We, the students, looked fear in the eye<We will continue to struggle for an equal, socially just, publicly funded and democratic education system; for quality education as a right, not a privilege purchased by those who can afford itWhen I think of how this movement began, I return to May 3, when NEET-UG was held, and May 12, when it was cancelled after the paper leak could no longer be denied. For students, this was not merely an examination gone wrong. It was years of preparation, family savings, borrowed money and postponed lives. Young people died by suicide. Families were shattered. Yet the government was neither apologetic nor accountable.
Our demand for the education minister’s resignation arose from this refusal of responsibility. Not once did the government try to sit with students or understand what repeated leaks, cancellations and uncertainty do to young minds. Its efforts were directed instead at exhausting, frightening and maligning those who asked questions. The insensitivity was visible in the words of those in power. Nirmala Sitharaman suggested that some students had used the delay to improve their performance. What does one say to families who lost their children? That a paper leak was an opportunity? Then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan described those demanding accountability as the “B-team of dehshatgard” (terrorists). Students whose futures had been gambled away were recast as enemies. The government would not answer the questions, so it tried to make the questioners suspect.
But the issue travelled beyond NEET almost immediately. Students came with stories of UPTET, constable recruitment examinations, REET, RPSC, BPSC, UGC NET sociology, and many others. These were stories around papers leaked, examinations cancelled, results delayed, recruitment processes left hanging. Together, they exposed the same contempt for young people’s time, labour and aspirations. Soon the movement became larger than one examination. It spoke to a generation told to keep studying, keep waiting and blame itself for every institutional failure.
Everything about the Jantar Mantar protest is political — as it should be
During the movement, we kept reiterating that everything is political, because so many sorrows we are taught to bear privately are produced by public policy. A leaked paper is political. A government school shut or merged in the
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