The Jantar Mantar effect

The protest by students of Sarvodaya Inter College in Kishanpur town of UP’s Fatehpur district, about 120 km from state capital Lucknow, was spontaneous. On 28 July, students staged a sit-in protest over the lack of basic amenities — clean drinking water, functional toilets and desks, tables and fans in classrooms. Within hours, a video of their protest was all over social media, adding more fuel to the fire already raging over the government’s apathy about the sorry state of education in India.

The timing was significant. Days earlier, students and other young people protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar had forced the resignation of the Union education minister. Echoes of their protest were heard all over the country. The grievances of the school students in Uttar Pradesh weren’t exactly the same, but it was the same impulse of holding the authorities accountable that spurred their agitation.

Ankur Sonkar, a Class 12 student whose speech during the protest went viral, is the son of a farm labourer. Local social activist Kalimullah says the Jantar Mantar movement had a visible impact on young people here. “Many teenagers travelled to Jantar Mantar.” Ankur was one of them.

The effect of the countrywide protests was not lost on the Fatehpur school administration. It quickly conceded the protesters’ demands: fans and drinking water dispensers were installed; fines imposed on students withdrawn; assurances given that outstanding issues would receive administrative attention.

Modest as the outcome may appear, its significance lies in the fact that here too a heedless administration had to bend to the agitating students’ will. Once again, the power of an interconnected, internet-enabled, app-native generation was on view: being from a small town didn’t mean being cut off from the big conversations animating other parts of the country.

Reports of similar student protests started coming in from Bihar (Simaura Middle School, Gaya district), Chhattisgarh (Eklavya Model Residential School, Korba), Maharashtra (Palghar, Beed, Dharashiv) and Rajasthan.

At PM Shri Government Senior Secondary School in Mengalwa, Jalore (Rajasthan), students locked the school gates for hours and staged a sit-in on the main market road, demanding the appointment of regular teaching staff. Similar demonstrations took place in Barmer and Baran.

The simultaneity of these protests is no coincidence. The internet and Instagram (more than other social media apps) are a powerful glue for this community of young adults, and the country is again a village. Echoes of what happens in Delhi or Patna or Kolkata ring loud and clear in Fatehpur, Beed, Baran and Barmer. Irreverent youth everywhere are drawing support and inspiration from one another to question authority and demand accountability.

On 4 August, mid-day meal workers from across Haryana held a mahapadav (mass sit-in) outside the chief minister’s camp office in Kurukshetra, demanding permanent employment and a minimum monthly wage of Rs 30,000. They also resolved to organise a ‘Jail Bharo Satyagraha’ across all districts on 10 August, followed by a march on Parliament on 6 October. Trade unions and the Samyukt Kisan Morcha have also jointly called for a nationwide ‘Jail Bharo’ movement.

According to Jaibhagwan, general-secretary of CITU Haryana, workers and farmers will unitedly hold public meetings at district headquarters before courting arrest.

Meanwhile, in Odisha, students are demanding the resignation of the state’s education minister.

In Jharkhand, they are seeking greater accountability from recruitment bodies like the Jharkhand Public Service Commission and the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission. Delhi University students have been on hunger strike, protesting the saffronisation of DU and demanding an apology from the vice-chancellor over an alleged directive to prevent students from joining the Jantar Mantar protests.

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The demand for accountability is by no means confined to education — farmers, tribal and other communities displaced by sundry ‘development’ projects, ASHA workers, industrial labour, NGOs… are all suddenly more vocal and pushing back.

In Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh, adivasis rallied under the leadership of social activist Amit Bhatnagar, to protest the Ken-Betwa river linking project. Eighteen days after a collective hunger strike and chita andolan, the state government assured them that it would conduct a fresh survey of displaced families and review complaints relating to rehabilitation.

The leaders of the Ken-Betwa protests underline solidarities with seemingly faraway movements. Shivkant Tripathi of the National Youth Organisation (NYO) recalls that members of the Cockroach Janata Party had approached them for support during the Delhi protests, adding that if the MP government reneges on its promises, the Ken-Betwa movement too will seek support at the national level.

Different concerns, different demands, different leaderships, but a common grouse — a government that does not care. Whether it is school students asking for more teachers and better basic amenities or aspirants demanding an end to exam paper leaks or industrial workers demanding better wages and secure employment or farmers demanding loan waivers, nobody is asking for the moon; they want fair opportunities, fair wages, fair compensation but, first of all, a fair hearing from a government that listens.

As noted above, online platforms have played a key role in enabling these solidarities, but these platforms can only amplify; they can grease a movement, but not create it. The people behind these movements must see — and build — the connections.

As political scientist Ali Khan Mahmudabad wrote in these pages, ‘For the most part, people will view all these protests as disparate. But even though the lifeworlds of these people might be wildly different, it is evident that they are all reacting to an overly centralised and unaccountable state that relies on technocratic solutions provided and upheld by corrupted institutions. […] The question that follows is not what ideologies these groups might share but how they view each other and talk to each other.’

Farmer leader Sunilam describes the Jantar Mantar movement as ‘a ray of hope’ in a time of despair. “For those seeking justice, this moment is uplifting. Earlier, a young person questioning authority at home was ignored or punished. Today, they know support can come from strangers across the country.” The discovery of that belief may prove to be the move- ment’s most enduring legacy.