The wave of youth-driven mass protests that has roiled India in recent months has inflicted serious damage on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, according to prominent education reform advocate Sonam Wangchuk, whose 26-day hunger strike became the catalyst for the growing grassroots movement.
In an interview with the BBC, the 59-year-old activist explained that a profound shift in public mood has swept the country following the demonstrations, which ultimately forced the resignation of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on July 25. Wangchuk, a veteran engineer and education specialist, noted that young Indians have emerged from the protest wave with newfound confidence: they now understand they are capable of driving meaningful change when they organize, and are no longer willing to accept unfair systemic outcomes passively.
The movement that has shaken national politics took its unusual name from a widely criticized comment by India’s Chief Justice, who infamously compared groups of unemployed young jobseekers to “cockroaches” during a public court hearing. What began as public outrage over a widespread exam paper leak quickly escalated into one of the largest displays of public dissent against Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which has held national power since 2014.
Wangchuk led the protest movement from the front, staging his hunger strike through record-breaking high temperatures in New Delhi between June and July, consuming only salt and water for 26 days. By the end of the fast, he had lost 11 kilograms, six of which he has since regained. For the final six days of his protest, he was forcibly detained by authorities and moved to a hospital, which Wangchuk describes as having functioned “more like a prison” to restrict his activism.
One day after Wangchuk ended his hunger strike, Pradhan stepped down from his cabinet post. In the aftermath of the protests, the Modi administration has announced a series of policy concessions: it has established fast-track courts to prosecute individuals linked to the exam paper leaks, appointed a prominent tech billionaire to lead a national examination system reform effort, and pledged to provide financial compensation to the families of students who died by suicide in the wake of the leak scandal.
But Wangchuk argues that India’s crisis runs far deeper than a broken examination system. For a quarter of a century, graduate unemployment has hovered between 35% and 40%, a systemic failure rooted in an outdated education model that does not align with the needs of the modern job market. Current national exams, he explains, rely heavily on multiple-choice questions designed to efficiently grade millions of test-takers, with no consideration for whether they actually measure practical skills or deep conceptual understanding. This assessment model, in turn, distorts how schools teach students, prioritizing rote memorization over applied learning.
To address the country’s persistent unemployment crisis, Wangchuk says fundamental education reform is non-negotiable. If assessments shifted to prioritize hands-on experience and aptitude for real-world work, he argues, schools would adapt their curricula and teaching methods to match. He also calls for long-term strategic planning that anticipates India’s economic and social needs 15 years from now, to ensure that young people are prepared for future jobs and that growing industries do not face widespread labor shortages. “Changing the way children are taught might help ensure they are not left unemployed and sectors that need people are not left underemployed,” he says.
The Indian government has pushed back against criticism of its economic management, arguing that claims of a widespread unemployment crisis are overstated and that the country’s core macroeconomic fundamentals remain strong. Despite the government’s policy changes after the protests, reports indicate that many activists involved in the “Cockroach” movement still face ongoing retaliation, including pending criminal court cases, routine police harassment, and coordinated abuse on social media. These repercussions continue even after India’s Supreme Court ordered authorities not to take coercive action against protesters with no prior criminal record.
Even so, Wangchuk says the movement has already made tangible progress, and a shift toward change is already underway. He argues that the Modi government has been severely damaged by the public backlash over its slow response to the protests, which in turn gave young activists space to build unity and confidence in their collective power. Wangchuk points to the BJP’s recent poor performance in three key by-elections, where the party lost two seats — including a Bihar constituency it had held for more than 30 years — as evidence that the political fallout is already being felt at the ballot box.
Wangchuk, who is now back in his hometown of Leh in the Himalayan region of Ladakh 12 days after ending his hunger strike, maintains he remains open to the government changing course. “I always believe in people realising their mistakes and amending their ways. So I would give them that chance,” he says. If the administration refuses to address the demands of the movement, however, Wangchuk warns that protests could expand beyond the issue of education reform to challenge broader government policies.
A long-time activist who previously led hunger strikes to demand greater self-rule for Ladakh and oppose development projects in ecologically sensitive Himalayan regions, Wangchuk says he remains committed to Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance. Even when his past campaigns did not immediately achieve their stated goals, he argues that self-inflicted sacrifice through hunger strike changes the government’s calculus in a way that violent confrontation never can: “inflicting pain on ourselves makes the government feel differently, compared to us using sticks and stones.”
When asked if he plans to run for public office to advance his reform goals, Wangchuk says he has no interest in holding office, preferring to support and empower the next generation of young leaders to run for office themselves.
