Let me first clarify that I am not making a value judgement here. Nor am I pushing forward an argument that students of yesterday were avid readers, while students of the present time are an anti-knowledge lot.

To make such a sweeping generalisation, one would need to conduct a scientific study and take into consideration multiple factors. On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, I simply want to share my own experience—something that has been troubling my mind.

One of the first major signs of the decline of reading culture is the disappearance of shops and stalls selling books, magazines, and newspapers. Even the Xerox shops around colleges and universities are now busy printing and photocopying documents to be submitted to the administration, rather than essays, articles, or relevant portions of books and magazines.

Even newspaper hawkers are hardly visible, not only around colleges in semi-rural areas but also at those located in district headquarters and cities. Around college and university campuses, what one mostly sees is the mushrooming growth of fast-food kiosks. Since the administrations are often unable to run the canteens properly, students have little choice but to go outside and eat junk food.

Inside the campus, library culture is also on the decline. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of library staff. Most of the library staff are contractual workers who are poorly paid. As a result, they often do not work there with a sense of commitment. Even among those who are working, many are not trained in library science. Nor are they sensitized to the needs of readers. The reading hall is also poorly maintained. The seating arrangements and lighting are inadequate. The books are not properly arranged, making it difficult for readers to access them.

However, the growing corruption within the publishing world has also infected our campuses. As a result, a large portion of the books purchased in recent years are simply garbage. Even in the journal sections, substandard journals are purchased while quality journals are often ignored. Everywhere, there are cuts in the budget, and even when money is spent, it is rarely spent on the welfare of students or the promotion of genuine academic activity.

The administration is happy to display this garbage on the shelves of the library in return for hefty kickbacks, while caring little about valuable books that are damaged by pests or due to neglect.

I do not know much about the complex rules and norms that determine how colleges and universities are ranked among the top institutes by government agencies. But my yardstick for judging whether a college or university is academically vibrant is very simple. Whenever I visit a new academic institution, I first try to visit its library because a well-attended library is a sign of a healthy academic environment.

While no bhajan (devotion) is possible without bhojan (food), I next visit the canteen inside the academic premises. A canteen not only provides food but also creates a space for interaction, debate, and discussion. I am sad to say that most universities and colleges cannot boast of having such a happening place. If there are a few such eateries, they are highly commercialised, serving mostly fast food. While the food may be ‘hot’ and ‘spicy’, the public culture there is dull and lifeless.

The shrinking democratic space is no less responsible for the declining reading culture. The administration is becoming more authoritarian day by day. The regime of security and surveillance is intensifying with each passing day. Even teachers often maintain a sense of superiority. Most teachers favour students who act meekly before them, touch their feet, and flatter them at every opportunity.

The caste network is also deeply pernicious on campuses. It is not a coincidence that the students or research scholars favoured by a teacher are often those who belong to his caste. While our teachers project themselves as the biggest “patriots” in public life, in their personal lives they often indulge in what can only be described as anti-national behaviour by practising caste-based discrimination.

Worse still, our educational campuses are not adequately sensitised to the needs and concerns of female students, religious minorities, and differently-abled people. The syllabus has been framed to glorify the past rather than to meet the needs of students in the present. Students from marginalised sections often find it difficult to relate to the course structure and feel alienated from the academic environment. The rise of majoritarianism and intolerance, along with the display of religiosity on campuses, has further alienated minorities.

Discussions and jokes in staff rooms and classrooms are often anti-women. The rampant misogyny prevalent on campuses makes women feel unsafe. Parents, too, often seize this opportunity to further control the freedom of their daughters.

The lack of student activism and the disappearance of debating and seminar culture are among the major reasons why students do not feel motivated to read. Often, student organisations are banned on campuses by the administration on the grounds that they are involved in violence. It is true that some student bodies have been involved in violent activities, and no one is arguing that they should not be held accountable for their misdeeds. But one also needs to recognise that banning student politics is not the solution to violence. Even elections are sometimes marred by violence, but no one argues that elections should be abolished.

Even the seminars held within campuses often fail to achieve their intended purpose. This has much to do with the relationship between funding agencies and the ideologies they seek to impose on the organisers. Seminars have now turned into occasions to facilitate politicians in power and echo the political lines of the establishment, without critically examining whether such policies are indeed framed in the public interest or merely serve vested interests. Since students and researchers are required to produce certificates of participation, they are often more concerned with obtaining the certificate and filling the chairs in the audience than with participating in any meaningful and fruitful discussion.

It is not only the academic spaces that are responsible; parents, too, often impose their own will on their children. We hardly find parents who facilitate their children in pursuing the goals of their choice. Most are in a hurry to see their children settle into high-salaried and secure jobs. Both at home and in our society, a person is often judged “successful” on the basis of how much wealth they have amassed, how trendy their clothes are, and how luxurious a car they drive.

The anti-intellectual environment at homes get extended into our academic spaces. The teachers hardly read. They have forgotten that a good teacher is the one who is first a student. The advancement in career is the bigger concern for the teachers rather than acting as the source of knowledge. They hardly speak on the pressing political issues because they want to remain in the good book of the establishment.

Even if our Constitution gives every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of speech, and the highest court of the country has held that dissent and criticism are integral parts of democracy, a large section of teachers have imposed self-censorship on themselves. They write only when they need papers for promotion, and most of these papers are poorly written and make little sense. Yet they get published as “research papers” because the authors pay publishers huge amounts of money.

Even in the staff room, teachers hardly discuss academic issues. The favourite gossip among male teachers is often about the clothes of their female colleagues, accompanied by rumours about their personal lives and sexual relationships. Worse still, many teachers are excessively flattering towards their seniors while being rude and dismissive towards their students.

All these factors contribute negatively to the lives of our young students. The smarter among them have come to realise that knowledge is not the first criterion for getting jobs in academia. That is why they spend a large amount of their energy flattering their teachers and developing networks with those in the administration and politics. Sensing that joining the political outfits of the ruling party is a more secure way of getting jobs, they are often too busy attending sectarian political programmes rather than spending time in the classroom and library.

Since a large number of students hardly read, they are unable to write. Whenever they turn up to submit their assignments, their writings are often copied and pasted from the internet. These are some of the more disturbing trends that I have noticed while working as a teacher. I do not know how these issues can be addressed. But if India has to excel in the field of knowledge and ensure that its democracy remains meaningful, policymakers cannot afford to ignore these questions.

(Dr Abhay Kumar teaches Political Science. His recently published book is Muslim Personal Law: Definitions, Sources and Contestations (Manohar, 2026). Email: debatingissues@gmail.com)

The post Why are reading habits among Indian students declining? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Bhardwaj was traced to Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh and detained by a Delhi Police Crime Branch team on September 4 afternoon, hours after representatives of the CJP, Nishu Azad, Congress workers and MPs Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav gathered at the police station demanding action. The detention followed a FIR and police assurance to the protesting delegation that Bhardwaj would be arrested within 72 hours. He was detained by UP police.

Finally, Delhi Police have registered an FIR against the Sanghi goon and said he will be arrested within 72 hours.

It took two months and a protest just to get an FIR registered for a hate crime that happened right in front of the police.

POLICE DEPARTMENT THIK KARO!

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) September 4, 2026

#Announcement

From Day 1, we have not let any student or protester fight this battle alone.

Nishu’s father Sanjay ji’s case is harrowing. Gang members like Swatantra Bhardwaj are openly flaunting that they attempted murder on Sanjay ji who was simply peacefully protesting…

— Saurav Das (@SauravDassss) September 3, 2026

According to The Indian Express, the police team traced Bhardwaj to Bulandshahr after he travelled there earlier in the day. The Times of India reported that he had stayed at a local resident’s house in Naithla village and left on a motorcycle after his presence became known. Police subsequently tracked him down and took him into custody. The detention came after Bhardwaj himself appeared in a widely circulated podcast discussing the alleged assault and claiming that political connections had helped him avoid jail.

The case began at a CJP protest at Jantar Mantar

The controversy began during a CJP protest at Jantar Mantar, where Nishu Azad, then a 14-year-old student protester, was participating. Her father, Sanjay Kumar, was at the protest site when a confrontation allegedly broke out. According to the FIR-based account reported in the material provided, Kumar was recording the proceedings on his phone when he was questioned by a young man about making a video. An argument followed, after which two or three people allegedly joined in and assaulted him. Kumar alleged that he was punched on the head and struck with a kada or bracelet-like object.

He was taken to RML Hospital for treatment. The medical record referred to two deep wounds on his head. Lawyer Feroz Gama, who said he witnessed the incident, told The Indian Express that he took Kumar to hospital and that Kumar received stitches for his injuries. The precise nature of the injuries subsequently became one of the central points of dispute in the case.

While Kumar’s supporters and CJP described the assault as serious, Delhi Police said the injuries were simple in nature. Police rejected claims that Kumar had suffered a skull fracture and said that the injury was caused during a scuffle involving the kada worn by one of the accused, as reported by The Indian Express.

Detailed reports on brute force used by police on the protestors may be read here, here, here and here.

Bhardwaj was initially detained—but not arrested

The first police response to the alleged assault became one of the most troubling aspects of the case. Delhi Police said Swatantra Bhardwaj and another accused, Suraj Kumar, were detained at the protest site, questioned and served notices. But after that, they were not arrested and were allowed to remain out of custody while the case proceeded.

For Nishu Azad’s family and CJP, that was not an adequate response to an alleged assault that had left her father with serious head injuries. The question they raised was straightforward: if the accused had been identified and detained at the scene, why was there no immediate custodial action? And why did the initial FIR omit the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act despite the family’s demand that the caste dimension of the alleged attack be formally recognised?

देखिए, स्वतंत्र भारद्वाज अपना बचाव इस तरह कर रहे थे पापा के सर पर कड़ा मरते हुए सेल्फ डिफेंस कर रहे हैं स्वतंत्र.. pic.twitter.com/DkB6geSsHl

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 4, 2026

A podcast puts the case back in the spotlight

The case returned to the headlines after excerpts from a lengthy podcast featuring Bhardwaj began circulating widely. In the interview, Bhardwaj appeared to speak about the confrontation with Sanjay Kumar and claimed that he had “cracked” his skull. He also spoke about how he had not been jailed after the incident. Notably, he invoked the names of political figures while describing his connections. Bhardwaj referred to Delhi minister Kapil Mishra and Union minister Chirag Paswan as “elder brothers” and also invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi while speaking about his political support.

वीडियो में साफ़ सुन सकते हैं कि स्वतंत्र भारद्वाज खुद अपने किए की बात कबूल कर रहा है। दिल्ली पुलिस को इससे ज्यादा क्या सबूत चाहिए? अब कानून के तहत सख्त कार्रवाई होनी चाहिए।@DelhiPolice @PSParliamentSt @ChandrashekharAzad @RahulGandhi#स्वतंत्रभारद्वाज #DelhiPolice #Justice pic.twitter.com/Zn9dQnjSu4

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 5, 2026

When demands for his arrest started being made, Bhardwaj later disputed his own words. He claimed that he had acted in self-defence after being surrounded by a group of people and said his references to political leaders were sarcastic. Delhi Police, too, rejected allegations that political pressure had prevented his arrest. But the video fundamentally changed the public conversation around the case.

The allegations were no longer based only on what the victim, witnesses or protesters said had happened. The accused himself had publicly discussed the confrontation and his alleged political connections, creating a fresh basis for demands that the police revisit the matter.

CJP takes the issue back to the police station

CJP responded by organising a fresh protest outside the Parliament Street police station. The organisation’s representatives Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, along with supporters, went to the police station demanding Bhardwaj’s arrest and stronger charges. CJP had been involved from the beginning because the alleged assault took place during its protest. The organisation’s campaign subsequently became the mechanism through which the demand for police action was kept alive after the initial detention and release of the accused.

CJP demanded the addition of provisions relating to attempt to murder, criminal intimidation and the SC/ST Act. It also raised the issue of threats and online abuse directed at Nishu following the controversy. The protest brought Nishu and her father back to the police station as well.

@Cockroachisback @SauravDassss @AshutoshRanka A special thank you to you both as well for providing us with such strong and capable lawyers who are working hard to make our case as strong as possible. Me and my father truly appreciate your support…

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 4, 2026

Congress joins Nishu and CJP

The mobilisation soon widened beyond CJP. Indian Youth Congress Delhi president Akshay Lakra joined Nishu at the police station and demanded action against Bhardwaj. Congress also provided legal assistance. According to the reports, the AICC legal department deputed a team of lawyers led by Rishabh Ranjan to assist Nishu and her family with the matter. The legal intervention focused not only on the assault case but also on the threats allegedly directed at Nishu after the incident.

मेरे बुरे वक़्त में मुझे जान से मारने की धमकी मिल रही थी उस समय मेरे साथ एवेंजर्स की तरह साथ देने वाले एडवोकेट्स, उनकी पूरी टीम को धन्यवाद
Sr Adv & Member of Parliament Shri @DrAMSinghvi Sir & AICC Law Dept
Ayesha, @Lawyermdkhan @omarhoda46@rishav_ranjan18 @akshaylakra17 & ors

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 5, 2026

मुझे आशा नहीं थी कि @RahulGandhi जी की सच में ट्वीट करेंगे अब मुझे राहुल गांधी जी जैसे बड़े नेता का साथ मिल चुका है अब मुझे न्याय मिल कर रहेगा और स्वतंत्र भारद्वाज जेल जाकर रहेंगे.. https://t.co/t055GHxOAY

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 3, 2026

This became an increasingly important part of the case because Nishu said she had faced rape threats, abuse and online harassment, including the circulation of objectionable or morphed images. She said the harassment had affected her education and that she had stopped attending school for several weeks.

Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav join the protest

The protest then drew two opposition MPs. Chandrashekhar Azad, Nagina MP and president of the Azad Samaj Party, reached Parliament Street police station and joined the delegation. He questioned why Bhardwaj had not been arrested despite the video in which he appeared to discuss the alleged assault. Azad also raised the threats allegedly directed at Nishu, including threats of rape, acid attack and death.

मेरे @BhimArmyChief बड़े भाई ने जिस तरह से मेरा हाथ पकड़ा है ना हमें उससे कोई मतलब नहीं है कि मेरे बड़े भाई मेरे साथ है, आखिरी दम तक साथ खड़े है.. pic.twitter.com/CxYLf6k7qy

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 4, 2026

Pappu Yadav, the Independent MP from Purnia, subsequently joined the protesters and sat with them outside the police station. He spoke about violence against women and Dalits and held up the Constitution while demanding action. Their involvement marked a significant expansion of the mobilisation: what had begun as CJP’s campaign over an alleged assault during its protest was now being taken up directly by elected representatives.

बीजेपी का आतंकी स्वतंत्र भारद्वाज को बंदी
बनाने से ही न्याय नहीं होगा बल्कि, उसे स्पीडी
ट्रायल से उम्र क़ैद भी हो!

वहीं उसे बीजेपी सरकार में किस-किस का
संरक्षण प्राप्त है, गृह मंत्री अमित शाह समेत
सबकी जांच होकर उन पर कठोर कार्रवाई हो! pic.twitter.com/gN2tygKwrl

— Rajesh Ranjan Pappu Yadav (@pappuyadavjapl) September 4, 2026

The New Indian Express reported that the CJP delegation, joined by Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav, demanded both the attempt-to-murder and SC/ST Act provisions and an FIR over the threats allegedly made against Nishu.

Police add the SC/ST Act and other provisions

After negotiations at the police station, Delhi Police agreed to add provisions under the SC/ST Act to the case. The police also added provisions relating to criminal intimidation and other offences under the BNS. The question of attempt to murder was more complicated. Police indicated that the applicability of the provision would have to be assessed in light of the medical evidence and investigation into the nature of Kumar’s injuries. This was an important shift from the police’s initial position.

The police had earlier described Kumar’s injury as simple and rejected claims of a skull fracture. After the renewed protest, however, the FIR was expanded to include the SC/ST Act and additional criminal provisions.

A separate FIR was also registered after Nishu complained about the threats and online harassment she had allegedly received. The new case invoked provisions of the POCSO Act, along with BNS provisions and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act.

Nishu asks for protection

As the protest continued, Nishu also raised concerns about her own safety. She said she did not know when or where she could be attacked and asked for protection for herself and her family. Hindustan Times reported her concern that she was living under a continuing threat after the controversy surrounding the assault and the subsequent online abuse.

Her position became an important part of the renewed campaign because the case had by then moved beyond the alleged assault on her father. It had expanded into allegations of intimidation and sexual threats against a teenage protester herself.

It was at this stage that Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, publicly intervened. Nishu had appealed to Gandhi for support, saying that she had lost faith in the police response. Gandhi responded publicly, assuring her that she should not panic and that he stood with her. He questioned why Bhardwaj remained free despite the statements attributed to him in the viral video.

निशु, घबराने की ज़रूरत नहीं है। मैं तुम्हारे साथ हूँ।

साफ है कि तुम्हें इसलिए निशाना बनाया गया क्योंकि तुम अपने समुदाय और छात्रों के हक़ की आवाज़ उठाती हो।

अमित शाह की दिल्ली पुलिस एक तरफ़ छात्रों के साथ अमानवीय बर्बरता करती है। दूसरी तरफ़ एक दलित लड़की के पिता का सिर फोड़ने… https://t.co/m1mgH655hw

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 3, 2026

Gandhi also directly questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah about the alleged political protection claimed by Bhardwaj. His intervention brought the case substantially greater national political attention.

Support also came from across political parties, with the Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress questioning the alleged political protection being claimed by Bhardwaj.

आज कौशांबी के समाजवादी पार्टी सांसद @Pushpendra_MP_ जी से बात हुई। उन्होंने हर संभव साथ देने की बात कही, जिसके लिए उनका हृदय से बहुत-बहुत धन्यवाद। pic.twitter.com/TMG5L25ljW

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 5, 2026

@RahulGandhi @BhimArmyChief @yadavakhilesh @ArvindKejriwal @CJP_for_India
Thankk uuu so muchh pic.twitter.com/bY5c3y1fvf

— Nishu Aazad (@Nishuazad11) September 3, 2026

Chirag Paswan files his own complaint

The political claims made by Bhardwaj also prompted a response from one of the people he had named. Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan filed a complaint with the Parliament Street police against Bhardwaj, objecting to the alleged misuse of his name.

As reported by The Hindu, Paswan’s complaint sought an FIR and strict action against Bhardwaj and asked that it be formally recorded that neither Paswan nor the LJP (Ram Vilas) had any connection with him or with the incident. Paswan said that Bhardwaj had falsely invoked his name to create an impression of political protection and called for an impartial investigation.

Have you observed this disturbing pattern? The more you abuse Muslims, target Dalits, spew hatred make derogatory remarks about a community and sexualize women, the more access you seem to get to the top leaders of a particular ideology. Unfortunately, Such conduct is rewarded… https://t.co/TaCINb4Nlm pic.twitter.com/HxpCShegug

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) September 3, 2026

Police trace him to Bulandshahr

While the political and public pressure was mounting in Delhi, police began looking for Bhardwaj. He had travelled to Bulandshahr, where reports said he stayed with a local resident in Naithla village.

According to India Today, Bhardwaj fled the village after police began looking for him. The Times of India reported that he left on a motorcycle after media attention around his presence increased. Police teams eventually traced him and detained him.

The Indian Express reported that Crime Branch officers took him into custody at around 2 pm on Friday. The arrest/detention therefore came on the same day as the CJP-led mobilisation at Parliament Street.

Related:

Maharashtra’s schools are struggling to survive as students protest, infrastructure crumbles and Marathi-medium institutions disappear

After NEET protests ended, the battle moved online: Women protesters face threats, doxing and criminalisation

Bihar: Not just Delhi, Patna, Siwan too saw brute police violence against demonstrating students: PUCL

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Water Cannons Instead of Answers: Bihar’s recruitment crisis and the state’s crackdown on protest

Amnesty Investigation finds unlawful and deadly force against CJP-led protesters in Delhi and Siwan

The Supreme Court’s Uneasy Middle Path on Protest Policing

Governments begin rolling back cases against protesters, but questions over violence, arrests and accountability remain

July 2026: A dissent that was brutally put down, a crackdown after the protest ended

The post Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It was hardly two weeks since Jason Arday’s ordeal, which resulted in his suicide- I am rather inclined to term it systemic murder of marginalised bodies. When another Google search, returned with the headline, another IIT student allegedly committed suicide, at what is purportedly the country’s most ‘meritocratic shop’, producing efficient docile bodies for the neoliberal industry!

The recurrence of suicides across IITs compels a question: what makes a student at an institute celebrated as a guarantor of upward economic and social mobility take their own life? Possibly, the explanation lies not within the student at all; rather, the institution itself becomes the focal lens of our inquiry.

Why are these campuses becoming deathscapes?

At dawn on a Saturday in August, a second-year M.Sc. student took his life at IIT Delhi. His suicide stirred the same question that each lost life before his has opened- Is it the institutional environment of the IITs that produces this recurrence?

Recurrence of Suicide:

According to the statistics compiled by independent trackers, drawing on partial government data, records a staggering 160 suicides across IITs within the past two decades. The recent ruling by the Central Information Commission (CIC) flagged a persistent crisis of suicides across IIT campuses. At IIT Delhi alone, eight students have died by suicide in the past two and a half years, roughly once every fourth month at this institution. Nationally, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur, the notorious ones, have been designated “concentration zones” owing to the high intensity of cases, alongside other premier institutes such as IISC Bangalore.

The rate of recurrence sprouts a question about the institutional experience of students who lost their lives. IITs as institutions invested in the fraught ideal of meritocracy, often function as competitive, toxic workplaces obsessed with productivity optimisation. The institutional environment of IIT needs to be viewed through this framework, in which intense academic pressure, coupled with social burden, creates conditions in which a student’s worth is seen as inseparable from their academic performance.

It is worth stressing that this burden isn’t evenly distributed nor does it reflect the collective institutional experience among students. The vulnerability gets compounded for students specifically hailing from marginalised social locations. Besides the relentless scholarly strain, they also carry the burden of representation- the weight of representing their community in a space that was never designed keeping them in mind. Caste, class and institution isolation intersect here, making the burden heavier. Therefore, framing this as a uniform institutional experience would inadvertently obscure those at greater risk. Each of these deaths lays bare the underlying reality of institutional negligence, the absence of robust student support systems, and the conditions students are left alone to endure. This isn’t merely an anomaly, it points to the long trend of “administrative lapses”, a refusal by universities to acknowledge these deaths as a systemic problem, and a corresponding negligence in curbing further deaths.

The Language of Evasion:

Media treatment of these suicides often frames this recurrence as a consequence of a “chain reaction”, the idea that one student’s suicide triggers suicidal ideation in another with pre-existing suicidal ideation. “Unofficially we are not supposed to discuss it amongst ourselves. Officially everyone knows, as if silence doesn’t spread just as fast, and trigger just as much”, Adarsh*, revealed an IIT student, characterising an undercurrent which runs through whisper networks. Beneath this, as an unofficial and incognito practice, students are advised to refrain from discussing suicide on campus, stemming from fear of “suicide contagion”. Though the clinical validity of this practice is questionable, the social effect of this approach does succeed in suppressing the conversation around this phenomenon, thus concomitantly aiding the institution evade confrontation. Even the administrative responses are composed in a deflecting register. Every death follows the same customary email template, under the header, “Sad news”, a performance of concern that changes nothing, while actively obscuring institutional accountability narratives. Further, the pattern of vocabulary across institutions deploying phrases such as “isolated incident”, “mental health” and “committee formed” remains consistent. This language reduces structural issues into a pathological and an individual predisposition.

Suicide cannot be adequately understood as a purely individual or psychological phenomenon. Notwithstanding the solitary nature of the act itself, the degree to which an individual experiences a sense of belonging, connectedness, and social integration constitutes as equally significant determinants. When this integration weakens, or when the society’s moral framework becomes either too rigid or too loose, a state of crisis unfolds within an individual. Institutions do not merely create rules; they actively structure an individual’s perception of the self and of success and failure. These normative rules constitute the very persona of the “successful individual”.

At the IITs, this image resonates with extraordinary intelligence, relentless competitiveness, and interminable productivity optimisation, all without exhibiting any vulnerability. A student’s failure to live up to this created image is not read as failure of the system, but as a matter of personal inadequacy. It’s framing as an individual’s inadequacy makes the pressure so effective, thereby requiring no external enforcement. The internalisation by students towards relentlessly performing and optimizing themselves, becomes both the source of pressure and its target. Academic competition curdles into self-exploitation, where any inadequacy towards meeting these high-academic standards is experienced as a moral and existential failure of the self, never as a flaw in the standard itself. Thus, the individual becomes the site of issue, their personal dejection becomes the victim, while the institution remains unquestioned.

Speaking of the recent death, when a death is coded as mental illness rather than the outcome of institutional negligence, issues such as “denial of hostel facilities”, “denied major academic project” never come close to being registered as evidence of a structural pattern. In the wider frame, explaining such a crisis through individualisation escapes scrutiny of deeper machineries such as the graded caste hierarchy and class inequality. These deaths aren’t mere idiosyncrasies; they’re better understood as failures of a system infused with institutional apathy. With regard to the structural pattern, there’s another dormant failure compounding the individualisation narrative: the absence of a standardised, consistent national database tracking students’ suicide across IITs. The existing data from the Supreme Court, Parliament, or the Ministry of Education are fragmented and mutually inconsistent, with figures either overlapping or spanning different timeframes. The very state apparatus meant to hold these institutions accountable is operating in the absence of a stable object of knowledge. This form of instability isn’t merely a clerical failure; it puts the political class in an uncomfortable position. Taken together, the individualisation narrative and the absence of reliable data reflect the practice of evasion by both the state and its institutions.

Fracturing the culture:

The culture of protest at IIT Delhi isn’t ordinary. It is highly unusual for IIT students to ruffle the administration’s feathers with this kind of agonistic confrontation, since the fear ingrained in the students here is deeply structural, not incidental. Any dissent has historically carried consequences, sometimes strained relationships with supervisors, rigged academic records, or being unofficially marked as an “unserious” student. Oftentimes, the culture of being indifferent to injustices within these institutions also emanates from the fear of getting penalised.  This suppression, and the fear of being labelled, has long dissuaded any dissent from emerging at all. The silence over this many deaths can plausibly be attributed to why these suicides became routine, rather than rupture. Yet this protest cannot be read in isolation, it also shares the wider wave of dissent witnessed across the state in recent months.  Weeks earlier, the nationwide protest drew the same generation onto the streets, ferreting accountability towards the precarious state of the Indian education system. The scale of mobilisation followed by Hrishikesh’s death is something that none earlier deaths within IIT, in recent memory, has produced.

The sloganeering of “Investigation, Compensation, and Resignation”, by the student collective in the Lecture Hall of IIT Delhi speaks to a demand for redistributive justice, from the administration to recognize these deaths as failure of institutions. In doing so, it has succeeded in rekindling the demand for institutional accountability from the institutions, in which earlier deaths, despite their recurrence, remained absent from public discourse. The protest extends beyond symbolic administrative fixes towards challenging the structural flaws persisting within the system. Beyond individual diagnosis, redistributive justice here would require adequately funded mental health personnel, not the faculty sporting a counsellor label, mandatory compensation for the deceased’s family, and ensuring faculty diversity proportionate to student diversity within committees. Such demands challenge the system to rethink and requisition the existing mechanisms and their speculation in academic spaces, which are deemed sufficient once the pressure becomes overwhelming.

According to Hrishikesh’s mother’s account, shared publicly during the protest, the deceased who lost his father years ago, had been battling mental health issues, previously been hospitalised for the same and later resumed his studies. He had also confided in the counsellor at the institute about his struggles. In the time since, he was denied “a major academic project under his supervisor, “denied hostel facilities”, due to his mental health illness. These facts reflect the administrative indifference shown towards his distress, despite having sought support from what the institute offers. When an institution flags a student as “severely depressive”, or exhibiting “suicidal ideation”, this identification should be followed by institutional duty of care, rather than employing this diagnostic function to depriving the student of essential amenities and pushing them towards further precarity. This scenario, in its most precise sense, is the institutional betrayal the deceased went through.

The larger question is, not merely to counsel students to survive within these institutions, but to confront the relentless culture of self-optimisation, and other structural harms such as caste-based discrimination, class inequality, and cultural alienation. Counselling isn’t the panacea for student’s survival, no specific remedy is, least of all counselling alone. Institutional redressal mechanisms such as counselling and campus wellness centres cannot mitigate the kind of distress manufactured by the institution themselves. Placing such mechanisms equivalent to addressing academic pressure silently shifts the blame onto the student’s incapacity to cope, rather than introspecting into conditions they are expected to cope within. It is worth situating this issue in a wider frame. When in a hyper neoliberal environment, where job markets are contracting, mental health concerns are soaring, even meritocratic showcase institutions such as IITs are no longer reliably delivering the economic security it once seems promising, it is worth laying out briefly here to not read these deaths as outcome of individual inadequacy, but these vulnerabilities as produced by the society itself. These deaths are often accumulated results of adverse conditions infused within the institutions.

*Adarsh (name changed for the reasons of maintaining anonymity of the respondent) is a scholar at IIT Delhi who shared his experience of being in the institute following a student’s suicide.

(The author is a second-year PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral research examines the student suicide crisis in higher educational institutions in India, with a particular focus on caste-based structural discrimination as a contributing factor)

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The post The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The contemporary economic crisis, dangerously hollowed out middle classes and mounting unemployment (of their children) has brought Indian youth to the brink of becoming Weary Generations (udaas naslein), an expression used by the Urdu novelist, Abdullah Husain (1931-2015), for the generation wasted in Partition, violence, migration and traumatic displacement.

How does one then place or read the energies and fearlessness of the present upsurge be it in Bihar, UP, Delhi or Mumbai? It is not just these seemingly apolitical mobilisations but also smaller left formations (AISA, SFI) that have sustained protests, a) spoken and highlighted education and access for all b) examined structural failures, yes, but also lack of voice and representation c) refused to be black-holed into the Hindu-Muslim paradigm d) broken through a paralysis of fear; e) while in Delhi and Mumbai these may have been dominated by a class difficult for the far right to pigeonhole, in Bihar they are subaltern students. Plus, a protest by Adivasi/tribal students in Maharashtra reached a successful end (though they had been fasting for over 47 days) after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi highlighted their demands. LOP Gandhi speaking of withdrawing criminal cases, getting an FIR lodged, and speaking on youth issues of access and social justice together show how the narrative is for once not being dominated by the regime. The icing on the cake is the union government’s concrete withdrawal of FIRs against many/most if not all the protesters.

Global history demonstrates that youth energy in times of crisis takes one of two distinct paths: violent criminal implosion or revolutionary democratic renewal. In May 1968, France witnessed an explosive student movement that began on university campuses like Nanterre and Sorbonne. French students did not merely demand educational reforms; they linked arms with the working class, paralysed a Gaullist state, and fundamentally reshaped modern European political consciousness through raw democratic assertion. Conversely, where youth energy is denied legitimate political expression and institutional avenues of dissent, it devolves into structural criminality. In 20th-century Sicily (in Italy), the complete absence of democratic avenues for youth advancement permitted underworld gangsterism to swallow an entire generation—a social decay famously captured in Mario Puzo’s literary studies of omertà, patronage, and syndicate power.

Indian campuses today stand precariously at these very crossroads. The current stagnation stands in sharp contrast to the analytical framework established by Philip Altbach in his books, Turmoil and Transition: Higher Education and Student Politics in India (1968) and Student Politics in India (1972). Altbach demonstrated that students in developing democracies operate as a vital “incipient elite” and a primary political conscience. Unencumbered by institutional vested interests, they function as a catalyst for broader societal democratization. This theoretical reality materialised during the 1960s and 1970s across northern and western India. The Navnirman Movement in Gujarat in 1973–1974 began over price hikes in university canteens and escalated into a mass agitation that dissolved the state legislative assembly. Shortly after, the Bihar Movement of 1974, spearheaded by student leaders under Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979), directly challenged state authoritarianism and catalysed the nationwide opposition that eventually defeated Congress rule in 1977, after the Emergency (1975-77).

The anti-Congress political forces that seized state power on the back of these youth mobilisations recognized a key reality: an organised, democratically elected student body is an unpredictable, counter-hegemonic force. Consequently, once in power, the anti-Congress and regional regimes (communal reactionaries, single caste, personalized, dynastic and champions of identity-based divisive political forces) systematically disarmed the very machinery that elevated them. Province after province, most notably Uttar Pradesh, campus elections have been suspended across state universities for years, banning, curbing, or neutering Students’ Unions.

Crucially, this structural paralysis of student democracy was not merely a post-2014 phenomenon under the BJP regime; key policy frameworks that enabled this containment were set in motion earlier, notably under UPA-II through the implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. As Albeena Shakil highlights in Economic and Political Weekly (2008), the Lyngdoh Committee was constituted following Supreme Court orders to frame guidelines on student union elections—focusing on ‘curbing criminalisation’, ensuring financial transparency, and setting eligibility criteria. However, the committee’s recommendations introduced rigid constraints, such as a maximum age limit of 28 years for research scholars and restricting candidates from contesting office-bearer positions more than once.

The fundamental flaw in this approach was its mechanical, uniform enforcement across vastly different universities without accounting for their specific institutional characters. The Lyngdoh Committee report itself explicitly acknowledged the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) model as an exemplary “model to be followed”—a peaceful, direct election process conducted entirely by students through an independent, elected Student Election Committee without administrative interference, money, or muscle power. Yet, despite JNU’s flawless democratic track record, the Supreme Court stayed the JNUSU elections in 2008 on technical procedural grounds like the candidate age limits and re-contesting of posts. By imposing arbitrary eligibility constraints and administrative control over a self-regulated, highly participatory student democracy, the policy environment under UPA-II severely weakened the capacity of student bodies to function as independent, capably led representative unions.

To understand how youth energy is absorbed in the absence of democratic representation, Craig Jeffrey’s 2009 essay on Meerut University, Fixing Futures: Educated Unemployment, Youth, and Politics in North India, provides the necessary framework. Jeffrey demonstrates how structural unemployment converts campuses into waiting rooms. Deprived of representative unions to bargain collectively against systemic failures, young people are forced into individual survival mechanisms. They become fixers (jugaad intermediaries, or brokers, dalals), trading political compliance for minor administrative concessions or informal rents. The failure of contemporary campuses to rise up in the style of global youth protests or digital mobilisations is not due to apathy; it is the direct structural result of an environment where collective bargaining has been replaced by atomised patronage networks akin to the Sicilian boss-client relationship.

This suppression of student democracy occurs alongside a mounting crisis of economic precarity backed by grim statistical realities. Data from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD) India Employment Report reveals that educated youth bear the brunt of the nation’s job crisis. Youths account for nearly 83% of the total unemployed workforce in India, with the unemployment rate for university graduates standing at an astonishing 29.1%—nearly nine times higher than for those without formal schooling. Furthermore, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) metrics continuously highlight that urban youth unemployment hovers at elevated levels between 13.6% and 14.3%, while roughly 90% of employed youth are pushed into informal, unprotected work. Despite holding degrees, millions of graduates remain trapped in underemployment, gig work, or endless competitive exam preparation. Yet, because campuses lack elected Students’ Unions to channel this systemic frustration into organised political demands, this massive reservoir of youth precarity remains politically inert, barring the latest ongoing movements. India, like the Germany of the 1930s, is on the brink of driving the unemployed youth and the campuses towards political extremism, crime, and murderous narco-culture.

Compounding this crisis is the wholesale capture of university governing bodies by pliant, regime-acolyte administrators and accomplishment-deficient academics. In his scathing critique of Indian higher education, Asking for Trouble: Crises with a Meaning (1984), veteran educationist Amrik Singh (d. 2010) laid bare how the Indian university system was being subverted from within by weak administrative leadership and corrupt appointments. Decades later, in the mid-2020s, Amrik Singh’s earlier warnings have metastasized into absolute reality. A knowledge campus must be led by scholars of recognised distinction, who exercise moral and inspirational influence upon the students. Instead, the internal governing bodies of Indian universities, such as Executive Councils, Academic Councils, Selection Committees, and Vice-Chancellorships, have been stuffed with under-accomplished, pliant, sycophantic individuals whose primary credential is ideological compliance and administrative servitude to the ruling political apparatus.

Across state and central universities, appointments to the highest academic offices routinely bypass scholars with high citation indices, major research monographs, or international peer recognition. Instead, pliant, regime-acolyte Vice-Chancellors with minimal publication records and negligible scholarly impact are installed as political commissars. To maintain their illegitimate control, these Vice-Chancellors surround themselves with similarly under-accomplished internal academics, who function as key collaborators and administrative fixers. Selection panels are shamelessly rigged to bypass highly cited, productive researchers in favour of candidates whose sole qualification is political alignment. Consequently, statutory bodies intended to protect academic freedom are transformed into rubber-stamp committees that penalize dissenting faculty, manipulate recruitment, and ignore systemic corruption.

This institutional decay manifests in distinct ways across major, historic, residential and state-funded campuses, illustrating the stark difference between passive compliance and active resistance.

At the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), an internal administrative oligarchy has long controlled key university apparatuses. With the prolonged absence of elected student union checks, a small network of senior teacher-administrators has maintained an unchallenged hold over the campus. This environment has allowed serious institutional irregularities to persist—ranging from a huge fee scam, illegal annual increments, illegal placements in the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), and financial opacities in civil construction contracts to administrative nepotism, the illegal retention of perks, unauthorized security deployment, and questionable pension schemes. Rather than challenging these abuses, executive bodies and elected teacher associations have largely chosen silence. At the same time, they offer instant, sharp, and unparliamentary reactions against internal whistle-blowers who expose the internal rot of the administration as well as elected bodies. The narrative-setting elites among Muslims rally desperately to fight for the minority status of AMU, but go silent on rampant irregularities within the very university of theirs. Further, they don’t mobilise themselves with equal alacrity and enthusiasm on other issues of social and gender justice, caste exclusions and economic grievances.

To make things far worse, this specific kind of minority-ism finds support from Left-Liberals. Operating under an unwritten code of Omertà, reminiscent of the institutionalized silence of Sicilian mafia structures depicted in Mario Puzo’s novels, they shield administrative failures under the pretext of protecting institutional identity from external hostility. In AMU this code of Omertà is turned into a more dangerous tool. Internal whistle-blowers are hounded, maligned, vilified, and humiliated by plunderers disguising as men of religiosity. They play dangerous politics of demonstrative religiosity and piety, giving a drum-beating clarion call of “Qaum in danger”. It is an open secret among campus insiders that these very demonstrably and instrumentally “pious” Muslim minority professors queue up in large numbers before Sangh functionaries running the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, intending to become Vice Chancellors (Felix Pal, 2020, offers an insight as to why Muslims join it), even while surreptitiously instigating common Muslim youth that the incumbent regime is rabidly anti-Muslim.

Globally too, Peter Fleming’s 2021 book, Dark Academia: How Universities Die, rightly diagnoses that with the neo-liberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years, universities have been turned into psychological hells for professionally committed academics.

Yet, despite all these odds, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) demonstrates how active representation can disrupt administrative opacity. On August 13, 2026, the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), alongside the elected JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU), held a joint press conference at New Delhi’s Press Club of India. Rather than hiding inner ills, they publicly detailed administrative irregularities, arbitrary changes to promotion guidelines, and compromised recruitment procedures enforced by the university executive. Despite facing intense administrative pressure, the presence of an elected student union—built on JNU’s long-standing tradition of self-managed student democracy that survived even the legal curbs of the Lyngdoh recommendations—allowed JNU to maintain a counter-hegemonic force against administrative overreach.

The tragedy of contemporary Indian public universities is an existential crisis of purpose. When campuses are stripped of democratic unions, handed over to regime-acolyte Vice-Chancellors, and silenced by co-opted faculty collaborators, they cease to function as spaces of higher learning and degenerate into administrative fiefdoms. Indian youth stand at a decisive crossroads: to remain passive captives within waiting rooms of managed mediocrity, or to reclaim the historic mantle of May 1968. Reclaiming the university requires breaking the institutional code of silence, ousting unaccomplished administrative syndicates, restoring elected Students’ Unions, and transforming quiet frustration into organised political agitation. Of course, ignoring or delaying the task of employment creation is absolutely unaffordable for India at this point of time.

[The author, a Professor teaches Modern and Contemporary History at Aligarh Muslim University. His X-handle is: @sajjadhist]

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The post Closing of the Indian Mind: Campus subjugation, intellectual mediocrity, & death of democratic assertion appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Dalit, Adivasi, rural and economically disadvantaged communities have repeatedly raised these concerns, often from the sharpest end of the crisis. For children in remote villages and tribal settlements, the loss of a neighbourhood school can mean a long and unsafe journey to another village. For students in government and municipal schools, a vacant teacher’s post can mean months or years without instruction in crucial subjects. For children living in government hostels and Ashram schools, inadequate sanitation, food, security and medical facilities can turn access to education into a question of basic safety and dignity. Moreover, for families seeking education in Marathi, the steady weakening of Marathi-medium institutions raises questions about whether the State is preserving meaningful choice or allowing an entire public education network to wither.

The Maharashtra media and even some sections of the “national legacy media” have reported these failures repeatedly, but largely as separate episodes: a school without teachers here, a dangerous building there, a protest over toilets or hostels elsewhere, a proposed school merger or closure, a dispute over Marathi-medium education, or a new policy promising modernisation. The result has been a fragmented public conversation about what is, in reality, a connected and longstanding crisis. These issues crucial to access and participation in a democracy have never been the subject of a sustained media campaign. Successive governments have announced schemes, reviews, reforms and infrastructure programmes, while the underlying questions of staffing, access, funding and accountability have remained.

What is equally striking is how little political space this crisis has occupied as a sustained issue. Despite Maharashtra’s large network of government, Zilla Parishad and municipal schools, and despite repeated concerns raised by teachers, parents, educationists and marginalised communities, the condition of public schooling has rarely been made a central political question. Opposition parties have criticised individual decisions, school closures or government policies, but the broader deterioration of the public education system has not consistently been treated as a major political issue.

It was against this backdrop that the recent School Thik Karo campaign brought the condition of government schools into a more concentrated public spotlight. The campaign led by Cockroach Janta Party convenor Abhijeet Dipke has sought to document basic deficiencies in schools across Maharashtra and place them before the public. Its significance lies in something larger: it has attempted to connect problems that have too often been reported, protested and debated separately. The crisis, however, predates the campaign by years.

The evidence is now difficult to dismiss as a series of isolated incidents. Maharashtra’s own education data records schools without electricity, internet connectivity, functional computers, accessible toilets and adequate teaching staff. Students have protested because teachers are missing. Adivasi students have gone on hunger strike over hostel conditions. Parents and activists have opposed school closures, mergers and relocations. Marathi-medium schools have steadily declined. Teachers are being pulled away from classrooms for non-academic duties, including prolonged election-related work. At the same time, governments have explored cluster schools, school adoption and Public-Private Partnership models even as large parts of the public system continue to struggle with basic infrastructure and vacancies.

This is therefore not simply a story about a few poorly maintained schools, nor is it only about the latest government policy or the latest student protest. It is a story about what happens when the State’s responsibility to provide public education is repeatedly addressed through piecemeal interventions while the structural weaknesses of the system remain.

Maharashtra now speaks the language of a “modern”, digital and future-ready education system. However, before asking whether its schools are ready for artificial intelligence, coding, smart classrooms and digital learning, there is a more basic question to answer: are its schools adequately staffed, safely accessible, properly equipped and capable of providing every child with a meaningful education? The answer emerging from the experiences of students, teachers, parents, marginalised communities and the State’s own data is far more troubling than the language of modernisation suggests.

Justice Varale questions education spending as Marathi-medium schools face closure

Nothing exposes Maharashtra state’s education policy priorities more than what was highlighted by a Supreme Court Judge recently.

Speaking about the condition of Marathi-medium schools weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice P.B. Varale on Saturday, August 22, reportedly questioned the State’s spending priorities, saying that even a fraction of the funds earmarked for the Nashik Kumbh Mela could have helped prevent the closure of hundreds of Marathi-medium schools. The Times of India reported that Justice Varale made the remarks during an event at his former school in Nashik.

Justice Varale reportedly referred to the Maharashtra government’s proposed expenditure on Kumbh infrastructure and a corridor project, while clarifying that he did not oppose such spending. However, he questioned whether a small portion of the allocation could instead have been directed towards education. He said that 0.1% of the Kumbh allocation, amounting to around Rupees 32 Crore, could have helped save more than 100–150 Marathi-medium schools from closure, according to the report.

The Maharashtra government has informed the Union government that a comprehensive development plan of Rupees 22,425.39 Crore has been approved for the 2027 Nashik Simhastha Kumbh Mela. The plan was approved at a meeting of the Apex Committee chaired by the Chief Minister on March 13, 2026, with the Kumbh scheduled to begin in October 2026.

Justice Varale also drew attention to the condition of residential schools, particularly ashramshalas catering to students from marginalised communities. Referring to reports of three girl students at an ashramshala who died after allegedly being bitten by snakes while sleeping on the floor, he reportedly said that the overall condition of several residential schools remained “pathetic”.

His remarks also pointed to a broader concern over the State’s changing budgetary priorities. Justice Varale reportedly observed that the share of the budget allocated to education, which had earlier ranged between 8% and 12%, had declined.

Modern education system cannot be built on disappearing schools

Perhaps the most significant development in Maharashtra’s education story is that students and their families are increasingly refusing to remain passive recipients of policy. Adivasi students have gone on hunger strike, Dharashiv students have sat outside the Zilla Parishad CEO’s office, villagers have locked a school in protest over teacher shortages, parents have challenged school relocations, and activists have documented failures in school infrastructure.

The protests differ in geography and immediate demand, but they share a common message: children and their families are being asked to accept gaps in a system that the State continues to describe as modern, inclusive and future-ready. Educationist Prabhu Mohapatra, commenting on the wider rise in student protests, told PTI that students were increasingly asserting themselves as stakeholders in education policy and that the protests reflected concerns over infrastructure, teacher availability and the quality of learning.

That assertion of agency may be the most important shift in Maharashtra’s education story. Students are not demanding luxury. They are demanding teachers, safe school buildings, functioning toilets, drinking water, adequate classrooms, accessible schools and the ability to continue learning in their own language. They are asking for the basic conditions necessary for education, and for the State to treat those conditions not as discretionary benefits but as public obligations. Maharashtra now has two competing narratives about education.

The first is the official narrative: smart classrooms, artificial intelligence, coding, digital platforms, teacher training, modernisation and a “mission mode” transformation of the education system. The second is emerging from classrooms, villages, hostels and protests: missing teachers, inadequate infrastructure, unsafe or unsuitable accommodation, inaccessible schools, unreliable or disputed data, and institutions facing closure or merger. Both realities have to be confronted.

The government can legitimately point to improvements and new initiatives, and its officials have disputed some of the broader allegations concerning infrastructure. But the State’s own U-DISE data, the Centre’s Project Approval Board review, the Bombay High Court’s intervention and repeated student and parent protests point to structural weaknesses that cannot be resolved through announcements alone.

The decline of Marathi-medium schools makes the problem even more consequential. This is not simply an infrastructure crisis; it is also a question of what kind of public education Maharashtra intends to preserve. If Marathi is to be protected, Marathi-medium schools cannot merely be celebrated symbolically. They must be adequately funded, staffed, upgraded and made capable of providing quality education without forcing parents to abandon the language in which their children have been studying.

If a school has low enrolment, the first question should therefore not automatically be how soon it can be closed. The more fundamental question is why enrolment is falling in the first place.

Is the school inadequately staffed? Are its buildings and facilities deteriorating? Are teachers being diverted to non-teaching duties? Is the school too far from where families now live? Has urban redevelopment displaced the community it once served? Are parents choosing other schools because the Marathi-medium option is perceived to offer poorer infrastructure or fewer opportunities? Has the medium of instruction itself become stigmatised? In addition, crucially, could targeted investment reverse the decline?

These questions become particularly urgent when the children affected are poor, rural, tribal or dependent on Marathi-medium government schools. For such families, the closure of a neighbourhood school is not simply an administrative restructuring. It can mean longer journeys, additional transport costs, greater dependence on private education and, in some cases, the eventual withdrawal of children from school altogether. And where closure is genuinely unavoidable, the State must be able to answer a more basic question: where exactly will every child go?

The Maharashtra government has now promised a time-bound transformation of the education system. The measure of that transformation, however, should not be the number of schemes announced, platforms launched, classrooms labelled “smart” or meetings conducted. It should be visible in the ordinary conditions in which children actually study.

It should mean a functioning fan in a classroom, a usable toilet, clean drinking water, adequate teachers, a safe hostel, a working computer, a laboratory that has actually been built and equipped, and a school that remains within reasonable reach of the children it serves. It should also mean a Marathi-medium school that is not forced to fight simply to survive.

Until these become ordinary features rather than exceptional achievements, the phrase “modern education system” will remain more aspiration than reality. A State cannot credibly claim to be building the schools of the future while allowing existing schools to become inaccessible, under-resourced or disappear altogether.

August 2026: Students on hunger strike for the right to study

The latest and perhaps most revealing episode came from Maharashtra’s Adivasi student community. In August 2026, tribal students in Pune and elsewhere in Maharashtra began protesting against a range of issues concerning government hostels and Ashram schools. Six students continued a hunger strike at the Adivasi Government Boys Hostel near the Hadapsar-Manjari border.

The immediate trigger was a Government Resolution issued on August 14, 2026, imposing a maximum age of 30 years for admission to tribal hostels. But the students’ demands went far beyond the age restriction.

The protest also brought allegations about the treatment of female students into focus. On August 24, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis raising concerns about the conditions described to him by tribal students. He alleged that hostels were unsafe and lacked adequate food, sanitation and medical care, and referred to claims that female students returning after an extended absence were subjected to pregnancy and other medical tests.

The Hindu also reported on August 24, the protesting students demanded the withdrawal of the August 14 Government Resolution and a revised order based on the earlier November 11, 2011 framework, with allowances linked to inflation. They sought greater protection for students living in tribal hostels and Ashram schools, ₹1 crore insurance cover for tribal students, ₹1 crore compensation for the families of three tribal girls who died following a snake-bite incident in Gadchiroli, a safe and properly equipped hostel for female students in Pune, and immediate filling of vacant posts including peons, security guards and sanitation workers.

The scale of dependence on these hostels is itself significant. As The Indian Express reported on August 26, the Tribal Development Department runs 490 government hostels across Maharashtra, accommodating between 58,000 and 60,000 students every year. The government ultimately backed down on the immediate issue. On August 25, following discussions with tribal legislators and MPs, Tribal Development Minister Ashok Uike announced that the 30-year age limit had been scrapped and that there would be no age restriction for admission to Adivasi hostels. The Indian Express reported that the decision came a day after Rahul Gandhi had raised the matter with Fadnavis. The government therefore acted. However, it acted after 13 days of hunger strike.

That sequence matters. It raises the question of how many of the other problems raised by the students — safety, sanitation, staffing, food, medical care and financial support — will require another protest before they receive sustained attention.

July 2026: “We need teachers, not promises”

The same pattern was visible in Dharashiv. On July 31, India Today reported that Class 10 students of a Zilla Parishad secondary school in Sonari village had begun an indefinite sit-in outside the Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer’s office demanding regular secondary-school teachers. Their complaint was not new. According to the protesting students, several teaching and staff posts had remained vacant for nearly four years. Repeated representations had allegedly failed to produce concrete action. A day before the sit-in, villagers had locked the school to draw attention to the shortage.

Students particularly objected to primary-school teachers being used to teach secondary classes, arguing that students preparing for the SSC examination required qualified subject teachers. The protest carried an especially pointed message. Students invoked the government’s “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” campaign and asked, in effect: what does saving the girl child mean if she is then denied the teachers required to complete her education? They also invoked Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s call to “Educate, Organise and Agitate”.

They said they had already approached the Zilla Parishad CEO, Education Officer, District Collector and Superintendent of Police on July 28, but claimed that no effective action followed.

This is not merely a question of staffing. For a Class 10 student, a missing teacher is not an abstract administrative vacancy. It can mean an incomplete syllabus, inadequate preparation for a board examination and, for poorer families, pressure to pay for private tuition that they may not be able to afford. Moreover, the state already knows that teacher shortages are a wider problem.

The Government’s own data exposes the gap

On July 17, the findings emerging from the Ministry of Education’s U-DISE 2025-26 data provided that Maharashtra had 108,139 schools, 21.6 million students and 750,272 teachers. But 3,201 schools had no electricity connection at all. Another 10,938 had electricity connections that were not functional. A further 23,855 schools had no internet connectivity. Of the 90,419 schools that had computer facilities, computers were functional in only 84,530. That left 23,609 schools without operational computer systems.

The contradiction is hard to miss. The state is speaking increasingly about artificial intelligence, coding, smart classrooms and digital learning. Yet thousands of its schools are still struggling with the infrastructure required to switch on a computer, let alone build a digital classroom. The problem goes beyond technology. U-DISE data showed that 9,269 schools were single-teacher schools, catering to 179,104 students. More than 32,000 schools lacked separate toilets for children with disabilities, while 16,341 did not have ramps with railings.

There were 2,019 unusable girls’ toilets and 3,280 unusable boys’ toilets, with the data attributing the problem to issues including water, maintenance and pending repairs. Another 3,932 schools lacked playgrounds and 1,099 lacked a library or book bank. Only 13,550 schools had digital libraries, leaving 94,589 without one. These figures matter because they are not merely the claims of opposition parties or activists; they come from the government’s own education database.

Teachers are being asked to do more with less

Teachers have also described the consequences of this system. Vijay Kombe, president of the Maharashtra State Primary Teachers’ Committee, told ETV Bharat that schools continued to face shortages of basic items such as mats, desks and benches. He said local-government schools lacked dedicated cleaning staff and that teachers in some places were consequently forced to clean classrooms and toilets, sometimes with students’ help.

Kombe also claimed that more than 75 per cent of primary schools run by local self-government bodies lacked headmasters, leaving teachers to combine administrative duties with classroom teaching. He criticised the staffing arrangement in low-enrolment schools, under which one primary teacher may have to manage multiple classes, while one teacher may be required to teach all subjects for Classes 6 to 8.

There is, however, an important official counterpoint. Divisional Deputy Director of Education Rajesh Kankal said drinking-water facilities were available in more than 100,000 schools, while more than 107,000 had hand-washing facilities and more than 102,000 conducted annual health check-ups. He said the administration was working to rectify the remaining shortcomings. The issue, therefore, is not that Maharashtra has no facilities.

It is that the existence of facilities in the majority of schools does not erase the thousands of schools where they are absent, dysfunctional or inaccessible. For a child attending one of those schools, the state-wide average offers little comfort.

SIR extension keeps teachers away from classrooms

The extension of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Maharashtra has prolonged the deployment of teachers as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and support staff, affecting regular classroom teaching, unit tests and other academic activities. Teachers who were expected to return to schools by August 8 had been assigned election-related duties until August 17, with house visits, voter verification and form-related work continuing even as schools prepare for examinations and work to complete the syllabus.

The timing has added to existing pressures on schools. Unit tests scheduled for August and periodic assessments meant to track students’ learning are being affected, while teachers are also required to cover new textbooks introduced for Standards III, IV and VI under the National Education Policy. In some government and civic schools, more than 70% of teaching staff has reportedly been deployed for SIR-related work, leaving schools with reduced staff and, in some cases, forcing them to operate for only half the day. Teachers and school heads have said the prolonged absence is making it difficult to complete teaching and conduct examinations as scheduled.

The impact extends beyond teachers formally appointed as BLOs, with other teaching and non-teaching employees being assigned to assist with the exercise. In one school, Headmaster Tanaji Mane said three teachers initially appointed as BLOs were later joined by teaching and non-teaching staff who were relieved of their regular duties. Data cited by Progressive Teachers Association president Tanaji Kamble from Mumbai’s Ghatkopar East constituency reportedly showed that 184 of 283 BLOs were from the Education Department, including 157 teachers. Teachers have also faced pressure to report for election duties, with police notices reportedly issued to some who failed to do so. Educationists and teacher representatives have consequently questioned whether such prolonged deployment is compatible with the State’s responsibility to ensure uninterrupted schooling.

The issue ultimately raises a larger question about how election-related administrative work is being balanced against children’s right to regular education. Teachers have described the SIR process as continuous and demanding, while educationists have warned that prolonged absence from classrooms can disrupt learning, assessments and syllabus completion. With the electoral exercise continuing even as the academic year progresses, teacher organisations have suggested using trained personnel from other departments or other mechanisms for election work instead of repeatedly drawing teachers away from schools. The concern is not simply about teachers’ workload, but about what happens to students when the people responsible for teaching them are routinely pulled away from the classroom.

Detailed report may be read here.

The Centre’s review makes the picture worse

The Ministry of Education’s Project Approval Board raised similar concerns while examining Maharashtra’s Samagra Shiksha plan for 2026-27. Of 22,416 eligible upper-primary, secondary and higher-secondary schools, 21,009 did not have ICT laboratories. Another 4,286 lacked smart classrooms. Nearly 60 per cent of primary and upper-primary schools had fewer than 30 students each, while 7,186 schools had only one teacher.

The Union also noted that more than 4,300 villages did not have a secondary school within the prescribed distance and more than 6,500 villages lacked access to a higher-secondary school. More than 80 per cent of approved science laboratories had not been completed, while toilets sanctioned for children with special needs remained pending. The teacher vacancy figures were equally concerning; around 17% of secondary teaching posts and 25% of higher-secondary posts were vacant.

The Centre approved ₹2,494.17 crore under Samagra Shiksha for Maharashtra for 2026-27 and directed the state to complete pending infrastructure and digital projects in “mission mode”. The Maharashtra government, for its part, said most sanctioned ICT laboratories were under installation and would be completed by the end of the year.

But this creates an uncomfortable policy contradiction. The government is being asked to modernise schools while it has not yet completed the basics.

Then there is the question of closing schools

Perhaps the most consequential issue is not what is missing from schools, but what happens when the state decides a school is no longer viable. In April 2026, the Maharashtra government issued two Government Resolutions declaring 433 primary schools and 324 secondary schools ineligible for grant-in-aid. The schools were directed to apply under the Maharashtra Self-Financed Schools Act, 2012. If they failed to do so, their recognition could be cancelled, effectively leading to closure. The Bombay High Court intervened.

On April 29, 2026, the Kolhapur Bench held that the government’s action could not proceed against the petitioner schools without giving them an opportunity to be heard. As The Hindu reported on May 19, the court found that the resolutions violated principles of natural justice and directed that the petitioner institutions be removed from the list. Nevertheless, the court’s observations went beyond procedure.

The bench noted that the affected schools were predominantly Marathi-medium institutions, particularly in villages. It pointed out the contradiction in the state’s position: on the one hand, Maharashtra was insisting that Marathi be given greater importance; on the other, the government’s action could result in the closure of Marathi-medium schools.

The judges also asked questions that should have been at the centre of the government’s decision before the resolutions were issued: Could the students actually be accommodated in nearby schools? Would the medium of instruction continue? What would happen in villages where alternative schools were not available? What would happen to teaching and non-teaching staff? Could teachers be absorbed elsewhere? And could poor families be expected to bear the consequences of the shift to self-financed education?

The court concluded that these considerations had not been adequately addressed and directed the state to conduct hearings before taking action. That intervention is crucial because it exposes the danger of treating school closure as a mere question of numbers. A school with fewer students is not automatically a redundant school as it may be the only school within walking distance, or the only affordable school, or the only school teaching in the child’s language. And if it disappears, the state’s responsibility does not disappear with it.

2023: From school closures to “adoption”: A changing model of public education

The debate over low-enrolment schools cannot be separated from another policy shift: the growing role being given to private entities in the management and development of government schools. Maharashtra has increasingly presented private participation as a means of improving infrastructure and educational quality, even as questions remain about why the State is unable to adequately fund and maintain its own public-school system.

In September 2023, the Maharashtra government introduced an “Adopt a School” scheme under the National Education Policy’s Vidyanjali initiative. As reported by the Times of India on September 19, 2023, the scheme allowed private and public sector entities to adopt government schools for five or 10 years. The State proposed making more than 62,000 government schools available for adoption. Corporate entities could use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds for activities ranging from repairs, maintenance and painting to improving sanitation, health, enrolment and the use of technology.

Dalit groups strongly protested this move towards privatisation that would deny access to Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students especially in rural areas.

The financial commitments were substantial yet no audit of the scheme or the implementation have ever been held, nor demanded. According to the government resolution reported by The Times of India, entities adopting schools in “A” and “B” category municipal corporations, including Mumbai and Pune, were required to commit ₹2 crore for five years or ₹3 crore for 10 years. For “C” category municipal corporations, the amounts were ₹1 crore and ₹2 crore respectively, while other schools could be adopted for ₹50 lakh for five years or ₹1 crore for 10 years. The Business Standard, reporting on September 18, 2023, said the funds could be used for school-building repairs, painting, and toilets, infrastructure and sports equipment.

The government insisted that the scheme was not privatisation. In December 2023, then School Education Minister Deepak Kesarkar told the Hindustan Times that a major corporate house had expressed interest in adopting around 5,000 schools and stressed that the objective was to improve infrastructure and amenities, not to privatise schools. The government resolution also permitted an adopting entity to add its name to the existing school name for the duration of the agreement, although the original name was to be retained.

The distinction between “adoption” and privatisation, however, becomes more complicated when viewed alongside the State’s broader education policy. In July 2026, Frontline reported that Maharashtra was expanding public-private partnership models in school education, including the operation of five English-medium schools of the Pune Municipal Corporation through a PPP arrangement. The report said the same organisation that had previously operated the schools using CSR funds was subsequently awarded a contract worth ₹12 crore annually by the Pune civic administration. Frontline also reported concerns over proposals to hand over land reserved for Mumbai municipal schools to private entities under PPP arrangements.

This raises a fundamental question about the direction of public education. If private organisations are initially invited to improve government schools through CSR and are later given contracts to operate schools using public funds, the State’s role can gradually shift from being the primary provider of education to financing or facilitating private participation in its delivery. The issue is therefore not simply whether private money can improve a school building. It is who ultimately controls public educational assets, who determines priorities and whether access to education remains governed primarily by public obligations rather than the interests or capacities of private partners.

The question becomes particularly important in the context of Maharashtra’s low-enrolment and cluster-school policies. In September 2023, Mid-Day reported that the State had identified 14,783 schools with 20 or fewer students for consolidation into cluster schools. The proposed restructuring was expected to affect 1,85,467 students and 29,707 teachers. The government argued that very small schools could not provide adequate infrastructure, qualified teachers or opportunities for social interaction, and pointed to successful cluster models in Panshet and Toranmal.

Teachers and education activists, however, warned that consolidation could push students to travel longer distances and increase the risk of dropouts, particularly in rural and remote areas. Their concern was especially significant for young children, girls and students from economically weaker families for whom daily travel to a distant school may itself become a barrier to attendance.

The State subsequently sought to reassure critics. In July 2025, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde told the Maharashtra legislature, as reported by ET Education, that schools would not be closed merely because of low enrolment. He said the government would make adjustments to ensure that such schools continued functioning and that teachers would be redeployed only after appropriate adjustments were made. Yet the same report noted that around 18,000 schools had fewer than 20 students.

The policy trajectory therefore remains difficult to reconcile. On one side, the government says low-enrolment schools will not be shut and that every child must continue to have access to education. On the other, cluster models, school consolidation and private participation are being promoted as solutions to the perceived financial and infrastructural limitations of the existing public-school network.

The issue is not that private participation is inherently harmful, nor that every small school must necessarily remain open regardless of circumstances. The concern is whether the State is addressing the reasons behind low enrolment and poor infrastructure before declaring a school inefficient, relocating its students or inviting private entities to take over functions that should ordinarily be part of public educational provision.

A government school is not merely a building that can be repaired through CSR funding or managed through a contractual arrangement. It is part of the public infrastructure through which the State fulfils its constitutional obligation to provide education. When schools are under-resourced, the answer cannot automatically be to reduce the State’s responsibility by transferring greater functions to private actors. The more important question is whether Maharashtra is investing sufficiently in making its public schools viable before concluding that they need to be consolidated, adopted or operated through PPP models.

Marathi schools: Declining enrolment or a policy-created cycle?

The decline of Marathi-medium education in Maharashtra is particularly troubling because it cannot simply be reduced to a story of parents “choosing English”. The numbers in Mumbai are stark. According to BMC data cited by ThePrint on July 24, 2025, the number of Marathi-medium schools in Mumbai fell from 460 in 2019-20 to 421 in 2025-26 — a loss of 39 schools. Around 50,000 students had moved elsewhere from the 2019-20 academic session onwards.

The longer-term numbers are even more striking. Mid-Day, reporting on May 4, 2025, said Mumbai had 413 Marathi-medium schools in 2010-11, 368 in 2014-15 and only 262 by 2023-24. That is not a temporary fluctuation, but rather a sustained decline.

The government has attributed the decline largely to parental preference for English-medium education. Parents do indeed have reasons to make that choice. English is widely perceived as providing better access to higher education, employment and social mobility. But educators and activists argue that parents are also responding to the relative quality and visibility of the schools being offered to them. As ThePrint reported in July 2025, educators pointed to inadequate infrastructure in Marathi-medium schools and alleged that English-medium institutions received greater preference when it came to development.

Deepak Pawar of the School Education Action Coordination Committee argued that Marathi-medium schools should be upgraded without changing their medium to English. Teachers cited in the report similarly described a communication gap with middle-class families and said some Marathi-medium schools had modern facilities such as Atal Tinkering Labs and robotics labs, but that efforts to publicise and develop these came only after enrolment had already begun to collapse. The important point here is thus, if the state allows a school to deteriorate, then points to falling enrolment as evidence that the school is no longer viable, it risks creating a self-fulfilling cycle. One cannot ignore the vicious cycle of how poor infrastructure erodes parental confidence, leading to declining enrolment, reduced allocation of teachers and resources, and a further deterioration of schools, creating a cycle that ultimately pushes schools towards closure. The final closure can then be presented as the inevitable consequence of “parental preference”. But inevitability is not the same as neutrality.

The fate of one of Mumbai’s oldest Marathi schools

The uncertainty surrounding Dadar’s Nabar Guruji Vidyalaya brought this crisis into sharp relief. In May 2025, Mid-Day reported that the Marathi-medium school, which dates back to the 1940s, was facing an uncertain future amid falling admissions. Thirty-five students had appeared for its SSC examination that year, but only 17 students remained in Classes 9 and 10 for the new academic year. The management clarified that it had not decided to close the school.

Trustee Satish Rama Nayak said the institution remained financially capable of functioning because it offered free education and teachers’ salaries were supported through government grants. The difficulty was the collapse in enrolment and its impact on the teacher-student ratio. Nayak also described a social transformation.

Parents who had themselves studied in Marathi-medium schools were increasingly choosing English-medium or CBSE schools for their children, sometimes even taking loans to pay for them. That is the other side of the story. It would be too simplistic to blame the government for every parent who chooses English. But it is equally simplistic to blame parents for the disappearance of Marathi-medium schools without asking why government and aided Marathi schools have not been made equally attractive, well-equipped and aspirational.

As Sushil Shejule of the Marathi Abhyas Kendra told ThePrint, the decline had been visible for years and, despite the availability of data, neither governments nor political parties had taken meaningful action.

The irony of Marathi’s “classical language” status

In October 2024, Marathi received classical-language status from the Union government. Maharashtra has also repeatedly asserted the importance of Marathi in public life and education. The Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Act, 2020 made Marathi compulsory in schools across the state, including CBSE and ICSE schools. Yet the institutions that actually provide education through Marathi continue to shrink.

The Mid-Day report of May 2025 placed the decline against precisely this backdrop: Marathi had acquired classical-language status, but one of Mumbai’s oldest Marathi-medium schools was struggling with falling admissions. The contradiction was also noticed by the Bombay High Court in its April 2026 intervention.

The state cannot convincingly claim to protect Marathi while allowing the network of Marathi-medium schools, particularly those serving poorer and rural families, to become increasingly fragile. Protecting a language is not merely about official resolutions, signboards or declarations. It also means ensuring that a child who wants, or needs, to study in that language has a functioning school in which to do so.

Mumbai’s municipal schools: when “repair” means displacement

The infrastructure problem becomes even more complicated when schools are declared unsafe and children are moved elsewhere. In December 2025, Outlook reported on the closure and relocation of Mumbai municipal schools, including New Mahim Municipal School. Students were shifted from August 2025 to another municipal school operating from a few rooms on the first floor of a residential building.

According to the report, the replacement premises lacked a playground, proper drinking-water facilities and adequately supplied toilets. The concern raised by parents and activists was not that unsafe buildings should continue to operate. A genuinely dangerous school building cannot be defended in the name of access to education. The concern was about what children were being offered after their school was shut.

When a school has to close because its building is unsafe, the replacement should provide an equivalent educational environment. It should be sufficiently close to the children’s homes, have adequate classrooms, functional toilets and drinking-water facilities, and provide children with access to a playground. Parents and children should also have a say in decisions that directly affect their education. For Marathi-medium schools, relocation should not result in the loss of the medium of instruction. These are not peripheral concerns. They determine whether a “relocation” actually amounts to continued and meaningful access to education.

When official records themselves threaten to erase students

Another warning emerged in January 2026. On January 10, ETV Bharat reported discrepancies between Aadhaar-linked records and UDISE Plus data that had left thousands of students classified as “invalid”, “not provided”, “under verification” or “out of school”. The report said that of 2,14,68,288 students registered in the relevant Maharashtra UDISE Plus data, 5,78,433 were listed with invalid Aadhaar details and 4,98,759 had not provided Aadhaar details. Another 69,688 were shown as out of school. Educationists warned that such discrepancies could have consequences for school enrolment figures and, consequently, teacher deployment and funding. The concern was particularly acute for Marathi-medium schools.

Rajan Mahadeshwar, principal of Govandi’s Jagruti Vidyamandir, told ETV Bharat that his school had 430 students actually registered, while the UDISE system showed only 380 because 50 were marked invalid or pending verification. He feared that an artificially reduced enrolment could eventually affect the school’s viability. Officials disputed the extent of the danger.

Divisional Deputy Director Rajesh Kankal said only around five per cent of students in numerous schools did not have Aadhaar updated and said he did not expect grant-in-aid schools to face major problems. Yet the larger policy concern remains valid: when funding, staffing and school viability are increasingly linked to enrolment data, the accuracy of that data becomes an educational rights issue. A child should not become statistically invisible because a database has failed to correctly reflect their presence in a classroom.

The state is promising a transformation

The government has not remained silent. On August 22, 2026, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde held a detailed review meeting with School Education Minister Dada Bhuse and senior officials. As Deccan Herald reported on August 23, Shinde directed the Education Department to prepare a clear, comprehensive and time-bound action plan to modernise schools and bring about “real, visible and qualitative improvements”.

The proposed plan includes teacher training, capacity building, greater involvement of education experts and experienced teachers, health check-ups, nutrition, a review of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme and attention to students’ mental and emotional well-being. The state has also expanded digital education initiatives. Digital Learning reported on August 4 that the Vinoba Digital Education platform had been expanded to 45,000 government schools across 25 districts, reaching more than 31 lakh students and nearly 1.3 lakh teachers.

These initiatives may be useful. However, the timing of the government’s August review is telling. It came after weeks in which government-school conditions had repeatedly been placed in the public eye — including through the “School Thik Karo” campaign launched in Maharashtra by Cockroach Janta Party convenor Abhijeet Dipke.

On August 15, Telangana Today reported that Dipke had launched the campaign in Hingoli after inspecting a Zilla Parishad school where he alleged that toilets lacked water, windows were broken and students lacked adequate benches. He said the campaign would document basic facilities in government schools across Maharashtra. The campaign itself is not a substitute for institutional inspection or government monitoring. Its allegations must therefore be independently verified before being treated as established facts.

But its very existence points to a troubling question: Why are political and citizen campaigns increasingly having to inspect schools to make basic educational infrastructure visible?

When will policy on public education, access and representation actually be formulated with the stakeholders? Who are the stakeholders? They are communities that demand education for the young, the most marginalised and teachers who form the other crucial arc. All the policies hurriedly formulated are however top heavy and solely the creation of bureaucrats and politicians, often concealing blatant private interests.

This is not democracy but public policy turned on its head.

Related:

Six-year-old detained during Patna teacher aspirants’ protest, parents allege police assault

Water Cannons Instead of Answers: Bihar’s recruitment crisis and the state’s crackdown on protest

Amnesty Investigation finds unlawful and deadly force against CJP-led protesters in Delhi and Siwan

August 11, 2026: A decade plus of students challenging a regime that seeks to control thought & ideas

Maharashtra SIR extension keeps teachers away from classrooms as unit tests face delays

After NEET protests ended, the battle moved online: Women protesters face threats, doxing and criminalisation

The post Maharashtra’s schools are struggling to survive as students protest, infrastructure crumbles and Marathi-medium institutions disappear appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In this conversation, activist and journalist Teesta Setalvad speaks with Rhiya Ahir, whose act of standing in front of a police van carrying detained protesters during the July 2026 student protests became one of the defining images of the movement.

Rhiya reflects on what compelled her to step forward, where courage comes from and why fear cannot become a reason for citizens to remain silent. Teesta speaks about the resolve it takes to stand up to power in difficult times.

The post ‘We Cannot Be Afraid’: Rhiya Ahir in Conversation with Teesta Setalvad appeared first on SabrangIndia.

There is a detail worth pausing on before the argument even begins. The account’s bio carried a line from B.R. Ambedkar, “Educate, Agitate, Organise,” – before it was removed – which presented, evidently, as the spirit animating the campaign. It is hard to imagine a more complete inversion of what that phrase was meant to do. Ambedkar issued it to the very communities that reservation exists to protect, as an instruction for building collective power against a system stacked against them.

He was, not incidentally, also the principal architect of constitutional reservation itself. An account campaigning to dismantle his signature achievement, while quoting his most famous call to arms as its own mission statement, has not so much misread Ambedkar as run his words backwards.

That confusion turns out to be the whole story. RHA is being sold as something new – a fresh generation, fed up with a broken meritocracy, finally saying what previous generations were too timid to say. It is not new. The demand to “remove reservation” is one of the oldest, most recycled slogans in independent India’s political life, and it has failed, in more or less identical form, every single time it has been tried – against Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST) quotas as much as Other Backward Classes (OBC) ones, in state after state, for nearly fifty years before Gen Z existed as a demographic category.

Before Mandal: A fight older than the word “OBC”

The template was set in the late 1970s. In 1978, Bihar’s socialist chief minister Karpoori Thakur implemented 26% reservation for backward classes, based on the Mungeri Lal Commission – the first major state-level rollout of its kind in north India. It triggered a destructive anti-reservation movement, with upper-caste protestors, including some allied to his own coalition partners, taking to the streets against him. The quota outlasted his tenure; Thakur lost the chief ministership within a year.

Three years later, in 1981, a movement erupted aimed squarely at SC and ST quotas rather than backward-class ones. Ahmedabad saw India’s first big anti-reservation agitation, triggered by a state government move to raise reserved medical college seats for SCs and STs. It turned violent quickly, with Dalit students and neighbourhoods bearing the brunt of the backlash – an early, ugly template for what “antireservation” mobilisation would come to mean on the ground: not abstract policy debate, but targeted intimidation of the communities the policy served.

In December 1989, a separate wave of protest broke out in Uttar Pradesh, this time against Parliament’s routine decision to extend reserved SC/ST legislative seats for another ten years – a renewal that had never before drawn street opposition. Both agitations fizzled without altering the underlying quotas.

Then, in 1985, Gujarat erupted again, this time over a further hike in the OBC quota under chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki. What began as boycotts and marches by upper-caste students spiralled into months of rioting between February and August, killing well over a hundred people, before curdling into communal violence against Ahmedabad’s Muslim residents, who had played no role in the reservation dispute at all. The army patrolled the city; curfews ran for weeks; Solanki was forced to resign. The quota hike stood regardless.

1990 and 2006: Bigger stages, identical outcome

Then came 1990, the moment anti-reservation politics entered the national bloodstream in earnest. Prime minister V.P. Singh’s implementation of the Mandal Commission’s 27% OBC quota in central government jobs set off an agitation that spread across north India, marked by the self-immolation attempt of Delhi University student Rajeev Goswami – his image still invoked today by both sides of the debate. Dozens of copycat attempts reportedly followed, some fatal. The reservation survived regardless. The Supreme Court’s 1992 verdict in Indra Sawhney upheld it, adding only a creamy-layer exclusion and a 50% ceiling as concessions.

Sixteen years later, the argument resurfaced almost unchanged. When the government moved to extend 27% OBC reservation to the IITs, IIMs and AIIMS in 2006, a new organisation called Youth for Equality sprang up almost overnight, drawing medical students, engineers and general-category doctors into one of the most disruptive protest waves independent India had seen.

AIIMS doctors struck work, reducing hospitals to emergency services only; nearly a hundred thousand people rallied in Delhi; blockades shut down roads and rail lines across three metros for weeks. The protestors demanded a rollback, a white paper, merit-based alternatives to caste quotas. The Supreme Court instead upheld the quota in 2008, with additional seats added to protect general-category numbers rather than shrink them. Youth for Equality still exists today, now largely as a legal and political lobby rather than a street movement – itself a quiet admission that the agitation route did not work.

Numbers don’t lie

There is a structural reason none of these movements – 1978, 1981, 1985, 1989, 1990, 2006 — have ever succeeded: reservation is not a policy preference that a hashtag, or even a riot, can talk a government out of. It rests on constitutional protection, a court-enforced ceiling upheld across decades of litigation, and a cross-party political consensus that no electoral coalition has found worth breaking, whatever its private sympathies. Every time an anti-reservation campaign has gathered visible pace, a far larger counter-mobilisation has followed within days, not years, because reservation is tied to the political identity and material stake of hundreds of millions of Indians. One popular response to RHA’s overnight follower spike put the arithmetic plainly: for every lakh who want reservation gone, crores will show up to defend it.

Counter-mobilisation arrived within a day

The 2026 instalment has now supplied its own case study, and it has run true to form. RHA had sought permission for a demonstration at Jantar Mantar, and on August 21, Delhi Police instead issued a no-objection certificate for the alternative venue of Ramlila Maidan, capping the crowd at 500 people until 4 pm. Organisers cried foul, calling it a deliberate attempt to shrink their numbers. Hundreds of protesters – drawn, by their own account, from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan among other states — showed up at Jantar Mantar anyway and refused to budge even after the Ramlila permission window lapsed. By evening the standoff had escalated: Rapid Action Force personnel were deployed, and over fifty protesters were detained, with traffic diverted around Sansad Marg, Tolstoy Road and Ashoka Road for hours.

The demands articulated at the site – laid out by Ajeet Bharti, who addressed the crowd – were a government white paper on nearly eight decades of quota policy, a “quota within quota” so benefits reach the most deprived within reserved communities, strengthening of Economically Weaker Section (EWS) reservation, and minimum qualifying marks for reserved-category candidates. Other protesters went further, demanding a “one family, one reservation” rule and withdrawal of the UGC’s 2026 caste-equity directives – closer, whatever the semantic hair-splitting, to the abolitionist reading the campaign’s own name invites.

The counter-mobilisation arrived within a day, exactly as the arithmetic above predicts. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav both framed the Jantar Mantar mobilisation as an assault on constitutionally guaranteed SC/ST/OBC reservation. By August 24, Union Minister Chirag Paswan had delivered the government’s own rebuttal in unusually blunt terms, calling reservation a constitutional right no power on earth can abolish, and pointing to continuing caste-based humiliation – Dalit grooms still barred from wedding-procession horses, a Dalit leader’s stage still “purified” after his visit – as evidence the underlying problem hasn’t gone away. RHA, for its part, claimed on August 22, that the government had agreed to talks and that a minister would meet protesters personally – the same face-saving off-ramp virtually every one of its predecessor movements eventually took.

RHA also skips over what actually brought people onto the streets in the first place, and that omission is the tell. The CJP’s protests were about something specific and recent – a NEET examination scandal, a minister seen as unaccountable, an exam system that today’s students experience as rigged by coaching-centre capital and administrative failure, not by their classmates from reserved categories.

Turning that anger toward reservation isn’t a continuation of the youth movement. It is a hijacking of it, substituting a fifty-year-old argument that has never once won for the fresh, generation-specific grievance that actually filled the streets, and doing so under the borrowed authority of a thinker whose entire political project was to make that argument impossible to win.

Viral campaigns rise fast and vanish faster when the argument underneath them doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. RHA has the follower count of a trending hashtag, a bio quote it has fundamentally misread, a single Friday’s worth of detentions and traffic diversions passed off as a movement, and the record of every decade since the 1970s standing against it. History suggests it will have the shelf life of both – a brief surge of shares and outrage, followed by the quiet realisation that nothing about the underlying arithmetic, legal architecture, or political coalition around reservation has moved even slightly.

The post The ‘Reservation Hatao Andolan’ Isn’t a Gen Z Uprising. It’s a Rerun appeared first on SabrangIndia.

But to reduce the events to a story of “students versus police” would obscure the larger crisis. The agitation is rooted in a much deeper and longstanding grievance over recruitment delays, examination irregularities, alleged paper leaks, the changing format of competitive examinations and a lack of confidence in the State’s recruitment machinery.

The violence on August 25 is therefore not an isolated law-and-order episode. It is the latest flashpoint in a protest movement that has been building for weeks — and one that has also produced disturbing allegations of excessive and abusive use of State power.

A protest over jobs, examinations and a system students no longer trust

Students have been holding a sit-in at Patna’s Gardanibagh since August 18. More than a dozen student and youth organisations have joined the agitation, with demands extending across the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC), Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC), teacher recruitment and other government examinations.

At the centre of the immediate dispute is the fourth Teacher Recruitment Examination, or TRE-4. Students want the examination to be conducted in a single stage rather than the proposed preliminary-and-main format. They are also demanding the removal of negative marking, greater transparency in recruitment examinations and 100% domicile-based recruitment in government jobs and teacher appointments.

The scale of the recruitment opportunity is significant. The BPSC announced that TRE-4 would cover 32,388 teaching posts. According to The Indian Express, the proposed examination is expected to be held in December 2026 or January 2027, with applications scheduled from September 1 to September 30.  Students have also demanded cancellation of the 70th BPSC examination over alleged irregularities and a paper leak. The BPSC has rejected these allegations, saying that material circulated online was fake. It has also denied allegations of discrimination against Hindi-medium candidates..

Protester Vikas Bhatt, speaking to the media, pointed to the long delays in recruitment for posts such as librarians and the absence of regular examination calendars for several recruitment bodies. The New Indian Express reported his allegation that some recruitment processes announced through the BSSC had remained pending for years. The question confronting the Bihar government is consequently not merely whether students are willing to accept its assurances. It is whether the State has given them sufficient reason to trust those assurances.

The August 25 confrontation

On August 25, more than 1,500 students backed by 17 student organisations marched from the JP Roundabout near Gandhi Maidan under a call to “gherao” the Chief Minister’s residence, according to The Indian Express.  Police had erected barricades at Dak Bungalow Chowk to prevent the protesters from proceeding further. Students pushed through the barricades, leading to a confrontation with the police. The State responded with water cannons and a lathi-charge. Several students were detained. Two police personnel were also injured in the confrontation, according to The Telegraph, which reported that around 25 students were detained and later released without formal charges.

Other reports said students threw stones and that a police officer and a woman constable were injured. The violence cannot be ignored or excused: protesters who attack police personnel or damage public property must be held accountable through lawful procedures. But that does not settle the question of the State’s response.

A democratic government does not acquire unlimited authority merely because a protest becomes disorderly. The use of force must remain lawful, necessary and proportionate. The existence of barricades and a restricted area cannot by itself transform every protesting student into a threat requiring a coercive response.

The images from Patna — students facing lines of police personnel and water cannons — are particularly stark because the protesters were not demanding an overthrow of the constitutional order. They were demanding jobs, recruitment dates, examination reforms and accountability.

When the language of the State becomes dismissive

The confrontation was preceded by another controversy that exposed the widening distance between the administration and the protesters. BPSC Examination Controller Rajesh Kumar Singh, while responding to questions about the agitation, quoted the Hindi proverb: “Haathi chale bazaar, kutta bhaunke hazaar.” Protesters interpreted the remark as comparing them to barking dogs.

Singh subsequently expressed regret and said the statement had been taken out of context. But the Bihar government went further and suspended him following the controversy, according to The New Indian Express.  The suspension is significant. An official responsible for an examination system under intense public scrutiny cannot afford to speak about protesting candidates in language that can reasonably be understood as contemptuous or humiliating. Even if the proverb was not intended literally, the choice of language was extraordinarily insensitive given the circumstances. There is an important democratic principle here: the State must not dehumanise the citizen before it attempts to manage the protest. The students are not an inconvenience to be ignored until the barricades have to be erected. They are citizens raising grievances against institutions that exercise enormous power over their futures.

A much darker story lies behind the August protests

The allegations surrounding police conduct in Bihar go beyond what happened on August 25. A public hearing convened by the Bihar unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on August 22 documented testimonies concerning police action during protests between July 21 and July 27.

According to the account published by Counterview, the hearing recorded 19 direct testimonies and allegations spanning physical assault, illegal detention, custodial torture, raids on homes, sexual violence against women protesters and other forms of intimidation. The allegations were made by protesters and activists and should be independently investigated rather than treated as established judicial findings.  The allegations are deeply disturbing. PUCL’s public hearing reportedly documented claims of targeted lathi-charges, police firing, the use of firearms, custodial abuse and violations during arrests and detention. Some testimonies also alleged that women were subjected to misogynistic abuse and physical assault.

There were also allegations concerning raids on homes. According to the report of the hearing, families claimed that police entered residences at night, assaulted residents, damaged property and subjected women to degrading treatment.

These are not allegations that a democratic government can simply dismiss as the inevitable excesses of policing. If even a fraction of these claims is true, the matter goes far beyond “crowd control”. It becomes a question of systemic abuse of police power. The PUCL hearing also raised allegations of discriminatory treatment of Muslims, Scheduled Caste persons, women and activists associated with CPI(ML), as well as allegations involving minors being detained without being produced before the appropriate authorities within legally prescribed timelines. These claims require independent verification and, if substantiated, prosecution and institutional accountability.

Even lawyers allegedly became targets

Perhaps the most alarming allegations concern those attempting to provide legal assistance to protesters. According to the PUCL public hearing account, two PUCL lawyer-members who were providing pro bono assistance to detained protesters were themselves allegedly confined and booked on charges that included liquor consumption and obstructing police duties. They were reportedly handcuffed and paraded in public.

If independently established, such conduct would strike at the heart of the right to legal representation and the functioning of the criminal justice system. Lawyers representing arrested protesters cannot be treated as extensions of the protest movement merely because they are providing legal assistance. A State that intimidates legal aid provider’s risk transforming access to justice itself into a casualty of protest policing.

PUCL has consequently demanded an independent investigation into police action between July 21 and July 27, including allegations of illegal detention, custodial torture, use of firearms and the alleged targeting of its lawyer-members. It has also sought withdrawal of 64 FIRs filed against protesting students and compensation for those injured in firing in Siwan. These demands should not be dismissed as political rhetoric. They warrant an impartial investigation capable of establishing what actually happened.

Detailed report may be read here.

The State cannot answer institutional failure with police power

The central contradiction in Bihar is difficult to miss. The students are protesting because they believe recruitment processes are unreliable. The government’s response has been to insist that their concerns have been addressed while simultaneously deploying a large police presence to prevent them from marching.

On August 25, the government announced the launch of Vidyarthi Sahyog Shivir, student support camps to be held on the fourth Tuesday of every month, along with an online grievance portal and helpline 1100. The stated purpose is to allow students to place their grievances directly before government officials.  Dialogue is welcome. But a grievance mechanism cannot become a substitute for substantive accountability.

Related:

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

The post Water Cannons Instead of Answers: Bihar’s recruitment crisis and the state’s crackdown on protest appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The investigation, released on August 26, draws on witness testimony as well as video and photographic material examined and verified by Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab. According to the organisation, its findings show the use of pellet-firing shotguns, tear gas launchers and grenades, batons, electric shock devices and firearms against protesters between July 20 and July 24 in Delhi and Siwan, Bihar. Amnesty says the manner in which these weapons were deployed breached international human rights standards as well as domestic policing guidelines.

The findings directly challenge the Delhi Police’s public account of the crackdown. Delhi Police had denied allegations of disproportionate force and described its handling of the protest as “professional”, including before the Supreme Court. Amnesty, however, says the evidence it verified contradicts that version of events.

For Amnesty International India Chair Aakar Patel, the episode represents something more serious than a conventional crowd-control operation. He described the authorities’ response as beginning with restrictions on communication, movement and assembly before escalating into what he called unnecessary or excessive force against peaceful protesters, including children. The organisation has characterised the response as “state-sanctioned violence masked as crowd control” and has pointed to the absence of accountability a month later as evidence of continuing impunity.

Evidence of pellet firing

One of the most serious findings concerns the use of shotguns capable of firing pellet ammunition. Amnesty’s Evidence Lab verified 17 videos filmed in central Delhi on July 20, covering areas around Jantar Mantar, Sansad Marg and Connaught Place, as well as two videos from Siwan in Bihar recorded on July 24. The Delhi footage was found to show personnel belonging to the Delhi Police, Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

Two videos verified by Amnesty show an RAF officer firing a shotgun into a crowd at the Connaught Place–Sansad Marg intersection. Two other verified videos show protesters near the same location with injuries consistent with birdshot wounds. Amnesty also verified CCTV footage showing two RAF officers carrying shotguns elsewhere in the area.

The significance of the finding lies in the nature of the ammunition. Birdshot consists of multiple small metal pellets and is inherently inaccurate, Amnesty says, creating a serious risk not only to the intended target but also to bystanders. The organisation states that birdshot has been associated with deaths and blindness in other contexts and argues that it has no legitimate place in law enforcement.

A protester interviewed by Amnesty described being struck from behind while attempting to flee. According to the testimony, the individual sustained approximately 25 to 30 pellet wounds and required hospital treatment. The protester said doctors confirmed that the injuries were caused by pellets and that the incident had left extensive scarring.

The alleged absence of a warning is also significant. India’s Bureau for Police Research and Development guidelines recommend that security forces warn protesters before deploying less-lethal or lethal force. International standards similarly require law-enforcement agencies to exhaust non-violent means wherever possible and issue a clear warning before resorting to force when circumstances permit. Amnesty says the protester it interviewed reported receiving no warning before the pellet firing.

The allegations had previously been rejected by Delhi Police, which described reports of pellet injuries as “Fake News” and called them “completely false and misleading”. The police also warned that legal action could be taken against those allegedly spreading rumours.

However, the Amnesty investigation comes alongside other reporting cited in the organisation’s findings. The Hindu reported that an RAF unit fired two ballistic cartridges loaded with plastic pellets on the evening of July 20 on the orders of a Deputy Commissioner of Police. An internal CRPF inquiry reportedly found that RAF personnel had fired at least seven rounds containing metal pellets. An RTI response cited by The Hindu indicated that at least ten people were injured by pellets during the protests.

Tear gas used against protesters

Amnesty’s investigation also raises concerns about how tear gas was deployed. One verified video shows a tear gas grenade landing close to a group of protesters and exploding with a heavy blast. Amnesty says another verified sequence showed the grenade exploding immediately after landing near protesters, with one person attempting to escape before being thrown to the ground.

Eyewitnesses told Amnesty that tear gas grenades were fired directly towards protesters rather than being launched at an angle above their heads. The organisation says this is inconsistent with UN guidance on less-lethal weapons. More fundamentally, Amnesty argues that the use of tear gas should be restricted to situations involving widespread and serious violence. While acknowledging that there were isolated incidents of protesters throwing stones, it says the available evidence does not indicate violence on a scale that would meet that threshold.

This distinction is crucial. Crowd-control powers are not unlimited simply because a protest becomes difficult to manage. The question is whether the force used is necessary and proportionate to the threat actually posed. Amnesty’s findings suggest that, in several instances, the authorities crossed that line.

Lathis, including against peaceful protesters

The investigation further documents what Amnesty describes as frequent misuse of long, flexible batons, or lathis. The organisation verified eight videos showing Delhi Police and RAF personnel striking protesters, including a young boy who, according to Amnesty, offered no provocation or resistance. In some instances, officers allegedly struck people indiscriminately across different parts of their bodies. One verified video shows a man who had been knocked to the ground being repeatedly struck while he was unable to move or pose an apparent threat.

Amnesty notes that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has described such long flexible batons as inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading because they can deliver greater kinetic force than conventional batons, increasing the risk of serious injury. The investigation also identifies another accountability concern: the presence of plain-clothes men participating in beatings.

In at least two verified videos, men in plain clothes—including some wearing black helmets marked “Delhi Police”—are seen beating protesters with lathis. Uniformed officers appear to escort them towards the crowd but do not intervene, according to Amnesty. The organisation also points to the apparent absence of visible identification such as name tags or badge numbers, which it says violates the principle that law-enforcement officials must be identifiable during encounters involving the use of force.

Electric shock weapons under scrutiny

Amnesty also verified a video showing an RAF officer using an electric shock baton against a peaceful protester. The organisation argues that direct-contact electric shock devices cause severe pain without necessarily incapacitating a person and that there are less harmful alternatives available to law enforcement. Amnesty, together with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has called for their complete prohibition because of the risks of severe suffering, psychological harm, lasting disability and, in cases of prolonged use, death.

The finding therefore adds another layer to the concerns raised by the report: the issue is not simply the quantity of force used, but the choice of weapons and methods deployed against people participating in an assembly.

An assault rifle in Siwan

Perhaps the most alarming footage examined by Amnesty comes not from Delhi but from Siwan, Bihar. Two videos filmed on July 24 and verified by Amnesty show a state police officer firing an AK-type assault rifle towards protesters. Amnesty notes that such firearms are designed to kill and, under international standards governing assemblies, may only be used where there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury to a specific individual and only as an absolute last resort. The organisation says it found no evidence that such a threat existed in the incident examined.

The report says authorities have made no public commitment to investigate or prosecute officers involved in the alleged use of firearms, birdshot, tear gas, lathis and electric shock weapons. Amnesty is calling for a prompt, impartial and effective investigation, with the findings made public. It has specifically demanded an immediate end to the deployment of birdshot ammunition and direct-contact electric shock devices.

The crackdown began before the first baton was raised

The Amnesty investigation also places the use of force within the wider restrictions imposed on the “Chalo Sansad” march. Authorities denied permission for the march, imposed an internet shutdown around the proposed protest areas, prohibited gatherings of more than five people, closed several Delhi Metro stations and erected barricades across central Delhi.

Amnesty argues that these measures themselves raise serious freedom-of-assembly concerns. Under international human rights law, peaceful assemblies are not supposed to depend on prior permission. Where notification requirements exist, their purpose should be to allow authorities to facilitate an assembly rather than provide a mechanism for restricting it. The organisation further argues that the prohibitory orders effectively amounted to a blanket ban on the march and failed the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality. It reaches a similar conclusion regarding the blanket internet shutdown imposed around the protest.

This is an important aspect of Amnesty’s findings. The report does not examine the July 20 violence simply as an isolated confrontation between protesters and police. It places the physical use of force within a broader sequence of restrictions—communication blackouts, movement restrictions, barricading, transport disruption and prohibitory orders—that had already narrowed the space for protest.

More than 400 injured

The scale of the confrontation was substantial. According to Delhi Police, more than 400 people, including police personnel and protesters, were injured. Amnesty also notes that at least three people were injured in Siwan, including a bystander who was shot and sustained a bullet wound to the neck. The report’s findings therefore raise questions extending beyond individual incidents captured on camera. If hundreds were injured during the police response, and if independently verified footage shows the deployment of weapons in circumstances Amnesty considers unlawful, the central question becomes one of institutional accountability: who authorised the force, who carried it out, who monitored it, and who is responsible for investigating it? A month after the events, Amnesty says there has been no public commitment from the authorities to investigate or prosecute officers involved.

Amnesty places the July events against the longer history of pellet-gun use by Indian authorities. The organisation has previously documented extensive injuries, including blindness and deaths, linked to the use of birdshot-loaded shotguns for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir. A committee established by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2016 to consider alternatives recommended restricting the use of such weapons to the “rarest of rare cases”, although it did not recommend a complete prohibition.

In 2018, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called on India to end the use of pellet-firing shotguns for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir. A petition seeking to decommission the use of pellet-firing shotguns by law-enforcement agencies for policing assemblies was also filed before the Supreme Court in July 2026. The Delhi allegations therefore revive a longstanding question about whether weapons that have caused severe and sometimes permanent injuries in crowd-control situations should be used at all.

From “crowd control” to accountability

The central thrust of Amnesty International’s investigation is ultimately about the limits of state power. The State unquestionably has a responsibility to protect people, maintain public order and respond to violence. But policing a protest does not give authorities an unrestricted licence to use force. International standards require force to be lawful, necessary and proportionate, with lethal force reserved for exceptional circumstances involving an imminent threat to life or serious injury.

Amnesty’s evidence raises questions on each of those fronts. Its investigation alleges pellet firing into crowds, tear gas deployed directly at protesters, repeated baton strikes against people who were not resisting, the use of an electric shock device against a peaceful protester and the firing of an assault rifle in Siwan. It also documents restrictions on communication and assembly before and during the protest.

The significance of the report lies not merely in its catalogue of weapons. It is the combination of restriction, force and apparent absence of accountability that makes the findings particularly troubling. The Delhi Police has maintained that its handling of the protest was professional. Amnesty’s investigation reaches a sharply different conclusion, backed by 19 videos it says its Evidence Lab verified across Delhi and Siwan, alongside witness testimony and photographic evidence.

The complete report may be viewed here.

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Bihar: Not just Delhi, Patna, Siwan too saw brute police violence against demonstrating students: PUCL

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The post Amnesty Investigation finds unlawful and deadly force against CJP-led protesters in Delhi and Siwan appeared first on SabrangIndia.

To date, the issue of police brutality that has received national attention is the barbarity displayed in the capital of Delhi on July 20. Reports on this aspect of overt police misconduct may be read here, here and here. However, the conduct of the state police in another BJP-ruled state like Bihar has received scant attention.

Following newspaper reports of this brutality in Patna and Siwan, the PUCL’s Bihar Unit constituted a fact-finding team to investigate the cases of police firing and bullet injuries sustained by students, custodial torture of students resulting in severe hearing loss sustained by a student, and intimidation acts of the police. The team visited Siwan on the August 15 and 16 and met all the injured victims of either police firing or custodial torture. It also came across cases of intimidation by police, house raids, and damage to property and beating, profiling of victims on the lines of caste and religion, and attempts to destroy evidence. This report is also being prepared. Similarly, PUCL acted on a complaint regarding police brutality unleashed on the students of a welfare hostel in Sitamarhi, where a day before the July 22 protests, the police entered the hostel and brutally beat students. This incident is currently under investigation.

Thereafter, on August 22, at the IMA Hall, Gandhi Maidan. Patna, a public hearing was conducted to record testimonies and first person accounts of the statewide police brutality between July 21-25 in several locations of the state. The report was released today. This was a part of the human rights platform’s decision post July 25 to comprehensively document cases of police brutality, violating the human rights of Indian citizens guaranteed by the law, PUCL decided to hold a public hearing so that the voices of the victims could be captured and incorporated in its report.

As mentioned above, the public hearing was organised on 22 August 2026 at the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Hall, South-East Gandhi Maidan, Patna. Over one hundred people participated, comprising mostly students, PUCL members, and civil society activists. Most students belonged to organisations such as AISA, AISF, Disha Chhatra Sangathan, and NSUI. One student activist, and a victim of police violence as well, belonged to Chhatra RJD. A panel, comprising Basant Chaudhary (senior advocate, Patna High Court), Sudha Varghese (Padma Shri awardee, social worker), Arshad Ajman (social activist), and Pranav Chaudhary (former Assistant Editor of the Times of India, Patna edition), presided over the proceedings. A total of 19 victims of police brutality presented their testimonies. Of these 19 victims of police violence, a recorded video testimony of Bullet Kumar Gond, an ST youth from Siwan district, was presented as his bullet injuries and subsequent intramedullary nailing did not permit travel.

Based on the testimonies during the public hearing, also supported by the fact-findings in Siwan and Patna, the following types of cases of police brutality, seriously infringing upon human rights of the protesters, were recorded:

1. Brutal lathi charge deliberately targeting students to injure them. In some cases, beating of students happened outside the sites of protests or at the timings of the bandh call.
2. Hitting girl protesters on their private parts.
3. Firing directly on students, without any warning or immediate provocations, resulting in several cases of bullet injuries. In some instances, those injured by bullets were further beaten up.
4. Using a firearm as lethal as the AK-47 on students, though this firearm is not supposed to be used on protesting citizens.
5. Custodial torture of students by the police, resulting in injuries, loss of hearing, etc.
6. Illegal detention of students without presenting them before a magistrate within 24 hours.
7. Detained students’ families not informed of their whereabouts, thus denying the students the support of their families and lawyers.
8. Students sent to judicial custody without informing them of the charges against them or providing them with a copy of the FIR.
9. Students sent to judicial custody without access to a lawyer to defend them before the magistrate.
10. Destruction of evidence by police, such as seizing students’ and passerby citizens’ mobile phones to destroy video recordings related to the use of force by them.
11. Raiding students’ and activists’ homes in the dead of night without any search warrant. Beating of residents, damaging household items, abusing women, including older women, and infringing the right to privacy by checking mobile and personal belongings.
12. Making misogynist remarks against girls during home raids and in custody. For example, family members being warned that the girl will not find a groom if she participates in protests along with boys.
13. Obstructing an officer of the court (advocate on record of the Patna High Court) in discharging his duty to represent his client, filing FIRs against two lawyers in unsubstantiated charges of liquor consumption and another charge of obstructing the police officer in discharging their duty, parading them handcuffed in public, and leaking their arrest memo photos to the media.
14. Custodialisation and beating of citizens who were passersby at that moment. One such passerby was hit by a bullet fired by police in Siwan.
15. Even minors kept in police custody, not presented before the Child Welfare Committee and the JJ Board.
16. Calling students terrorists. Threatening protesters during their custody of imposing UAPA and making them suffer like Umar Khalid.
17. Profiling of arrested protesters on religious and caste lines, and differential treatment with them based on these lines. In particular, Muslims, SCs, women, and CPI (ML) activists were harshly treated.

The panellists were unanimous in their opinion that the testimonies made the entire state culpable and, rather than calling it merely police brutality, it should be called state brutality or state repression. It is only when the government decides to crush a movement that the police unleash their brutality ruthlessly.

Hence, the PUCL seeks accountability of the state for human rights violations.

Demands of the PUCL, Bihar

Towards the end of the public hearing, PUCL Bihar Unit presented a charter of demands and also announced its future action plan. The key demands are as follows:

• An independent and impartial investigation into the police actions starting from 21 July to July 27, 2026, including but not limited to the use of firearms in Siwan and Jehanabad, brutal lathi charge against protesters throughtout the state, illegal detention, custodial torture, violations of legal provisions while remanding the detained protestors to judicial custody, harassment of activists even after the protests were over, and mistreatment of two lawyer members of PUCL and imposition of false cases against them. The inquiry should also include brutal police action inside the welfare hostel in Sitamarhi on the evening of July 21.
• Fixing accountability for police brutality and stern punitive action against police officials at various levels who violated the rights of protesters and other victims.
• Fast-tracking the process to withdraw all 64 FIRs against protesting students. Identification and withdrawal of cases filed even after 6 pm on 26 July if they are related to the protests and Bihar bandh, and also related to the protests filed by private individuals against the protesters.
• Adequate compensation for all persons injured in the Siwan firing, commensurate with the nature and seriousness of their injuries.
• Protection of the constitutional right to peaceful protest, so that students, activists and ordinary citizens are not subjected to violence merely for raising their voices.
• Review of the police manual and police training and suitable changes therein so that police are sensitive about civil rights and regulating the protesting crowd, and do not resort to brutal methods.

Background: It was on July 25, several PUCL members raised their worries after watching and reading the news about Bihar police’s brutal action against protesting students in Patna and other parts of the state. Hundreds of student protesters and others were detained in several police stations, and some were even sent to judicial custody. There was also news of injuries sustained by several protesters due to lathi charge, police firing, and tear gas shelling. Police picked some students and youth activists from their homes. Some non-participating youth who just happened to pass by the site of protests were picked up by the police and detained or sent to jail. We also received news of the beating of some students in police custody.

It is in these circumstances that the PUCL Bihar Unit decided to play an active role in providing immediate legal support to detained or jailed protesters and other youth and, for this purpose, collaborated with the Jan Nyay Abhiyan in Patna and other districts. A group of lawyers worked day and night to identify detained or jailed protesters, file their bail petitions, meet those in police custody to assess their physical condition and needs, and accompany them when police presented them before a judicial magistrate. While performing this important role of a human rights defender and also as officers of the court, two of the PUCL lawyer members were kept in illegal confinement and implicated in false cases. Currently, they are on bail.

Action Plan

All testimonies and remarks by the panellists, as well as fact-finding reports, will form an important part of a detailed report on state repression unleashed on protesting students. PUCL sees this report as a useful tool for seeking justice for the victims. The report will be submitted to relevant government offices, commissions, legislative committees, courts, police and judicial training institutions, academic institutions, and other civil rights organisations. The full report will be printed and disseminated, and its summary will be sent for publication to newspapers, news portals, magazines and journals.

On the legal front, PUCL plans to hold a meeting with prominent lawyers to explore the possibility of filing a writ in the High Court and/or other actions, as per their advice. Together with Jan Nyay Abhiyan, PUCL will also monitor the withdrawal of 64 FIRs related to student protests, as per the government’s announcement. Moreover, there are still cases filed by private individuals or the police but not listed in the 64 FIRs.

An invitation was received during the public hearing to conduct a similar public hearing in Jehanabad on the use of firearms and other brutal methods employed by the police against protesters. The PUCL has stated that it will pursue the invitation and also explore the possibility of organising public hearings in Siwan and Sitamarhi.

Related:

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

The post Bihar: Not just Delhi, Patna, Siwan too saw brute police violence against demonstrating students: PUCL appeared first on SabrangIndia.