There is frustration among the youth. There is undeniable courage in the masses of participants of the movement. All that is now needed is proper leadership.

Shyamoli Jana

As someone who has mostly walked in rallies organised by left groups, I had so far been rather unfamiliar with what I’m going to call ‘colourful language’ in rallies. That was until Friday’s march. And boy, was the language colourful in HD. The ‘cockroaches’ of Kolkata poured out in the streets in thousands on Friday, July 24, demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Minister of Education. The call for the rally came from various left groups, like the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), All India Students’ Association (AISA), All India Democratic Students’ Organisation (AIDSO) and others. But many, if not most, of the participants had never been part of a left organisation. Many were schoolchildren, many were college students, and the overwhelming majority of the participants were what is termed ‘Gen Z’.

The march that started at Sealdah and ended at Esplanade was attended by tens of thousands. The mood of the march was as festive as it was irreverent. A friend described what I heard too, “I didn’t hear Modi’s name uttered without being followed by an expletive.” Among the more polite posters, there was one that read, “Meloni madam, Modi ji loyal nahi hai” (Meloni madam, Modi isn’t loyal). Another one read, “Asked for face sits, not fascists”. Looking at the protesters, who would believe that the Goonda Act, comparable to the terrifying Rowlatt Act, is in force in Bengal? Whenever they passed the cops, they’d shout, “Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai” (whenever Modi is afraid, he sends the cops). One marcher, probably in his early twenties, asked a cop, “Kaka, ki bujhchhen?” (Uncle, what do you think?) The cop was amused, “Azaadi, Azaadi.”

Yes, ‘azaadi’ slogans were repeatedly raised in the march, even though the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) leadership in Delhi told protesters not to raise that slogan. The protesters did not ditch a good slogan just because the CJP leadership was politically too hollow to stand its ground. Alongside thousands of apparent first-timers to political protests, there were many left student activists too, with red flags, banners with the face of Bhagat Singh and slogans that are a staple in left protests. The main demands were Pradhan’s resignation, scrapping the National Testing Agency (NTA), and punishing those responsible for the police brutality in Delhi on July 20. The NTA conducts the NEET exam, which is the all-India national medical entrance test. The NEET exam papers were leaked thrice in the past five years. In a country like India where a decent living is beyond the grasp of most, many look at entrance or eligibility exams as a way to secure a future and sometimes spend years preparing for these. The NTA conducts many of these exams, such as JEE, NEET, UGC-NET and CSIR-NET. When the integrity of these exams is compromised, preparing well for those becomes meaningless. The last NEET paper leak was this year. More than a dozen aspirants scheduled to appear for the June 21 re-NEET exam died by suicide, according to The Wire.

So to be honest, I’m not going to mind terribly if the youth of this country, who are looking at dead-end jobs and climate crises, decide that those in power don’t really deserve politeness. After all, it’s not like the state wants to take any responsibility for its citizens’ education. The state has left the youth of this country at the mercy of greedy private institutes and cheating agencies. What right do the agents of the state have to complain about the language that the youth then use to call them out? The corporate media, aptly referred to as the Godi media, saw the hand of “deep state”, “Pakistan’s involvement” and what not in the protests. Arnab Goswami pointed at a ‘Demonstration Alert’ by the US Embassy in India on July 17 for the July 20 rally from Jantar Mantar and the July 21 farmers’ rally, and asked, “How did they know?” Well, they probably knew because there was a July 9 announcement by the CJP leadership about the July 20 rally and the crowd at the Jantar Mantar Dharna leading up to it kept increasing. The Hindu reported on July 15 about the farmers’ plan to hold a ‘maha rally’ in Delhi on July 21. The youth without a future who showed up at Friday’s march in Kolkata with posters that cost less than 20 rupees to make would go back home and see how they were maligned on news channels as actors of the “deep state” and “Jihadis”. So I’m not really going to lose sleep over the fact that the protesters – truly treated as cockroaches by the state as well as the media – called the Godi media correspondents names and splashed a bit of water on some of them.

There is frustration among the youth. There is undeniable courage in the masses of participants of the movement. All that is now needed is proper leadership. Will the left leaders rise to the challenge and try to take the reins from the inept CJP leadership, whose goal is merely to change the nameplate on the door of the Minister of Education? Time will tell, but I am not holding my breath.

Shyamoli Jana is a Kolkata- based social activist.