Komal Rajak
Both academic and non-academic spheres are recurrently using terms like “Gen-Z protest,” “Gen Z’s political anger,” “Gen Z pressure,” “Gen-Z consciousness,” and “Gen Z politics” to describe the follow-up events. US public broadcaster NPR, despite accentuating the statistics of joblessness and inequality across South Asia as latent sources of unrest, concludes its argument by portraying “Gen Z” as an active political force. I feel some edginess with how a demographic detail is so readily treated as an explanation, when it is, at best, merely a description. Young people marching in large numbers, staging sit-ins, occupying public spaces, and facing tear gas are not new phenomena of 2026. These have long been a persistent feature of political activism in India. For instance, Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha (1926) had already demonstrated the political mobilization of youth nearly a century before.
Protests against exam-leaks are not new to India. We witnessed similar protests regarding the NEET exam in 2024. However, in 2026 the movement evolved into a mass youth mobilization, garnering national and international attention. It was driver not solely due to the examination scandal, but its collision with an unrelated event. Chief Justice Suryakant likened unemployed youth who turned to media and RTI activism to ‘cockroaches,’. Later he clarified that his remarks were intended merely for those who had entered professions such as the Bar through fake degrees, and not youth in general (Bar & Bench, 2026). Nonetheless, this clarification remained ineffective and within 24 hours a satirical social media account named ‘cockroach Janta Party’ (CJP) was created, open to anyone. This account gained 15000 followers within 24 hours, and over 19 million Instagram followers within a week. The NEET exam-leak and subsequent students-suicides provided impetus, leading tens of thousands of protestors to march towards Parliament Street under the overarching leadership of CJP and veteran Sonam Wangchuk, and ended with the resignation of a union minister.
The protesters were widely framed as a representation of a globally lucid generational style that is exasperated with institutional reverence, smooth in satire, and native to the platforms on which the movement lived. The movement has been routinely presented as a ‘Gen Z phenomena,’ that includes humour, memes, slang, and digital presence as its principal vocabulary. Gen Z has become a dominant frame, or popularised as one. Here, the concern is not whether the specific age-group people participated in the protest, but why this frame has become the media’s preferred explanation of it? Generational categorisation, such as Gen Z, Gen Alpha, Millennial, is neither an analytical lens nor an ideology in itself. A generation is just a demographic category that may have diverse socio-political orientations (Kumar, 2026); different structure[s] of power they may have confronted; and navigated varied trajectories of struggle. This essay raises the question of whether a demographic category is an appropriate explanation of a political mobilisation.
Instagram posts, memes, sarcastic placards, or even irreverent slogans are forms of political expression that should not be mistaken for an account of the politics. Labelling it as ‘Gen Z protest’ can highlight the prominent demographic cohort of protestors. But it does not shed light on the concerns, grievances, institutional failures, leadership, or political orientations that catalyzed these protests. The essay argues that while the youth presence in the protests is not new, the available grammar has shifter in the key dimensions: (a) the mode of communication through which issues, objectives and planned actions are circulated; (b) the mode of mobilisation through which sympathisers are turned into participants; and (c) the mode of campaigning through which a protest sustains public attention and pushes its demands. It is not the generational essence, but rather a recurring structural feature of youth combined with the accessibility of modern media, that explains the difference between the 2026 movement and its predecessors.
Theoretical framework: Beyond the birth-year bracket
A widespread discourse about ‘Gen Z’ typically considers a generation as a straightforward demographic fact demarcated by shared birth years, commonly dated 1997 to 2012. It is presumed to share a psychology, a politics, and a communication style as a consequence of little more than having been born within the same 15– to 18-year window.
Here, “Mannheim’s ‘The problem of generations'” distinguishes a generation as only a biological site in itself. Being born within the same span of years does not give any static political meaning; it is just a common thread. A generation gains socio-political meaning when it lives through the same historic events during its formative years and, in the process, builds a collective consciousness out of those experiences (Mannheim, 1952: 276-322). However, their [political] interpretations of those historic moments are shaped by their caste, class, gender, region, religion, education, employment and family circumstances etc. It locates the causal engine of generational consciousness in shared historical time and youth’s structural position within it, instead of any inherent trait possessed by cohorts born in a certain period. Moreover, a generation may split into sub-groups that despite living through the same events and, though at different velocities, draw different and sometimes quite opposite inferences from those events. Therefore, a shared experience does not necessarily imply a shared politics. Both of these features, (a) that generational consciousness is constructed through the shared historical time instead of shared birth years, and (b) that a generation is never a monolithic political actor, are routinely absent from the ongoing discourse catalogued under ‘gen Z’ label. Presenting an age cohort as a single political personality wipes out Mannheim’s sociological caution.
Dimock (2023) also warns that generational categories are simply analytical tools, rather than natural or scientific boundaries. They may help us understand societal change over time. But using them as static labels not only oversimplifies, but also conceals the differences between social groups. Dimock underscores three observations about the generational discourse. First, it systematically privileges differences over similarities [between two generations]. Second, a conventional generational narrative carries an explicit class bias where a single telegenic style of youth activity is mistaken for the political orientation of an entire generation, whereas it merely highlights a smaller, better-resourced and more visible slice of it. And third, youth is not a permanent state. People’s politics change with their age, career path, and other orientations that affect their lifeworlds. Hence, their apparent ‘signature style’ at best is a snapshot of youth’s structural position at a certain historic moment, instead a fixed trait for life.
Youth is significant for a movement, not only as an ideological force but also as an accumulation of [political] energy, [structural] availability, and enthusiasm that may be directed towards certain ends through the leadership and historical circumstances. Availability itself is socially structured. As McAdam’s concept of ‘Biographical Availability’ (1986) explains that protest participation cannot simply be understood through individual ideology or grievance, but an individual’s personal circumstances determine their participation in high-risk activism. Students, the unemployed, precarious workers, retirees, and anyone whose work affords unusual control over their own time, are disproportionately represented in protests. It is not necessarily due to any ideological commitment, but because they are structurally the members of society who are least encumbered by dependents, mortgages, and career risks and for whom the costs of mobilisation are lowest.
Youth Mobilisation in India: A Comparative Lens
A fair comparison of some prominent protests and mobilisations spanning a century of Indian history, based upon the available grammar of communication, mobilisation and campaigning, explains the underlying continuity. For instance, Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha relied upon print, pamphlets, newspapers and public meetings to reach the dispersed youth in 1920s colonial Punjab. Bhagat Singh’s own journalism, under pseudonyms for Urdu and Punjabi newspapers, was a form of youth mobilisation. Its theatrical expression occurred in April 1929 when Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw low intensity bombs and showered leaflets onto the floor of the central legislative assembly. This act was designed to ensure their arrest so that a courtroom trial was guaranteed, and subsequent press coverage could convey their objectives to the larger public in a way that pamphlets alone could not achieve.
In 1974, by using the platform of All India Radio along with wider print media spaces, Jayaprakash Narayan reached out to the larger public for the Sampoorna Kranti. The Anti-Mandal agitation (1990) against the Mandal Commission recommendations of 27% reservation for OBCs in central government employment and education, was also a youth protest. The protest sought to maintain the status quo against redistributive, anti-caste-hierarchy reforms, wherein urban middle-class and ‘uppered caste’ politics played a crucial role. It registered the most dramatic campaigning repertoire of tactics-namely, a self-immolation attempt by a student, along with road blockades and effigy burning.
In 2011, an evolving 24-hour cable news cycle, and mass adoption of Facebook enabled Hazare’s acclaimed Gandhian-style fast at Jantar-Mantar to yield a high scale attention. IAC’s official facebook page drew hundreds of thousands of followers, which was unthinkable as a measure of political support in any earlier previous movement. Protest against department-wise 13-point roster (2019) which is completely wiped out from the current discourse, is important to list in this genealogy, as it adds hashtag-based communication to the movement repertoire, in addition to marching in huge numbers through the political corridors.
In all cases, youth energy remained a constant element, channelised by diverse political entrepreneurs – whether Gandhian, religious fundamentalist, or reactionary, etc. – who use the grievances in terms that feel urgent to youth. Youth has been mobilized toward dismantling colonial rule in the 1920s, as well as defending caste privilege against redistribution in 1990. Looking back to Ambedkar’s own youth-era activism—which unfolded during the same historical period when Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha was taking shape—the Mahad Satyagraha (1927), for instance, was mobilized toward a fundamentally different end: exposing and dismantling caste hierarchy and untouchability. This demonstrates that even within a given period, ‘youth’ is never a single political actor, but is instead internally divided along the axes of caste, class, region, and community—a reality that generational labels often obscure.
These examples underscore that youth energy is directionally uncertain (Kumar, 2014) and available in every era. Its mobilisation is shaped by historical circumstances, leadership, and available communication infrastructure, rather than some fixed disposition carried by everyone born within a particular birth window. It is organized around transparent examinations and accountable governments, around public assertions of religious identity, and around radicalized and sometimes violent expressions of religious and political extremism—the same energy occasionally capitalized upon even by terrorist organizations. Furthermore, generational labels obscure the fact that youth energy has proven available to patently different and at times directly opposed political ends. Therefore, instead of treating generation as a determinant of political orientation, this essay foregrounds that whatever political orientation people hold is shaped by the structural settings, lived experiences, and political trajectories through which they encounter and respond to their social world.
Labeling the NEET protest (2026) as a Gen-Z protest explains only ‘when’ a cohort was born, instead of ‘why’ it acted in a certain way. Characterising young people’s experiences of unemployment, examination uncertainty, and career precarity simply as ‘Gen Z consciousness’ obscures the larger socio-economic and institutional structures in which such consciousness is constituted. While concrete explanations are provided by graduate unemployment—which accounts for 67% of all unemployed young people aged 20–29 (APU, 2026)—along with an examination system’s loss of credibility, an institutional insult delivered from the higher judiciary, and a communication infrastructure that separates it from previous protests, this movement does not stem from a political landscape that uniquely emerged with Gen Z. Rather, it demonstrates a long-standing reservoir of youth politics becoming active within a new communicative infrastructure.
This historical comparison brings to light the significant distinction that there is no revolutionary change in the 2026 protests. The structurally disproportionate biographical availability of youth is present in all protests, but the medium through which a grievance can be converted into participation has evolved. Instagram, X, short videos, memes, and AI-generated visual content have made this conversion instantaneous, interactive, and replicable. It is not that today’s youth are more enthusiastic or energetic than the Naujawan Bharat Sabha’s cadre, the Mahad Satyagraha’s volunteers, or the roster protest participants, but rather that the available medium converts anger, frustration, and sympathy into participation at a velocity that pamphlets or radio broadcasts could never achieve. The movement discourse registered an ecological turn with this protest, as it was essentially an interlinked agitation. Its horizontal, internet-based communication has changed the organisational morphology of the movement.
References
Azim Premji University. (2026). State of Working India 2026: Youth in the labour market—Pathways from learning to earning. Centre for the Study of the Indian Economy, Azim Premji University.
Dimock, M. (2019). Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins. Pew Research Center.
Dimock, M. (2023). 5 things to keep in mind when you hear about Gen Z, Millennials, Boomers and other generations. Pew Research Center.
Kumar, V. (2014). Caste and democracy in India: A perspective from below (pp. 179-188). Gyan Publishing House.
Kumar, V. (2026). Why a homogeneous ‘Gen-Z’ is impossible in India. Round Table India.
Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. In P. Kecskemeti (Ed.), Essays on the sociology of knowledge (pp. 276-322). Routledge.
McAdam, D. (1986). Recruitment to high-risk activism: The case of Freedom Summer. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 64-90.
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Komal Rajak is an interdisciplinary scholar of political theory, gender, property and inheritance rights, and institutional governance in India. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Delhi. She has held research positions at IISER Mohali and the Centre for Law & Policy Research and has participated in the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program in 2025.
