India’s student protests serve as a warning to Modi: Europe is witnessing them too

by Rajnish Singh, European Policy Centre

When students take to the streets, governments often treat them as a problem of public order. That can be a costly mistake. From India’s fierce competition for university places to protests over education and economic insecurity in France and Belgium, young people are challenging a promise that once underpinned social mobility: work hard, get qualified and build a better life.

The immediate grievances differ. In India, allegations of examination paper leaks and irregularities in high-stakes entrance tests such as NEET-UG have exposed the pressures facing students competing for limited places in higher education and professional careers.

In France, student demonstrations have become part of wider battles over public spending in education, labour reform and the future of the welfare state. In Belgium, concerns about education funding, employment prospects and the cost-of-living feed into a broader debate about the opportunities available to younger generations.

These are not identical movements, nor do they operate in comparable political systems. But they share a powerful underlying frustration: the traditional route from education to economic security is looking increasingly uncertain.

In India, families can invest years of preparation and substantial sums in private coaching, only to see their students’ prospects threatened by alleged failures in the examination system. In Europe, a university degree no longer guarantees stable employment, affordable housing or financial independence. Even colleges providing qualifications for practical jobs are underfunded. Across both, generative AI and automation are adding to anxieties about entry-level jobs, particularly in technology and other white-collar professions.

The result is more than youthful impatience. It is a growing crisis of confidence in institutions that claim to reward effort and provide opportunity.

Anger over examination integrity is resonating well beyond the students directly affected. For families who see education as the principal route to social advancement, failures in the system can undermine confidence in the institutions responsible for delivering that opportunity.

Though most of students are grouping around the satirically named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), who has gained huge support online from tech savvy Gen-Z. The anger over exam leaks, are part of wider discontent, including student suicides and mental health, institutional reforms, accusations of vote rigging, and like Europe high youth unemployment and lack of opportunities, increasing made worse with introduction of AI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, retain substantial organisational and electoral advantages. The opposition, including Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party and its coalition partners, faces the challenge of turning public frustration into a credible nationwide alternative. Discontent may be widespread without being politically unified.

But Modi and the BJP should not get complacent. Absence of an immediate political threat should not be mistaken for public approval. Governments can remain powerful even as they lose the confidence of groups whose expectations they have failed to meet.

France’s experience in May 1968, when widespread student demonstrations took place in Paris, illustrates the danger of underestimating generational discontent. What began with student protests escalated into a national crisis as workers joined a general strike, bringing millions into the streets and challenging the authority of President Charles de Gaulle. The unrest exposed deeper tensions over hierarchy, social change and the political establishment’s ability to respond to a rapidly changing society, like the societal changes India faces, which has a very young population.

De Gaulle, though surviving the immediate crisis, resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum, rather than being directly brought down by the student movement.

There is no reason to assume that India’s current youth mobilisation will follow the same trajectory. But there are lessons to be learnt: when governments respond to generational anxieties as isolated incidents of unrest, they can miss the broader loss of confidence occurring beneath the surface.

For Modi, that means treating examination integrity, access to education and employment prospects, and the growing challenge of AI as more than administrative challenges. Neither heavy-handed policing nor social media political messaging can substitute for credible solutions. Nor will every protest become a movement capable of changing the government. But repeated failures to address the causes of discontent can accumulate, giving opposition parties an opportunity to connect grievances that once appeared separate.

Like De Gaulle, the political danger for Modi is not necessarily that Gen Z will bring down his government tomorrow. It is that a generation, along with their parents, which has invested heavily in education and professional ambition may increasingly question whether the system works for them at all.