Two Protests, Different Government, Two Different Responses

When thousands of students gathered at Jantar Mantar this June and July, demanding accountability for a leaked NEET paper and irregularities in board examinations, the government’s playbook of negotiation came after the violence that happened on the day of the march towards Parliament on 20 July.

When students in Ranchi took to the streets this August over alleged irregularities in the Jharkhand Public Service Commission’s civil services exam, the government’s playbook of negotiation only came after the use of batons and tear gas.

Both protests were about the same thing, at their core: young Indians who no longer trust the institutions and believe that changes are needed.

The government’s two responses, side by side, raise an uncomfortable question. Is India actually reforming its examination system, or has it simply learned which protests to negotiate with and which to disperse?

Delhi Protest and Negotiations

The Delhi story looks, on paper, like a win for peaceful protest.

The Cockroach Janta Party, a movement that began as online satire, brought a hunger strike, a sit-in, and eventually tens of thousands of demonstrators to the capital.

After talks with Union Ministers JP Nadda and Jitendra Singh, the government agreed to a three-point charter: the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, compensation of one crore rupees for the families of more than twenty students who had died by suicide following exam cancellations, and the withdrawal of cases against peaceful protesters.

Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on 25 July. The movement declared victory and went home.

Look closer, though, and the picture is less tidy.

The compensation and the FIR withdrawals were ‘assurances’, not completed actions, and CJP itself later said the government had not fully honoured them.

The talks that produced these promises came only after security forces had already used baton charges and tear gas against protesters trying to march towards Parliament, and after mobile internet was suspended at the protest site.

So, even Delhi’s negotiated settlement sat on top of a foundation of force.

The difference was that in Delhi, the concessions came fast enough, and visibly enough, to let the government call it a resolution.

Jharkhand Protest and Delayed Talks

Jharkhand has not had that luxury.

Students protesting alleged irregularities in the JPSC exam, including unreleased cut-off marks and an unsigned merit list, began their agitation without the kind of national media spotlight that followed Sonam Wangchuk’s fast in Delhi.

For over two weeks, the response was water cannons, lathi charges and barricades, not Ministers at a negotiating table.

Talks did eventually happen, six rounds of them, but concessions came slowly and only partially.

The government agreed to cancel the JPSC exam, but has refused, so far, to hand the matter to the CBI, citing judicial oversight of the process.

The exam that they were protesting was cancelled, but the accountability they are demanding has not arrived. This is where the old safety valve theory, which was given by Lala Lajpat Rai, becomes useful, not as a history lesson, but as a lens.

The theory, first applied to describe why the Britishers in India tolerated and even encouraged the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885, held that a controlled outburst for political frustration is safer for a government than no outburst at all. This contained dissent, channelled through talks, committees and concessions, which further let off pressure and anger among the people without forcing real structural change.

Seen this way, Delhi’s resignation and compensation promise look less like reform and more like release valves: visible enough to defuse a national story, cheap enough not to touch the underlying machinery of how India conducts its exams.

Reform Beyond Political Concessions

Jharkhand complicates that issue in an important way. If safety valves are simply a tool of governance, they should have opened in Ranchi too. They did not, not quickly, and not without force first.

That suggests the valve does not open for every protest equally. It opens where the cameras are, where a hunger strike draws international coverage, and where the optics of repression threaten to cost more than the concessions would.

Students marching in a state capital, without Wangchuk or a satirical online movement behind them, had to face stricter measures in the form of severe injuries and barricades of barbed wire.

To be fair to the government’s position, there is a real legal distinction between the two cases.

A Minister’s resignation is a political decision that can happen overnight.

Cancelling an exam conducted under judicial supervision, with appointments already made on the basis of its results, is a more complicated legal undertaking, and the government’s caution here is not purely distrustful.

Reform of entrenched examination bodies takes longer than a single cycle, and it is fair to ask protesters, as much as governments, what a realistic timeline for structural change actually looks like.

The Real Test Ahead

But that legal distinction cannot fully explain why authorities used force differently.

The occurrence of two protests back to back clearly indicates that our examination system needs some urgent reforms, which cannot happen overnight.

The measure of Pradhan’s resignation is not at the centre of the stake; it has already happened, or the CJP’s fourth round of talks, which is still to come.

The real test will be whether the government delivers the promised compensation, withdraws the FIRs, and gives Jharkhand’s students the independent probe they seek.

Until then, both protests are still open questions, not closed victories, and the safety valve, however it looks from the outside, has not yet released the pressure it claims to.

---

Anurag Kakkar

Also Read: ‘Nation First’ Will Guide New BJP Team, Says Amit Shah