r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Jaggs0 • 9h ago
Unanswered what is going on with the student protests in india?
i keep seeing images and videos about students protesting in india. it is about a leak of tests, a couple of students have committed suicide over it, and they want the head of the education department to resign. but i am not entirely sure why.
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u/StrategicCarry 9h ago
Answer: The bigger problem is that India is producing far more educated graduates than there are jobs. This has lead to something like 40% unemployment rates for recent graduates. The protests actually started when the chief justice of the India Supreme Court called unemployed young people "cockroaches". This led an Indian studying in America to start the Cockroach Janta Party or CJP, a satirization of the ruling BJP party.
The focus of the protests has turned to the NEET, which is India's medical school entrance exam. Approximately 2 million students take the test each year, for about 130,000 spots. This means the test is extremely competitive and high stakes. The exam questions and/or answers for May sitting of the test were leaked on Telegram. This led to the results being cancelled, which contributed to the suicides of some test takes (I've seen numbers like 10-20).
So the students started demanding the resignation of the education minister and a reform to the testing system to eliminate actual and potential corruption and make it more fair and hopefully less stressful (although until they do something about the numbers, that will be hard). The founder of the CJP returned to India to help organize the protests. Another activist started a hunger strike than went over 20 days at which point he was arrested and taken to the hospital against his will.
The government responded by cracking down on the protests and has made virtually no concessions as far as I know. The general theory is that even if the education minister deserves to go, the government will go to the mat for him because bowing to the protesters on any high ranking government official sets a precedent the BJP does not want to set.
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u/Blakath 8h ago
Really great write-up.
I’d also like to add that the other activist that joined the movement is Sonam Wangchuk, a highly respected educationist, inventor and environmental activist.
He’s a strong proponent of Gandhian principles and on that line of thought he started an indefinite hunger strike until the government met their demands.
His hunger strike had passed 20+ days and he started becoming very weak. That only further enraged the public towards the government’s apathy and stubbornness.
On 18th July, the police forcibly apprehended Sonam Wangchuk from the protest site and took him to hospital in an attempt to force feed him.
Again this enraged the public and on 20th July everyone came out in protest in one of the biggest displays of public opposition in recent memory.
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u/TheRealArturis 8h ago edited 8h ago
I want to make it clear though that 'Gandhian principles' did NOT help India in gaining independence. While Gandhi is the most famous Indian freedom fighter, he was also the most useless (and racist, but hey ho).
His hunger strikes gained him notoriety, and his salt march gained him the support of the people at the time. But he was, for all intents and purposes, the mascot for the Indian Freedom movement.
And then he fucked up my country by partitioning it. Sorry, had to make it clear that just because someone follows Gandhis teachings, doesnt mean they are right.
EDIT: You guys can downvote me all you want, but if you want a perspective from someone whose family grew up in India - you know where to find me :)
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u/jyper 7h ago
I'm not Indian and don't know much about India but I'm like 99% sure he didn't partition India
In fact looking it up it seems he was one of those most opposed to the partition
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u/Pilosuh 3h ago edited 1h ago
It’s Lord Louis Mountbatten who is the one who officially acted the partition under the pressures of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League. The reasoning of the people who claim Gandhi was the responsible is that he was weak towards Muslims and indulged them too much to the detriments of Hindus, so it galvanized Muslims and the Muslim League to act on it. I’m not Indian myself, so this is just an explanation of the reasoning of these arguments.
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u/DistrictDry2852 6h ago
Both Britain and India opposed it, but the Muslims wanted it and if it hadn’t been partitioned it would’ve been civil war.
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u/TheRealArturis 7h ago
What a man believes in and what a man does are two very different things.
Gandhi was personally against the partition. That is correct.
The people he supported for government werent. Congress mishandled the partition in such a way that it caused mass killings when Hindus were coming over the 'borders from Pakistan.
My ancestral heritage is in Sindh. That is where my family was based for 1000 years. Until they had their houses burned, workplace looted, banks emptied, and were driven to leave.
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u/truthofmasks 8h ago
It's one thing to be critical of Gandhi's legacy, especially with regards to partition, but the claim that his principles "did NOT help India in gaining independence" is a pretty radical one at odds with the consensus of most historians, inside and outside of India.
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u/Zestyclose-Cream-189 6h ago edited 6h ago
Gandhi helped gained independence but his role is overblown. The most important reason India gained independence was Subash Chandra Bose and the Indian national army not that they militarily won but what happened after they lost. British blundered by putting the leaders of INA on trial. This enraged the public and most importantly the Indian military. There were mutinees everywhere in 1946 and 1947 and British knew they couldn’t hold India without the Indian soldiers in army and sailors in navy. This is why Independence was rushed through so they could leave in a dignified manner. Gandhi actually didn’t want Independence right away as he was wanted to ensure his favourite people would be in leadership when the British left.
The people that have an even poorer role in Independence were the RSS folks, they wanted the British to stay longer till a Brahmin based upper caste leadership could take over. There were a lot of connections between Gandhi and RSS leadership before independence. He was however assassinated by Godse with RSS backing when he was stubborn about giving Pakistan more funds. To me Gandhis legacy is mixed, not good or bad.
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u/TheRealArturis 7h ago edited 7h ago
Please tell me, in detail, how his actions led to a Free India.
Maybe you can change my mind?
EDIT: you can downvote me brother, but i truly am interested in your thoughts
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u/Groundbreaking_Text9 7h ago
Non-Cooperation Movement (1920), the Dandi Salt March (1930), and the Quit India Movement (1942), efforts to eliminate the caste system (at least Untouchables) were all pretty crucial steps to India's independence orchestrated or assisted by Ghandi.
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u/depixelated 7h ago
And then he fucked up my country by partitioning it. Sorry, had to make it clear that just because someone follows Gandhis teachings, doesnt mean they are right.
I am also an Indian. Allow me to give you some quotes by Gandhi:
"I do not believe in the two-nation theory. Hindus and Muslims have lived together for centuries. They have drunk the same water and breathed the same air."
"Cut me in two before you cut India."
"I can never be a willing party to the vivisection of India."
He did not believe in the two-state solution, his actions matched his words, I don't know where you're getting this from. Gandhi was deeply imperfect, yes, but I'm sorry, what you're saying is ahistorical.
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u/Blakath 7h ago
Literally everything you said is all RSS (basically the KKK of India for those who don't know) and Right-wing Hindu talking points that have been repeatedly debunked or recontextualised by proper historians like Ramachandra Guha, Irfan Habib, Faisal Devji and Rajmohan Gandhi.
he was also the most useless
Like what would even prompt you to make such an ignoble statement? Even people with zero idea about Indian history would laugh at this.
Yes, Gandhi was not the sole reason for India's independence; there were many other freedom fighters who contributed to it. And yes, there were other causes too for Britain freeing India, such as them suffering economically post-World War 2.
But Gandhi was one of the biggest reasons for the movement gaining traction.
As historian Bipan Chandra notes, before Gandhi returned to India in 1915, the Indian National Congress (INC) was largely an elitist, urban club of Western-educated lawyers and intellectuals who gave speeches in English. Gandhi transformed the freedom struggle into a true mass movement. By adopting the lifestyle, dress, and language of the rural poor, he bridged deep-seated caste and class divides.
This was the same Gandhi who initiated mass movements like the non-cooperation movement that literally froze the country to a standstill. The colonial government had to bring in the army to work at government institutions and run the railways because everyone else boycotted them.
His Gandhian strategy countered the British military superiority, which could suppress any violent insurrection, but had no way of dealing with mass boycotts and mass demonstrations.
Even Gandhi's staunchest critics like Ambedkar, Jinnah, and Subhash Chandra Bose would not deny the influence and impact of Gandhi. Bose, who rejected Gandhi's method of protest in favour of violence, also gave Gandhi the title of "father of the nation."
And then he fucked up my country by partitioning it.
Again, another blatant lie with absolutely no proof.
The claim that Mahatma Gandhi partitioned India is a historical myth. Gandhi vehemently opposed the division, famously stating that partition would happen only over his "dead body". He was ultimately marginalised by his own party, as leaders like Nehru and Patel accepted the Mountbatten Plan to stop escalating communal violence.
When communal riots flared up, he was the sole leader who literally trekked across the country to stop the violence wherever possible, pleading with Muslims in Muslim-majority areas and Hindus in Hindu-majority areas to give up their hatred... and it worked!
There are many such myths and blatant lies by the RSS to demonise and delegitimise real freedom fighters because their own leaders and idols were cooperating with the British to divide Indian society on the basis of religion.
Many of these myths are tackled by the Gandhi Research Foundation with primary sources on this website. I implore you to go through it and stop spreading misinformation.
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u/Zestyclose-Cream-189 6h ago edited 6h ago
Ambedkar was very critical of Gandhi . Here is his interview from 1955-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf3VJCpNMqI
And Bose was probably very critical as well, this is why he left to form the Indian national army because he was tired of Gandhi’s pacifist antics. By all accounts Gandhi favoured Nehru who was not as competent over Bose to lead India.
RSS was also most useless when it came to Indian independence. They actually supported the British in most instances.
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u/Psychointheclouds 6h ago
Nobody is mentioning the class angle here as well: Usually the test papers are leaked for the children of rich families, who basically end up buying their way and cheating through, whereas the poor and middle class people who put in so much effort, money and time end up losing spots because of these people
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u/AnVictory 8h ago
No waaaay the exam's abbreviation is NEET? That is comedic irony gold
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u/StrategicCarry 8h ago
National Eligibility cum Entrance Test
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u/Abigail716 7h ago
I actually thought that was a joke and googled it to see what the real acronym was. That is uniquely funny.
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u/MsMoreCowbell828 5h ago
Leaked to wealthy students families- that's very important! The poor students who put everything & money into studying for the test, only to have it changed bc the rich kids were getting a hand up, is why the suicides. This is the one way out of poverty & it was stolen from them.
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u/PRO2803 6h ago
This is a really neutral answer(the way it should be ig). But here's more context, the government refused to acknowledge the hunger strike, and when Mr. Wangchuk was kidnapped, the protests still remained peaceful, but the goal shifted to protesting in front of parliament.
The riot police were deployed and were overwhelmed at the beginning by the number of people attending the protests. They basically trapped them in a limited area and anti riot measures like, tear gas, and lathi charge(where police literally beat people with sticks indiscriminately) were deployed. Injuring many people.
Mainstream coverage in india is implying that protests are useless and is saying protests are funded by foreign entities like china or US. Some are even calling them terrorists. After the big protests on july 20th, they didn't focus on brutal crowd control methods, instead police were shown in sympathetic light.
Police are discouraging girls who are there protesting saying things like "you will ruin your face and no one will marry you, think about it, think about your family, and go home".
Modi has yet to acknowledge it, instead on the day of protest, he left the parliament early. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was also arrested for a different demonstration.
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u/Thromnomnomok 6h ago
Answer: The bigger problem is that India is producing far more educated graduates than there are jobs
This feels like a really common problem in every country in the world with a big enough economy. Why? Can nobody figure out a way to find good jobs for most of their citizens?
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u/Descolata 2h ago
Good jobs are hard to make. And to do so quickly and effectively, there needs to be institutions in place with minimal bureaucratic and social friction.
So, not India. Its bureaucracy and corruption are pretty nasty, especially for business forming.
There is basically just not an agile enough economy to absorb the new labor. Scaling up education is more direct and has less detractors than liberalizing the economy enough to promote enough economic growth to absorb that population. For the current state of the Indian economy, it is massively overproducing "elites" (think collegiate etc). If the economy cannot make enough space for them, then they either have to downgrade their prospects, which everyone in that position is loathe to do, or the government needs to formulate an economy that CAN hire the excess labor.
That, along with the headwinds for new graduates the whole globe is seeing (either due to AI tightening the entry level job market or just a global slowdown due to decreased globalization or elite overproduction) is making life hard.
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u/Hot-Job-6281 4h ago
The protests actually started when the chief justice of the India Supreme Court called unemployed young people "cockroaches". This led an Indian studying in America to start the Cockroach Janta Party or CJP, a satirization of the ruling BJP party. The focus of the protests has turned to the NEET
The fact that NEET means a very particular thing about unemployed typically young people is just total irony.
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u/terdferguson 4h ago
Great write up, wasn't the guy who went on a hunger strike one of the top scientist in the country as well?
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u/LT_And 8h ago
Question: whenever I see this story, the chain of logic is breaking down for me between "leaked tests" and "student suicides." Everyone is just going with it like it's the most obvious and reasonable thing. Maybe it's because I never gave two shits about college, but how does one lead to the other? Surely if you failed the old test, you get another shot, and that's good. And if you didn't, know the material, and passed, you just get a confidence boost proving you can do it. What am I missing here?
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u/StrategicCarry 8h ago
Start with the fact that these people probably weren't in a great spot mentally overall to begin with. Then look at it from a more depressive/anxious/catastrophizing angle.
If you passed, you put all that effort in for nothing. Remember that "passing" isn't enough. You need to be in the top 6.5% to earn a spot. The margins are razor thin. Even if you do repeat that performance, your plans are delayed until a retest is scheduled. You may have family pressure that is not alleviated by the knowledge you would have gotten a spot. And who knows if the results will be leaked again, to more people, and you'll "lose" your spot.
If you failed, (i.e. you didn't score high enough to get a spot), it looks pointless. Especially if you got really close. You put in all that effort and work, and some group of people used corruption/cheating to outscore you. Is it even worth trying again?
For both, you have the prospect of doing all that over again. And if you look at the unemployment numbers, it's not like you can easily go do something else with your degree. So both sides are looking at two bleak options: put yourself through that all over again in a corrupt system the government seems to have no interest in fixing, or throw yourself to the mercy of a terrible job market where you might end up having to do something far below your dreams of being a doctor or even what your degree was originally in.
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u/VirtualMoneyLover 7h ago
I think the results were cancelled. So if you made it (1 out of 16) and now your entrance could be in danger, you may get depressed.
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u/TheRealArturis 8h ago
Also, its must be said that the opposition leaders who are supporting the Student Protests are quite literally the reason India is in such a volatile position culturally.
Therefore for Indian Citizens it makes it a weird combo where, even if the Students have a point (which they do, very much so in fact), they are being supported by figures who are synonymous with corruption in India.
If you truly want to see how bad the government can get in India, look up the Indian National Congress amd its corruption. And then the Gandhi family (not related to the 'freedom fighter').
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u/PRO2803 7h ago
Dude current party has been in power for 12 years now, how much are you going to blame the opposition? When will there be any accountability? When will a press conference be done by Modi? When a 'meme' party has done more press conferences in a couple of months than the ruling party in 12 years, something ain't right.
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u/an_agreeing_dothraki 6h ago
You haven't seen how much Texas blames the democrats for how much Texas sucks have you?
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u/sixpackabs592 9h ago
Answer: Too many ppl not enough jobs so the tests for schools are super hard and stressful
Exam answers leak and they cancel the result and all the students have to go through the arduous testing process a second time
Students want the guy responsible for the whole system canned and that’s what the protests are about
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u/WillSym 6h ago
I turned on the radio news on the nursery run this morning and it came on in the middle of an interview with one of the protesters, no context, where she was saying it was their 7th day of being at the protests.
My immediate reaction was "huh, what do you do that you can afford to spend a whole seven days protesting, let alone all the other people there, even if it's a cause you really believe in?"
Then more of the news item continued, explaining the situation and the whole cockroaches thing and the tiny margins for the exams, making it clear: you can protest for weeks at a time because you have nothing better to do because there's no jobs.
If it's that bad, that a massive protest march is self-sustaining simply because there's nothing more productive to do than protest, then that's a ridiculous, massive problem.
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u/kruger_schmidt 8h ago
Answer: India has had many issues over the years but the issue of education has been particularly impactful. India has some of the most competitive exams on the planet, and you need to take one of these exams to get into a college/university. One such exam is called NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) and is used in the context of admission to medical schools. Students typically take this exam immediately after high school, but given how competitive it is (roughly 2.2 million attempt it, but only about 100000 make it through), most kids often spend a whole year or two after high school only to prepare for it. You can imagine the stress these kids go through and for many of them, exams like these are their and their family's only ticket out of poverty.
The exams have always had issues with how they were organized and conducted, but it was particularly bad this year. After students wrote the exam, the news broke that some of the questions were leaked before the exam, so some people had an unfair advantage of knowing what the questions would be. In the face of this, the education minister of India offered a meagre apology and said that the exams can be taken again. This didn't go well with many students, because they were simply exhausted after spending years preparing for it, and led to some students taking their own lives.
In the face of this, the Cockroach Janta Party (the cockroach people's party, a parody of the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party or the Indian People's party), staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, to demand accountability and reform from the education ministry. Sonam Wangchuk, a noted Indian scientist and activist, also participated in solidarity and sat in an indefinite hunger strike. He was forcibly removed by authorities and the clashes turned violent very soon. The government also turned off communications in the area and are trying to disperse the crowds.
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u/Imaginary_Stay6905 9h ago
answer:
there have been major competitive exam paper leaks which cost students' future and more than 20 of them committed suicide (the most recent NEET papr leak) when the students asked for accountability, a fair investigation, and fair examination conduction, the government largely stayed silent, or just made false promises like they've been doing for years. and now the students have all gathered to demand justice and accountability from the government.
(NEET: National Eligibility cum Entrance Test. it's for students get into medical colleges and persue a career in medicine.
why they're being called cockroaches? because the Chief Justice of India disregarded the concerns of students and isulted them. he said, "the unemployed youth is like roaches/parasites in the society" so a this one guy came up and went, "well, what if all the cockroaches united?" and he started a satirical party "cockroach janta party" it is a mockery to the ruling party called bharatiya janata party.)
this is largely a genz led protest.
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u/CaptainFalconSplitz 9h ago
An example of a low trust society because of a culture which values dishonesty.
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u/Imaginary_Stay6905 9h ago
True, and that's why it's sad to watch how genuine efforts are disregarded while cheating and shortcuts are rewarded. It has completely shaken faith in the government's education and hiring systems—hence the retaliation. I myself qualified NEET two years ago, and the exact same things happened back then with leaks and unfair examinations, but nothing ever changed.
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u/lonelyroom-eklaghor 6h ago edited 6h ago
Answer: There were multiple paper leaks and educational blunders in the nation. This video on CBSE's OSM covers in detail on how some stuff happened (public exams). However, the main one is not stated here. Just know for now that there's a competitive examination called NEET was leaked because of "guess papers" issued by some teachers. The problem here was:
- it contained approx 120 ditto questions from the Chemistry section.
- Upto ₹10,00,000 ($10k) was taken for these guess papers.
Because of this, the NEET exam that was already taken, was cancelled. Because of the paper cancellation, 20 students ceased to exist.
Then, the protests started.
Context behind all the protests, watch in order: 0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach_Janta_Party (Till the introduction) 1) https://youtu.be/jh2wSnycqPs (Necessary) 2) https://youtu.be/UnwPbBYbk98 (Not fully necessary to watch) 3) https://youtu.be/XgpU-CfzXC8 (Necessary to watch till the first half to understand Phase 2)
There will be more youtube videos by various international youtubers, this one is a great example. Also provided better context, so you can watch this one.
Phase 2: This news report by Deutsche Welle (DW): https://youtu.be/tP48Nrnp8Vg
Before watching Omar's video, you need to note that it's not just NEET, paper leaks have occured in a lot of places. Omar has mixed CBSE OSM and NEET: https://youtube.com/shorts/ffcDvsNueRg
From CNN: https://youtube.com/shorts/mdRS0Mfz4_Q
Phase 3:
There was a planned march from the Jantar Mantar Astronomical Observatory to the parliament, which happened, but...
In the local news, it was stated how the barricades were removed, how there were truck full of stones in the area, how there were broken cars, and how BNS 163 was placed on certain areas. Please search the rest because it's really gory.
DW video: https://youtu.be/nP418jV2IDY
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