When Demographic Dividend Turns Into Powerful Political Dissent

By K Raveendran

Mohan Bhagwat’s attempt to open a conversation with India’s younger generation carries significance precisely because such an intervention would hardly have been necessary if the political establishment were confident that the youth remained comfortably within its fold. The RSS chief’s argument that young people are neither misguided nor directionless, and that they require discussion rather than dictation, may sound conciliatory. Coming after an extraordinary confrontation between students and the government over examination failures, however, it looks equally like political firefighting.

The timing makes the message more important than its wording. Weeks of youth mobilisation over examination paper leaks culminated in a protest movement powerful enough to extract the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, an outcome virtually unimaginable when the agitation began. Young protesters demonstrated that they could organise outside established political structures, resist attempts to discredit them and force accountability from a government that initially appeared determined to outlast them.

Bhagwat is therefore acknowledging a political reality that the BJP itself was slower to recognise: India’s young people cannot indefinitely be treated as an audience for political messaging while being denied agency when they question the system.

This strikes directly at one of Narendra Modi’s most carefully cultivated political identities. For more than a decade, Modi has repeatedly invoked India’s demographic dividend, presenting the country’s enormous young population as the engine of its transformation into Viksit Bharat by 2047. Youth entrepreneurship, start-ups, digital skills, innovation and aspiration occupy an important place in his political vocabulary. Government programmes such as MY Bharat and the Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue are designed around precisely this narrative of young people as participants in national transformation.

The difficulty is that a demographic dividend is not created by speeches. It requires functioning institutions, credible examinations, expanding employment, social mobility and confidence that merit will be rewarded. For young people, an examination paper leak is therefore not simply an administrative irregularity. It represents the possible destruction of years of preparation, family savings and personal sacrifice. A government may see an examination controversy as something requiring an inquiry, a new law or an administrative reshuffle. A 22-year-old who has spent three years preparing for that examination sees the collapse of the bargain on which his or her future was constructed.

This difference in perception helps explain why the Jantar Mantar mobilisation acquired political energy so quickly.

The greater mistake was the tendency within parts of the political ecosystem to view dissenting students through the traditional vocabulary of political agitation. Governments everywhere dislike street protests. The BJP has an additional difficulty because its political culture has increasingly divided public discourse between supporters of the national project and those portrayed as obstructing it. Such a binary becomes dangerous when applied to a generation whose grievances are personal rather than ideological.

A student demanding an examination without a leaked question paper does not require a political philosophy. Nor does a graduate searching unsuccessfully for employment need instruction about patriotism. When such frustrations are answered with suspicion, accusations of manipulation or suggestions that protesters have been misled, political authority begins confusing obedience with loyalty.

That makes Bhagwat’s intervention revealing. His emphasis on affection, explanation and consensus implicitly rejects the idea that young protesters should simply be instructed to fall into line. It also suggests that the RSS understands something fundamental about the generational transition taking place. Gen Z does not respond naturally to hierarchical political communication. It has grown up with social media, instant access to competing narratives and an instinctive irreverence towards institutional authority.

The same digital ecosystem that helped Modi bypass traditional media and establish a direct relationship with voters is now allowing young citizens to bypass political parties.

That transformation should worry the BJP more than the emergence of another Opposition coalition. The youth mobilisation demonstrated that political organisation no longer necessarily requires conventional organisational infrastructure. A provocative slogan, shared grievance and decentralised online community can produce a movement before established parties fully understand what is happening.

The Cockroach Janta Party phenomenon illustrated precisely that possibility. Its importance was never whether it would become a conventional political party. Indeed, keeping distance from electoral politics may preserve its appeal better than contesting elections. Its significance lies in demonstrating that a generation previously treated largely as a voting category can generate its own political language, leadership and methods of mobilisation.

If the Sangh genuinely believes that the younger generation deserves dialogue rather than dictation, the principle must apply when young people criticise governments associated with its ideological family. It cannot operate only as a public-relations correction after confrontation has already produced political costs. Nor can the BJP celebrate young people as innovators, entrepreneurs and nation-builders while treating them as politically immature whenever they challenge authority.

There is nevertheless an opportunity embedded in the crisis. The government has already demonstrated, through Pradhan’s departure and moves towards tougher examination safeguards, that political pressure can produce institutional responses. A broader correction could convert the confrontation into reform: examination systems that command confidence, transparent accountability when failures occur, faster recruitment, better alignment between higher education and employment, and a political culture that stops treating questioning as disloyalty.

The deeper problem is one of credibility. For years, demographic dividend has been presented almost as an economic inevitability, as though possessing hundreds of millions of young citizens automatically guarantees national advancement. It does not. A demographic dividend can become a demographic liability when aspiration expands faster than opportunity and when educated citizens discover that the institutions determining their futures cannot guarantee elementary fairness.

The political establishment now confronts young people who have heard the promises of Viksit Bharat all their lives and are beginning to ask what their own place in that promised future will be.

India’s youth are no longer merely the demographic dividend politicians invoke from platforms. They are becoming an autonomous political constituency capable of defining their grievances, choosing their battles and compelling governments to respond. The shift from being celebrated as the country’s future to demanding a voice in its present may prove far more consequential than anything contained in the RSS chief’s attempt to reach out to them. (IPA Service)