BHARATA BHARATI

GenZ’s selective angst has been legitimised by the dominant social narrative. Parents and grandparents, rather than pointing out the contradictions in the youngsters’ stances, strive to be cool and “supportive”, self-consciously chiming in about the “system failing our kids” and turning up at protests without verifying facts. Such as, whether steps were taken to bring the NEET leak culprits to book (they have been) and if resignations ever helped (they haven’t). – Reshmi Dasgupta

Now that the protests ostensibly about the “broken” Indian education system have wound down after the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and the formation of a committee led by Nandan Nilekani to devise tech-driven structural reforms, it is time to address other issues: GenZ and, of course, those who rallied behind them, particularly parents, grandparents and non-students who swelled the numbers at Jantar Mantar and elsewhere in India to castigate “the system”.

By definition, those who sit for the NEET exam are 17 years old and above; although there is no upper age limit, it stands to reason that not very many people above the age of 25 still attempt it. Their parents would therefore be in their 40s or above and would have been at least teenagers during the Mandal Commission agitation that seared India in 1990. Thousands of students went to extreme lengths to register their opposition to caste-based reservations in jobs.

Do any of these parents recall vitriolic expletives targeting the prime minister and other senior functionaries during those Mandal agitations? Did teenagers and young Indians at that time casually call for the assassination of the PM and equally casually offer to carry it out themselves if given the chance? What sort of morality, or the lack of it, elicits that kind of response now? That sounds more like anarchy or nihilism rather than genuine emotional protest.

Decades of violent video games that today’s youngsters are exposed to at the same age when older generations were out playing sports or reading, inures them to real barbarism even as they mouth groupthink about the “horrors of war”. They agitate about the plight of Palestinians, flock to study conflict resolution and write long, plaintive ChatGPT-aided social media discourses on peace, and then happily throw brickbats at the police and attack and hurl abuses at reporters.

Only a distorted society rationalises the use of foul language as legitimate features of “democratic protest” by anyone, including the young and not-so-young. Arguments and denouncements do not have to be couched in obscenities, verbal or visual. Indeed, expletives were once considered the preference of mediocre minds, which cannot process and articulate thoughts and dissent cogently. Incredibly, profanity is now being spun as a fundamental right.

GenZ’s selective angst has been legitimised by the dominant social narrative. Parents and grandparents, rather than pointing out the contradictions in the youngsters’ stances, strive to be cool and “supportive”, self-consciously chiming in about the “system failing our kids” and turning up at protests without verifying facts. Such as, whether steps were taken to bring the NEET leak culprits to book (they have been) and if resignations ever helped (they haven’t).

Systems are only as good or bad as the people using or abusing it. Kids are not robbed of their childhood by being sent to crammers in Kota by the government or the “system” but by their own parents. The pressure to perform well is not put by the system but by parents and society. NEET/JEE become “make or break” because parents deem it to be so. The “doctor/engineer/CA/ suicide” quaternary has been crafted by parents. Yet suicides are blamed only on exams.

Many countries have centralised, standardised tests for the same elite professions, including the US, UK and Australia. China has an intensely competitive single entrance test for all undergraduate courses, including medicine and engineering. Thus, the nine-hour Gaokao exam spread over several days with mandatory (Chinese and Maths) and elective subjects is the sole gateway to higher education. Gaokao is a national obsession and conducted on a war footing.

Interestingly, even though there are stringent security protocols at the national level, cheating and leaks have happened in the Gaokao exam system at local levels. But no one has ever dared to posit those leaks as a national failure—much less ask for the resignation or assassination of Xi Jinping or any high official. But then, the punishment for corruption in China is draconian and unsubstantiated criticism also attracts penalties. India, however, has free speech.

And India’s youngsters actually have it easier as there are several separate entrance tests: JEE, NEET, CLAT, CUET etc. There are other opportunities as well, but impressionable young minds are conditioned by parents and often schoolteachers too, to think that everything hinges on that one entrance exam. Who insists on sending children to those dreadful education mills of Kota and elsewhere to study all day for years? Parents, not exam authorities.

And endemic corruption at the local level in the conduct of entrance exams are directly related to that make-or-break litany orchestrated by parents. Who pays for leaked papers? Not the students, obviously. It means one set of parents and/or coaching institutes are willing to go to any lengths to game the system for the “benefit” of their wards. So why specifically and solely blame only the system? To absolve all others and heap opprobrium only on the government.

The demand and the willingness to pay must be consistently considerable for those corrupt testing authority officials to risk detection and keep leaking papers whenever they can. The parents who paid handsomely for the leaks this time and in the past probably joined in with those parents who did not fork it out, to unitedly “protest” about the “broken” system. The government is culpable for not bringing those parents to book too for financing exam paper leaks.

The government was prompt about identifying the perpetrators of the leaks and taking action. It has also realised the system has been gamed so much that it needs a serious reboot; and it has roped in a man with the best credentials to make that happen. Even the minister has resigned because the protesters persisted with that demand—as if such grandstanding moves in the past have ever been the remedy for a problem. What will GenZ and their parents do on their part? – News18,  28 July 2026

› Reshmi Dasgupta is a freelance writer in New Delhi

Filed under: india | Tagged: cockroach janata party, culpable parents, NDA government, NEET protests, student protesters | Comments Off on NEET Protests: Time to discuss GenZ and parental culpability – Reshmi Dasgupta