Student protests are the consequence of Modi government’s policies, writes Sonia Gandhi

For the last few weeks, peaceful protests by young students all over India against examination paper leaks and the general decay in the education system have been gathering momentum. Their demands have been straightforward and to the point: accountability from the Government of India and education reform. The Narendra Modi government has responded to their courage with cowardice and wanton cruelty, treating them not as inheritors of the future but as enemies of the nation. On July 20, 2026, a day of infamy, the Delhi Police and the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) sought to suppress them with uncalled-for violence, using brutal lathicharges and tear gas. Scores of peaceful protesters have been injured. Even students heading back home were not spared, as lathis rained down on their backs and heads. The nation has seen some of the most depressing visuals of youth whose bodies have been scarred by pellets, the use of which would undoubtedly have been approved by the Union Home Minister himself. The videos from that day are seared into our memories and have stirred our collective conscience. Only the government and its captive media are spinning stories around this spontaneous rising tide of protest. It is time to say loud and clear: Stop. These are our sons and daughters, our young men and women.

The Modi government routinely uses violence in preference to dialogue. The pattern is clear, from farmers to activists. But this week, even a government as insensitive as the one that has set new standards of authoritarian governance, sank to a new low. Instead of reaching out with understanding to our future doctors and engineers, teachers and civil servants, entrepreneurs and nation builders, it unleashed the repressive power of the state on them. This can neither be forgiven or forgotten.

The old toolkit of labelling any and every dissent as anti-national has been repurposed to tar the student agitation. The Modi government has reached deep into its bag of tricks to cast aspersions and peddle conspiracies when what it should have done is to introspect on its policies that have motivated the protests.

The decline of public education

The first fundamental issue is the Modi government’s retreat from public education. It has reduced the proportion of its total Budget spent on school education by 50% and on higher education by 33%. Can anyone see the sense in such an absurd retreat? Over the last 12 years, the Modi government has shut down nearly one lakh public schools while overseeing the opening of 43,000 private schools — a large chunk of which are run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which, along with its affiliate organisations, incidentally presides over the largest private school network in India. In higher education, the University Grants Commission has cut its grants to universities and pushed them to take loans at high rates of interest. To repay them, public universities have resorted to raising their fees.

With high-quality, affordable public education inaccessible, families in India have been forced to spend out of pocket to educate their children. The total amount spent by families on the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) examination coaching alone is as much as the Modi government invests on public education in total. The cost of pursuing a private education deters lakhs of talented students, who come from humble backgrounds but have immense potential. Equally critical, however, is that these expenses also put a crushing burden of impossibly high expectations on our students. India’s youth are keenly aware of how much their families have invested in the dream of their academic and professional success. The acute desperation of our students is a direct consequence of the privatisation and commercialisation of education.

Broken testing system, issue of success

The second issue is the gutting of India’s public examination system, which has undergone the processes of centralisation, privatisation, and politicisation. The traditional practice of universities and States setting their own examinations to cater to their unique needs was replaced by a centralised, National Testing Agency (NTA)-conducted examinations such as the Common University Entrance Test (CUET). The NTA itself is a hapless, chronically-understaffed body which relies entirely on an army of private contractors to conduct its examinations. It is also well known that the paper-setters, translators, and experts engaged by the NTA are not renowned academics from India’s premier institutions but are, for the most part, mediocre individuals with political affiliations. The end result of this process has had stark consequences — 152 paper leaks occurring across the country in the past 12 years, including nine by the NTA itself since it was formed in 2017. Even the most talented and hardworking students find themselves failing simply because the authorities are choosing to reap profits from the examination system without facing any significant consequences for their criminality.

The third issue is the difficulty of succeeding in India’s education system. High-quality, well-paid job opportunities after graduation are a rarity today, partly due to the growing monopolisation of the economy. Unemployment rates for our young graduates have been consistently high, averaging about 40% in the last few years. Competition for the remaining few jobs is intense, and our students have never been more ill-equipped to compete for them. The appointment of feckless Vice-Chancellors chosen for their partisan loyalty, and the consequent recruitment of politically connected but unqualified faculty, has created a crisis in teaching in our public universities. At a time when skill requirements in the workplace have become far more challenging, India’s higher education system has remained bound to obsolete systems and politically motivated curricular changes, dangerously out of touch with evolving methods and standards, and particularly unable to keep pace with the Artificial Intelligence-enabled world. Students are confronted with trying to succeed in an increasingly demanding system for which they are far from adequately resourced.

The education system is therefore increasingly expensive, prone to corruption, and difficult to succeed in. But the last nail in the coffin has been the Modi government’s consistent and conscious policy of evading accountability and avoiding good-faith conversations on education. It deliberately cleared the National Education Policy 2020 without seeking consensus or subjecting it to parliamentary deliberations. The NTA itself was never brought to Parliament and remains a society that was set up by the Union Cabinet without any accountability mechanisms. The Education Minister infamously displayed his own contempt for accountability by publicly dismissing the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education’s recommendations to strengthen the NTA, simply because it had members of the Opposition in it. His unwillingness to resign from office despite these monumental failures has only further inflamed public opinion.

The roots of protest

The student protests are a natural consequence of these interrelated forces: today’s bleak education landscape, which evokes only hopelessness, and the Modi government’s trademark arrogance and unwillingness to be accountable or constructive. The brutality perpetrated by the police personnel functioning under the direct authority of the Union Home Minister on student protesters is hardly unprecedented for this regime. We all remember vividly how armed policemen and paramilitary forces savaged university campuses during the Citizenship (Amendment) Act-National Register of Citizens protests in 2020. The unacceptable excesses against India’s women wrestlers can never be erased from our memories.

The Modi government has not just degraded India’s education landscape but has also made a habit of acting with utter impunity, supreme self-delusion, and abject insensitivity. India’s students have called the Modi regime’s bluff. It is our moral, political, and constitutional duty to stand with them and safeguard their future.

Sonia Gandhi is the Chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party