After youth protests, Parliament must open its doors wider

The debate on the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill 2026 — passed by voice vote amid sloganeering in the Lok Sabha Wednesday — carried echoes of the street agitation that had raged outside the House. The over a month-long protests by students, led by the Cockroach Janta Party in the wake of the NEET examination paper leak, compelled Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. They also prodded the government to tighten the existing law, making it more stringent in terms of punishments and fines, and setting up fast-track courts that will work to defined timelines. The change of minister, and the harder law, however, are just the beginning. The momentum built by the students’ protests must not be lost — it must lead to larger and more meaningful changes in the education system, and re-energise structures of accountability and reform. And in that process, people’s representatives on both sides of the aisle must step up to the challenge — because Parliament has a crucial role to play. It is MPs’ responsibility now to ensure that the House opens its doors to let in the concerns and anxieties of the young that filled the streets till only a few days ago.

Some readings of the street protests by students have painted them as antagonistic to democratically elected people’s representatives and constitutionally mandated institutions. It is true that the students’ uprising rang with accumulated anger and resentment at the failure or inability of institutions — of government primarily, but also arguably of Opposition and Parliament — to address the crises that weigh down the education system or to assuage their apprehensions about dwindling opportunities for employment that is dignified and fulfilling. At the same time, however, the protests must be read as an appeal to those same institutions, to listen and respond, and to search for solutions. The movement on the street has made itself heard. Now Parliament must take on the hard and patient work of redesigning, correcting and finetuning educational structures and processes.

If Parliament is unable to step up to the task, if it is held back from doing so by long-playing and debilitating syndromes, like growing political polarisation and erosion of reciprocity, it would be missing an extraordinary opportunity. It has a chance to restore the trust of the young in the system. A rare possibility — of renewing and re-imagining the institution’s pact with the people — is at hand. The highest forum of democratic deliberation must not fail to seize it.