Government Discovers Students Exist, Responds With Tear Gas

Look, the NEET paper leak situation already sucked. Millions of students grind for years, one exam decides everything, then the paper gets compromised, they cancel it, force a retest, and a bunch of kids end up in a really dark place. Suicides happened. Families got wrecked. That’s the baseline disaster.

What the government did next is somehow worse.

Instead of owning the failure and fixing the system, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan went full “these kids are the problem.” He called the protesters the “B-team of disruptive elements.” When students and Sonam Wangchuk sat on hunger strike at Jantar Mantar for weeks, the official response was mostly silence. Then they removed Wangchuk and put him in the hospital. Not because they suddenly cared about dialogue. Because the optics were getting bad.

Then came the march toward Parliament on July 20. Thousands of students, parents, young people just trying to be heard. The state’s answer was freaking barricades, lathi charges, tear gas, injuries, detentions. Students getting hit while asking basic questions about their future. The government acted like a bunch of teenagers(now apparently foreign funded agents) demanding accountability was some kind of national security threat.

Now they’re offering talks. On their terms. At their preferred locations. And Sri Sri Sri Modi ji's big move is announcing fast-track courts for paper leaks. Cool. Except the core demand is still the minister’s resignation and that part keeps getting ignored.

From a Gen Z view this whole thing feels familiar. We grew up watching institutions fail, then watching the people in charge act shocked when we notice. They treat us like we’re either future voters to be managed or problems to be dispersed. Never like people whose entire lives get decided by systems that keep breaking.

The CJP started as an online joke and turned into a real movement because the official channels were closed. Students aren’t asking for miracles. They want exams that don’t leak, a minister who steps down when the system collapses under him, and a government that doesn’t reach for the stick the second young people show up in numbers.

Instead we got character assassination, forced hospital visits, and tear gas. The message is pretty clear: your future is important until you start asking questions about it.

It’s a generation that watched the system fail them and refused to stay quiet. The longer the government treats that as a law-and-order, foreign funded instability moves issue instead of a legitimacy one, the more obvious it becomes that they’re more interested in protecting chairs than protecting students.

We’re just watching them fumble the one demographic they keep claiming to care about.