A WAVE of protests is sweeping across the world in a season of unrest. From West to East, the street is confronting the state. Led predominantly by students and young people, protests have been widening to encompass other disaffected groups in society. In some cases, they are morphing into a nationwide movement. On almost every continent, governments are being put on notice that there will be a price to pay for misgovernance and being indifferent to public demands.
India’s Gen Z has been in the streets in anti-government protests against the controversial revision of electoral rolls. Students in France began protesting against deteriorating school conditions with other groups, including trade unions, joining demonstrations over high living costs and inequality. In Italy, students, farmers and truckers took to the streets in protests driven by education costs, economic grievances, and anti-war sentiment. In Brussels, students marched over education funding. Spain saw protests over a housing crisis. In Albania, student-led demonstrations occurred over living costs and a controversial tourism project linked to Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. In Portugal, protests erupted over housing and falling living standards. There were education protests across Greece. In Brazil, thousands joined a student march against the election bid of far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. Tunisia’s capital witnessed protests demanding the president’s resignation and democratic rights.
The triggers vary, as do the underlying causes. Each protest is rooted in its own political context. But there are common themes. All reject the status quo and indicate disenchantment with traditional political parties. All voice anger against unresponsive governments and the state failing them on their socioeconomic demands. The context for most protests is a cost-of-living crisis and deterioration or cuts in public services compounded by the state’s inability to deliver on education and jobs. Economic grievances and resentment of inequality are a driving force of the protests. A sense of disenfranchisement is another common thread. The heavy-handed response by governments to the protests and draconian crackdowns further fuelled the unrest and sparked violent clashes in several places. But it energised demonstrators to keep returning to the street. Unfortunately, in France protests degenerated into looting and rioting.
Protests in Europe and India share a defining feature. They are propelled by a wave of student activism. At their core is youth frustration in a generation that sees broken promises and an uncertain future. It feels betrayed by the lack of educational and economic opportunities. Protesters have also been venting rage against political leaders who have ignored public needs and are seen as venal. Initiated by young people, protests have expanded into broader movements as other disaffected groups, with their own set of demands, joined the demonstrations. Social media has been a key mobilisation tool in all the protests.
Governments have been put on notice that misrule and ignoring public needs will have consequences.
None of the protests or movements have been party-led. Political parties have largely been sidelined, even as they tried to leverage the demonstrations; France’s left aligned itself with the protesters. In several European countries, protests are playing out in an environment of deep polarisation, which parties of both the left and right are trying to exploit. This is especially because elections are due next year in many countries including France, Spain, and Italy.
In India, the youth ‘Cockroach’ movement has spearheaded the protests and mounted the most significant challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government so far. The ongoing protests came against the backdrop of student protests led by the Cockroach party over the leak of exam papers in May, which forced the resignation of the education minister. This time, the catalyst was the revision of voter lists by India’s election commission, which apparently involved the removal of around 130 million voters.
The government and the election commission’s claim that this was aimed at eliminating duplicate and ineligible entries was widely rejected. It was instead seen as a step towards mass disenfranchisement. It became the trigger for youth protests, demanding the resignation of the chief election commissioner and scrapping the revision. India’s opposition parties also joined the demonstrations and decried the move as a politically motivated purge to benefit the ruling BJP.
The Cockroach Janta Party used the opportunity to broaden its campaign. The government’s strong-arm tactics to suppress the popular upsurge only inflamed the demonstrators who accused Modi of “stealing democracy”. While these protests did not pose an existential threat to Modi, his jittery and increasingly autocratic government behaved as if they did — with arrests and a harsh clampdown. The scale of the protests and the government’s repressive response eroded Modi’s authority, weakened his grip on power, and dented his credibility and image.
The mass protests signified much more than opposition to the voter roll overhaul. They have been about democratic rights and democratic accountability and against pervasive injustice. As Indian academic Sudhir Kumar Suthar has argued, they have been driven by the quest for dignity as much as for rights. The message from the young is clear: “they deserve a more dignified life than what they have received from the system so far.”
The central question is what will be the outcome of mass protests and what will they achieve? A definitive assessment has to wait until the protests play themselves out as most are still unfolding. But one unintended consequence of the current wave of discontent in some European countries, especially France but to a degree also in Spain and Portugal, may be to strengthen the far-right. The far-right has led none of these protests but it stands to benefit from their fallout.
In a political landscape where the political centre is being hollowed out and centrist parties have lost touch with young people, unrest advantages the most organised opposition force that promises order. In France, that force is Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. Where the hard-right is in power the advantage works differently. It enables governments to cast the protests as a law-and-order issue fuelled by migrants to justify harsher measures.
More generally, youth-led protests may force governments to take more seriously the needs and aspirations of young people which have rarely been a priority. What the streets are signalling is a breakdown of trust that can no longer be brushed aside. For now, the protests have put governments on notice: misrule has consequences.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.
Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2026
