Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday after nearly a month of nationwide protests led by the youth movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). Named after a remark by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant comparing unemployed young people to “cockroaches”, the protests were triggered by the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak. However, the anger ran deeper, stemming from joblessness, a broken examination system and a generation feeling unheard.

It is already being called one of the biggest challenges Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced in twelve years in power - bigger, some analysts say, than even the year-long farmers’ protest that forced the repeal of three farm laws in 2021. What made this one different was who led it: not farmers, not a single community, but Gen Z students who filled the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Ahmedabad, who kept the movement alive through tear gas and baton charges, and who found an unlikely ally in Ladakh-based education reformer Sonam Wangchuk, whose 26-day hunger strike became a symbol of the protest’s resolve.

Gen Z has spoken. They are reclaiming accountability.

After years of political dormancy, Indian youth have finally woken up. This generation is not reacting to a single misdeed, but to a pattern the country has endured for over a decade.

The Millennial Inheritance

It would be unfair to place the entire decade on millennials’ shoulders. In the early 2010s, they inherited a genuinely difficult economy that culminated in the India Against Corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. Millennials were rightly part of that movement; their anger was earned. When they voted for Narendra Modi and the BJP in 2014, many were voting for the promise of rapid change, not for everything that would follow.

What followed was harder to foresee: a “Gujarat model” marketed as a blueprint for national prosperity, partly built on the legacy of a chief minister whose tenure coincided with the 2002 riots. This model also fuelled a wave of communal polarisation that, according to some accounts, even drew previously non-communal young voters into its orbit. Resistance emerged even then, with the 2016 protests around JNU and Rohith Vemula’s death garnering national attention. However, the government adeptly reframed dissent as disloyalty, branding student leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid as “anti-national”. This label was later applied broadly to the 2019 anti-CAA protesters. Millennials pushed back where they could, but it was not always enough.

A Mixed Economic Record

Modi’s promise of hope was met with uneven results, not uniformly negative. Growth held steady in the government’s early years, climbing from 7.4% in 2014 to a peak of 8.3% in 2016. However, demonetisation in November 2016 and a rushed GST rollout in mid-2017 triggered a three-year decline, reducing growth to just 3.9% by 2019, even before the pandemic hit. The Reserve Bank of India’s data later revealed that approximately 99.3% of the demonetised currency was successfully reintegrated into the banking system. This fact is often cited by economists as evidence that demonetisation failed on its own stated terms, making it one of independent India’s most significant policy misjudgments. Then came COVID-19, which caused the economy to contract by 5.8% in 2020, its sharpest single-year decline in decades. Growth has since rebounded strongly, averaging above 7% annually from 2021 onwards. However, for the generation now entering a tight job market, the scars of the 2017–2020 period remain. Youth unemployment and exam-system failures like the NEET leak are, in many ways, the delayed consequences of those years.

An Accountability Problem

Pradhan’s resignation is noteworthy precisely because it is so rare. In twelve years, only two Union ministers have resigned over personal allegations: M.J. Akbar, then Minister of State for External Affairs, who stepped down in 2018 after multiple women journalists accused him of sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement; and R.C.P. Singh of the JD(U), then Minister for Steel, who resigned in 2022 after his own party publicly accused him of irregularities in land and property acquisitions.

Against this backdrop, at least six BJP ministers and legislators faced serious allegations yet remained in office. Nihalchand Meghwal, then Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers, was accused of rape. Smriti Irani faced a fake-degree controversy in 2015. Sushma Swaraj was accused of favouring fugitive businessman Lalit Modi with travel documents that same year. In 2021, the son of Ajay Mishra Teni, then Minister of State for Home Affairs, was named an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence, where protesting farmers were run over by a vehicle. Teni himself faced resignation demands but never stepped down. Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat was accused of involvement in a conspiracy to topple the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan. Finally, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, BJP MP and Wrestling Federation of India chief, was accused of sexual harassment by Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik, and other top wrestlers. He refused to resign, stating it would amount to admitting guilt.

Pradhan’s resignation brings the total to three. However, it took a month of nationwide protests, a 26-day hunger strike and tear gas around Parliament to achieve this – a testament to the high bar set.

An Opposition That Held the Line

If Gen Z supplied the street pressure, the opposition and Rahul Gandhi in particular supplied years of institutional pressure that kept questions of accountability in the national conversation long before CJP existed. It came at a cost, and often without much company. Prominent Congress leaders left the party through this period, several joining the BJP directly - Jyotiraditya Scindia in 2020, Himanta Biswa Sarma back in 2015 (who went on to become Assam’s chief minister), Jitin Prasada and R.P.N. Singh in 2021 while senior figures like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal broke away citing dissatisfaction with the party’s direction. Gandhi kept going largely without them, leading two long marches across the country, the Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022–23 and the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in 2024 to physically rebuild the party’s connection with voters on foot.

Throughout the intervening years, he has also endured what Congress leaders and independent researchers have long alleged is a coordinated trolling and propaganda campaign linked to the researchers have long alleged is a coordinated trolling and propaganda campaign linked to the BJP’s social media ecosystem. The “Pappu” mockery campaign stands out as its most visible manifestation, a dynamic first documented publicly in journalist Swati Chaturvedi’s 2016 book on the party’s digital operations. Regardless of one’s assessment of his politics, Gandhi remained a steadfast national voice demanding exactly the kind of ministerial accountability that Gen Z would eventually force through Pradhan’s resignation.

The Deeper Pattern

The accountability gap has not existed in isolation. Minorities have borne much of the cost of the last twelve years. Muslims have faced a recurring pattern of mob lynchings tied to cow-related rumours, from Mohammad Akhlaq in 2015 to Tabrez Ansari in 2019. More recently, a wave of “bulldozer justice” demolitions of Muslim homes and mosques has been criticised by the Supreme Court as extrajudicial punishment. Dalits faced their own reckoning, from the Una flogging and Rohith Vemula’s death in 2016 to the Hathras case in 2020. Tribal communities bore the brunt of the Manipur ethnic violence that began in 2023, resulting in over 250 deaths and displacing tens of thousands before the state was placed under President’s Rule.

It is against this backdrop that Gen Z’s uprising signifies more than a single minister’s exit.

A Personal Note

As a millennial who lived through this, I write this to share my experience. When I raised similar issues on social media over the years, I faced mockery and the label of anti-nationalism, not just from strangers but also from friends and family who genuinely believed I had lost my way. They often tried earnestly to talk me out of it. I was far from alone; many millennials who spoke up against the government’s record faced the same backlash, from close friends and family and anonymous accounts alike, long before “troll army” became a familiar phrase. This backlash took a toll, and it’s partly why so many millennials who once pushed back eventually went quiet, even as their concerns never truly went away.

That’s why watching Gen Z do this so publicly and successfully is significant. As one protester put it, walking through Jantar Mantar with a copy of the Constitution in hand: “a win for the constitution.” Millennials lit the match a decade ago without knowing what it would become. Gen constitution.” Millennials lit the match a decade ago without knowing what it would become. Gen Z has proven that the fire hasn’t gone out.