06/08/2026
On 5th August 2026, the Disha Students' Organization, Mumbai, organized a discussion titled "Where Should Students and Youth Make a New Beginning? An Overview of the Student-Youth Movement."
The discussion began with an assessment of the recent protest against the paper leaks, held at Jantar Mantar, which had reverberated across the entire country. While the protest succeeded in securing the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, participants recognized this as only a small victory. They stressed the need to carry the momentum forward and engage more deeply with the systemic issues surrounding the NTA and NEP 2020.
Participants offered a critical retrospective of the protest and the broader movement. In particular, they reflected on the recent Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests, which had grown far beyond the leadership of the CJP itself and evolved into a wider student-youth upsurge. While acknowledging the significant gains made through this mobilization, participants were sharply critical of the decision to call off the protests without obtaining any concrete assurances that student and youth participants would be protected from persecution. Furthermore, no guarantees were secured that the police and paramilitary forces responsible for brutal violence against protesters would be held legally accountable.
This, it was argued, proved to be a costly mistake for the student-youth movement. As protest sites across the country were vacated, legal intimidation and state repression continued unabated. The immense people's pressure that had been built through sustained protests gradually dissipated, leaving the movement fragmented and scattered once again.
In this context, participants discussed how the movement could be reorganized and strengthened. A key observation was that a student movement cannot exist in isolation; it must connect itself with the struggles of the working masses. Even during these protests, it became evident that the movement had gone far beyond the specific issue of paper leaks. It had become an expression of the accumulated anger of the people against a system that repeatedly fails the masses.
The discussion underscored the need to reorganize and redirect the movement while recognizing that the problems faced by students and the working masses are deeply intertwined. In a system where education is increasingly privatized for profit, quality education becomes inaccessible to the majority. As a result, many are forced to pursue limited technical education or forego higher education altogether, leaving them confined to jobs that capitalism labels as "semi-skilled" or "unskilled." Even then, low wages and unemployment prevent workers from meeting their basic necessities. Thus, the privatization of education, combined with the absence of guaranteed employment, traps millions in a vicious cycle of poverty and exploitation.
Participants concluded that any meaningful mass student-youth movement must unite around the slogan:
"Free and Fair Education for All, and Equal Employment Opportunities for All."
It was further emphasized that if the state cannot guarantee employment, it must provide unemployment benefits to ensure a dignified standard of living.
Overall, the discussion was insightful and productive, with participants contributing a range of perspectives on how to rebuild and advance the student-youth movement in the period ahead.
