point reform charter.
The trigger of the unrest was the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG), the national entrance examination, for undergraduate medical courses. Held on 3 May for more than 2.27 million candidates, it was cancelled nine days later after a mock paper circulating in advance was found to overlap with the real one.
Why it matters
The government has reversed policy before, repealing three farm laws in 2021 and withdrawing a lateral entry recruitment notice in 2024. What it has refused is personal accountability. No minister resigned over the 2023 Balasore rail crash, and Pradhan himself faced an identical demand after a similar 2024 NEET leak and remained in post. His departure has been reported as the first by a union cabinet minister in Modi’s 12 years in office to explicitly accept responsibility for a governance failure.
More significant is why the movement proved hard to contain. Its constituency was national and cut across caste, region and religion, drawing on voters the ruling party counts on, where the farmers’ agitation was regional and opposed by other rural interests. There was no organisation to coopt, no leadership whose detention would end it and no single statute whose repeal would settle the grievance. Moving the activist Sonam Wangchuk from a hunger strike to hospital against his wishes enlarged the demonstrations rather than dispersing them.
Background
More than 90 examination leaks and irregularities have been recorded over two decades, at least 15 involving central agencies. The May cancellation pushed candidates who had prepared for years into a re-examination on 21 June. Reports claim that at least 11 aspirants died by suicide in the intervening weeks.
On 15 May the chief justice, Surya Kant, described unemployed youngsters and activists as cockroaches and parasites. Abhijeet Dipke, a communications strategist, founded the CJP as satire – playing on the name of the ruling BJP – the next day, and its Instagram following was reported at around 20 million within days.
Protests began on 6 June and became a continuous sit in from 20 June. On 20 July protesters marching on parliament breached barricades and were met with baton charges and tear gas. Metro stations closed and mobile internet was suspended within 1.5 km of the site. Casualty accounts diverged, with agency reporting describing minor injuries and 10 to 15 detentions.
Risk outlook
The settlement between the government and CJP may not hold. The Supreme Court ordered the release of detained protesters on 28 July, but the CJP argues that state governments closing proceedings rather than withdrawing them leaves students exposed and has warned it may return to the streets. A follow up meeting on the reform charter, which would raise minimum sentences for organised leak networks from three years to 10, is due in late August, and whether legislation follows will show if the concessions were substantive.
The CJP has ruled out contesting elections for now, backing recruitment examination protests in Jharkhand instead, which risks dispersing one national grievance into state level disputes. A counter campaign has begun, with an pro-BJP activists office bearer alleging foreign infiltration of the agitation. Should that framing harden, the next confrontation may be met with force rather than concession.