Gen Z: Nation Builders or Political Pawns?

If Dipke, Saurav and company are truly representative of Gen Z, then there is reason to worry about the direction in which the country is headed. One can only hope that they represent a vocal section of their generation rather than the generation as a whole.

The years from one’s twenties through one’s thirties are among the most energetic and productive years of adult life. Ideally, that energy should find expression in education, entrepreneurship, professional excellence, innovation, institution-building and other forms of constructive nation-building. Political engagement, too, is an important part of citizenship. But there is a difference between political participation and allowing oneself to become a pawn in larger political games. When youthful energy is repeatedly dissipated in sloganeering, confrontation and disruptive agitation, one has to ask who ultimately benefits from it.

Indian history offers abundant evidence of what youthful energy can accomplish when it is attached to a larger purpose. The freedom struggle itself was powered by the young. Bhagat Singh was only 23 when he was executed; Chandrashekhar Azad was 24 when he died. Khudiram Bose was barely 18 when he went to the gallows. Subhas Chandra Bose was still in his twenties when he resigned from the Indian Civil Service, choosing instead the path of the freedom movement. Their methods and political philosophies differed, and history may debate some of their choices, but there can be little doubt about the intensity of their commitment to something larger than themselves. They did not regard youth merely as a season for personal advancement; they saw it as a time for service and sacrifice.

Nation-building after Independence has taken less dramatic but equally important forms. Generations of young Indians have entered laboratories, universities, factories, farms, the armed forces, civil services and businesses and helped transform a poor, independent country into a major economy and technological power. India’s achievements in space, information technology, pharmaceuticals, engineering and entrepreneurship have depended heavily on scientists, engineers and professionals doing some of their most imaginative work while still young. Today, a new generation is building start-ups, developing technology, creating employment, competing and finding solutions in fields ranging from digital payments and renewable energy to biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Nor must nation-building always involve heroic sacrifice or spectacular innovation. A young teacher working conscientiously in a remote school, a doctor serving an underserved community, an entrepreneur creating twenty honest jobs, an engineer solving a local problem, or a civil servant improving the delivery of a public service may contribute more enduringly to the country than someone who commands a television camera or a crowd.

That is the standard against which today’s youthful activism should be judged. Anger can awaken a society and protest can correct injustice, but neither is an achievement by itself. The real test is what remains after the slogans have faded: stronger institutions, greater opportunity, better governance and a country more capable than the one this generation inherited.

This is not to suggest that the grievances being raised are necessarily without merit. The paper-leak issue, for instance, is a serious problem. Competitive examinations affect the futures of many young people, and any leakage, manipulation or corruption surrounding them strikes at public confidence in the fairness of the system. Those responsible should be identified and held accountable, loopholes must be closed, and safeguards should be put in place to prevent recurrence. Young people have every right to demand such action, and peaceful protest is a legitimate democratic means of applying pressure when institutions appear unresponsive.

But acknowledging the legitimacy of a grievance does not require endorsing every method adopted in pursuing it. Bringing normal life to a halt, inconveniencing millions of people, damaging economic activity or turning every grievance into an exercise in political paralysis cannot become the default method of seeking redress. A democracy needs protest, but it also needs proportionality, responsibility and respect for the rights of citizens who are not participating in that protest.

There is also a larger question that young political activists should ask themselves: are they advancing a cause, or merely advancing somebody else’s political strategy? Political parties and interest groups have always sought to harness youthful anger because young people provide enthusiasm, numbers and visibility. The danger arises when legitimate frustration is converted into permanent mobilisation, with slogans replacing engagement with policy and solutions. At that point, the original issue can become secondary to the political spectacle surrounding it.

Of course, the opposite argument deserves consideration. Young citizens should not be told that nation-building means remaining silent, concentrating only on their careers and leaving politics to an older generation. Challenging corruption, administrative incompetence and institutional failure can itself be an act of nation-building. Many important democratic reforms have emerged precisely because young people refused to accept the status quo. The real question, therefore, is not whether Gen Z should be politically active, but what kind of political culture it chooses to create.

If Dipke, Saurav and their associates want to speak for their generation, their credibility will depend on whether they can move beyond agitation towards constructive solutions. They should be demanding transparent investigations, institutional reforms, stronger examination safeguards, accountability for wrongdoing and measurable timelines for implementation. That would convert anger into a programme of reform.

If, on the other hand, disruption becomes an end in itself—or if legitimate grievances are merely being used as instruments in a political contest—then the concern becomes much more serious. A generation with potential risks spending its most productive energies fighting battles designed by others.

Gen Z has every right to be impatient with a system that fails it. But impatience is most powerful when coupled with judgment, discipline and a sense of purpose. The country needs its young people to question authority and demand accountability. It also needs them to build, create, innovate and strengthen institutions. Protest and nation-building need not be opposites; at their best, responsible protest should be one of the instruments through which nation-building takes place. 

An earlier version of the article was published in Times Of India Blogs

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Rahul Gandhi Gen Z and Women: Can Congress Turn Applause Into Trust?

Whoever advised Rahul Gandhi to concentrate on two electoral constituencies—India’s Gen Z, estimated at around 290 million, and women, roughly half of an electorate approaching one billion—understood electoral arithmetic. But identifying a constituency is easier than convincing it that one possesses the record, ideas to advance its interests. 

For young Indians, the obvious question is historical. Congress governed India for much of the period since Independence. What did it accomplish during those decades? Where it fell short, why could it not do more when it possessed time and power?

India’s technological transformation began before 2014, of course, but it gained considerably greater momentum after 2014. Earlier governments helped build scientific institutions, telecommunications networks, the space programme, and the information-technology foundations on which contemporary India stands. That contribution should be acknowledged. Yet the past twelve years have also witnessed an unmistakable acceleration in digital infrastructure, payments, connectivity, startups, entrepreneurship, and technology-driven public services. 

Whether this transformation has produced enough employment for India’s youth population is a legitimate question, and Rahul is entitled to ask it. But criticism creates a reciprocal obligation: Congress must explain why young voters should believe its prescriptions will produce better results than those of the government it seeks to replace. 

A country that often appeared hesitant about asserting its interests now seeks a larger economic, technological, and strategic role internationally. One may debate individual policies, but the change in national self-perception is difficult to miss. 

Rahul’s appeal to women takes a different route. He has invoked the Manusmriti as a symbol of historical hierarchy and restrictions on women, contrasting it with constitutional equality. Politically, the device is effective: an ancient Hindu text becomes shorthand for inherited injustice. 

But this approach creates a contradiction. 

If Rahul’s concern is genuinely the emancipation and equal citizenship of Indian women, why is his rhetoric framed so heavily through a Hindu textual and social lens? Indian womanhood is not synonymous with Hindu womanhood. Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and other women are citizens, and their rights deserve the same constitutional scrutiny. 

This becomes particularly important in relation to Muslim women. Some religious and customary practices can raise questions concerning autonomy, gender equality, and family rights. If Rahul is prepared to challenge perceived patriarchy within Hindu tradition, consistency requires equal willingness to discuss restrictions or inequalities wherever they occur, irrespective of religion. 

Rahul’s argument on women’s empowerment also leaves another contentious area largely untouched: allegations surrounding coercive or deceptive interfaith relationships, often described politically as “love jihad.” The expression is frequently dismissed as a right-wing construct, but concerns about conversion, deception and the vulnerability of women in interfaith relationships did not originate solely in contemporary BJP politics; Christian organisations in Kerala, including sections of the Catholic Church, raised such concerns more than a decade ago, and related matters reached the Kerala High Court around 2009. More recently, allegations involving workplaces, including claims connected with TCS, Nashik, have circulated and deserve to be judged on verified evidence rather than political labels. The essential principle should be straightforward: an adult woman has an absolute right to choose her partner irrespective of religion, but that freedom is meaningful only when her choice is informed and free from fraud, coercion or intimidation. If Rahul’s case is genuinely about women’s autonomy, he should be prepared to defend that autonomy consistently—whether the alleged threat comes from ancient social convention, modern family pressure, religious orthodoxy or individual deception. Empowerment cannot be selective: neither community sensitivities nor partisan convenience should determine which woman’s freedom is worth defending. 

The same principle of equal rights and equal protection brings us inevitably to the more fundamental question of a Uniform Civil Code, on which Rahul’s rhetoric about women’s emancipation appears considerably less emphatic.

A UCC is contentious. Objections concern religious freedom, cultural autonomy, minority protections, and the possibility that “uniformity” could become merely another name for majoritarian practice. Those objections deserve answers. A badly conceived UCC could replace pluralism with coercive standardisation. 

But disagreement over the solution cannot justify avoiding the underlying problem. Family law governs some of the most consequential relationships in human life. It addresses six areas that shape freedom: marriage, including the legal age of marriage; divorce; maintenance; inheritance; succession; and adoption. 

They determine when and whom a person may marry, how a marriage may be dissolved, what financial protection follows separation, whether sons and daughters enjoy comparable property rights, how family wealth passes between generations, and who may legally adopt a child. 

If equality is the principle, why should its application depend upon the citizen’s religion? 

This is where repeated invocation of Manusmriti risks appearing selective. Few Indians have read the English translation—which according to some scholars was not true to the original—and fewer still have read it in the original. Its textual history, interpretation, and relationship with the varied practices of Indian society cannot honestly be compressed into a campaign slogan.

The works of Robert Caldwell, Max Müller and, in a different period and genre, Katherine Mayo have generated arguments about the intersection of scholarship, missionary interests, colonial classification, and imperial politics. One need not attribute identical motives to these different figures to recognise that translation and classification are not politically neutral. Colonial categories sometimes acquired lives far beyond their authors and contributed to divisions later treated as timeless realities. The old imperial principle of divide et impera—divide and rule—therefore remains relevant to debates about how colonial knowledge was constructed and used. 

In both Gen Z and women, Rahul has found subjects possessing considerable emotional force. They can produce applause at meetings. But applause at a rally and reflection in the privacy of the voting booth are different things. 

Millions of Indian women are challenging inherited restrictions through education, employment, banking, self-help groups, entrepreneurship, property ownership, and political participation. Government schemes have attempted to strengthen this economic agency. Their effectiveness can certainly be debated, and inequalities, safety concerns, and employment barriers remain. Nevertheless, women are not waiting for a politician to announce their emancipation. 

Economic independence changes the balance of choices within families and communities. A woman with education, income, credit, property rights, and control over her finances possesses practical freedoms that rhetoric alone cannot confer. 

That is Rahul Gandhi’s central difficulty. Young Indians do not need to be taught ambition, and Indian women do not need instruction in equality. Both can distinguish recognition of their grievances from a credible programme for resolving them. 

Rahul may have identified the right constituencies. He has yet to answer the harder question: why him, and why Congress? 

For Gen Z, naming unemployment and inequality is not an economic programme. For women, invoking Manusmriti is not a philosophy of equal citizenship. If equality is truly the principle, it must extend consistently across religions, communities, and personal laws, including a debate over a common civil framework. 

That matters in a democracy as diverse as India. 

Mobilising a constituency requires an emotion that resonates. Earning its confidence requires a record, consistency, and a workable programme. When the slogans fade, voters ask simpler questions: who delivered, who failed, and whom can they trust to deliver next? 

Selective reform risks becoming political expediency; genuine equality demands the harder principle that a woman’s fundamental civil rights cannot depend upon the faith she inherits. 

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Equality in Principle, Division in Practice

How the politics of identity overwhelms the ideal of citizenship

A recent lament on social media was that the NCERT had removed a lesson on the French Revolution from the Class IX social science textbook. It subsequently transpired that the lesson had merely migrated from Class IX to Class X. The episode merely illustrated, yet again, that social media can be both an instrument of education and an instrument of disinformation. But that is another matter.

The anxiety over the alleged deletion was understandable. The French Revolution occupies a special place in the political imagination of democracies because it popularised the immortal trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity. Schoolchildren are expected to imbibe these values early because democratic societies cannot survive for long if citizens cease to believe in them.

The more interesting question, however, is whether independent India ever seriously intended to pursue equality and fraternity in the first place.

For over seven decades politicians across the ideological spectrum have proclaimed their commitment to an equitable social order. Every election manifesto contains solemn references to social justice, inclusive growth and empowerment of the marginalised. Yet the practical politics of independent India appears to have moved steadily in the opposite direction.

In order to cultivate vote banks politicians continuously seek reservations and more reservations for one group or another. Demands for fresh quotas emerge with remarkable regularity. Communities that spent decades arguing for social advancement now find themselves compelled to demonstrate backwardness. Political success increasingly depends not upon convincing citizens that they are equal participants in a common enterprise, but upon persuading them that they belong to separate and competing categories.

The paradox becomes sharper when one observes demands for inclusion from castes belonging to religions whose central theological proposition is that all believers are equal before God. Indeed, equality has frequently been advanced as one of the moral arguments for conversion from the Hindu fold. Yet electoral politics appears capable of transforming even communities founded on egalitarian doctrines into claimants for separate political recognition.

The logic of politics has proved stronger than the language of theology.

The responsibility for this development cannot be placed entirely upon politicians. Politicians merely harvest crops that others help sow. The more uncomfortable question concerns the role of India's public intellectuals.

How often does one encounter a social scientist, historian, journalist or television commentator arguing that the endless multiplication of reservations may perpetuate precisely those identities that an equitable society should gradually render irrelevant? Such voices, if they exist, are remarkably difficult to find.

Instead, analyses are largely confined to explaining which caste equations favour which political party and why. The euphemisms are fascinating. Caste calculations become "caste engineering" or "social engineering". Electoral mobilisation along communal lines becomes "coalition building". Politicians who successfully assemble combinations of mutually suspicious groups are complimented for their strategic brilliance.

Engineering, after all, was once associated with building bridges. In modern Indian politics it increasingly appears to consist of constructing compartments.

The framers of the Constitution certainly envisaged a different destination. In a celebrated judgement delivered in 1954, the Supreme Court expressed the fervent hope that the Constitution would create:

"a new order with its new allegiance springing from the same source for all, grounded on the same basis: the sovereign will of the peoples of India with no class, no caste, no race, no creed, no distinction, no reservation."

The Court, one suspects, was carried away by its own eloquence. The decades that followed witnessed not the gradual disappearance of these distinctions but their institutional consolidation.

Reservations introduced as temporary correctives acquired a permanence that few had anticipated. The debate shifted from whether such distinctions should eventually disappear to how many additional categories ought to be included within them.

Sociologist André Béteille observed that while equality of opportunity strengthens citizenship, equality based upon permanent group identities may weaken it. The observation rarely receives the attention it deserves.

An equitable society requires citizens to think of themselves primarily as citizens.

This does not imply that caste, religion, language or region should disappear from private life. Every society contains multiple identities and affiliations. The problem arises when these become the principal organising principles of public life and political competition.

Once every election becomes an exercise in demographic arithmetic, every census becomes politically charged and every public policy becomes a negotiation among organised groups. Equality before the law gradually gives way to equality of bargaining power.

The French historian and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville warned that democratic societies possess an irresistible passion for equality, but not always for liberty or excellence. India appears to have developed a variation of that tendency: a passion for equality among groups accompanied by an extraordinary indifference to equality among citizens.

The distinction is not trivial.

A society organised around groups inevitably incentivises individuals to think and act through the prism of group interests. Victimhood acquires political value. Backwardness becomes a resource to be protected rather than a condition to be overcome. Advancement creates anxiety because prosperity may threaten eligibility for state benefits.

No society can indefinitely pursue equality by rewarding the preservation of inequality.

Edmund Burke warned his electors in Bristol in 1780 that he would not sacrifice his judgement to popular demands, declaring that he acted according to "the instructions of truth and nature" rather than the instructions of opinion. Such intellectual courage is in short supply in contemporary India.

Politicians have little incentive to question a strategy that repeatedly delivers electoral victories. Public intellectuals, who ought to challenge convenient orthodoxies, often limit themselves to explaining electoral behaviour rather than examining its moral consequences.

Thus the cycle perpetuates itself.

India continues to invoke equality as an aspiration, fraternity as a constitutional virtue and social justice as a national objective. Yet our political vocabulary, our institutional incentives and our public discourse frequently move in the opposite direction.

Perhaps the equitable society appears eternally unreachable not because human beings are incapable of creating one, but because we continue to reward almost every behaviour that prevents its emergence.

Key words: Identity Politics in India – Reservation Politics in India – Caste Politics in India – Equality and Citizenship – Citizenship versus Identity Politics – Equality Before Law

An earlier version of the article was published in The Times of India Blogs.

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