top of page

By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Gen Z revolt leaves Modi govt scrambling

Mumbai: The recent CJP agitation at Jantar Mantar, amplified by a ferocious wave of social media backlash, has achieved what years of fragmented opposition politics could not: it has visibly shaken the highest echelons of the Narendra Modi government. For the first time in over a decade, the seemingly impenetrable fortress managed by Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah appears vulnerable. Driven by a Gen Z demographic that refuses to play by traditional political rules, the...

Gen Z revolt leaves Modi govt scrambling

Mumbai: The recent CJP agitation at Jantar Mantar, amplified by a ferocious wave of social media backlash, has achieved what years of fragmented opposition politics could not: it has visibly shaken the highest echelons of the Narendra Modi government. For the first time in over a decade, the seemingly impenetrable fortress managed by Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah appears vulnerable. Driven by a Gen Z demographic that refuses to play by traditional political rules, the movement has made the ruling dispensation’s meticulously crafted narrative look starkly outdated. The scale and intensity of the public unrest have triggered alarm bells, prompting the government to take unprecedented corrective measures. In a remarkable departure from its usual top-down approach, the Union government has officially deputed Officers on Special Duty (OSDs) to execute a massive ground-level feedback-gathering exercise. Insiders reveal that this crisis management strategy operates on multiple tiers. The government is actively seeking counsel from technology experts and content analysts to decipher exactly what went wrong and to understand the strategic advantages of the digital content generated by CJP supporters. These grassroots digital campaigns brought about a drastic, organic shift in public expression that caught the administration entirely off guard. Furthermore, officials are engaging in candid dialogues with independent, well-meaning individuals tasked with holding a mirror to the administration's failures. Professionals entrusted with coordinating these meetings admit the outcome remains uncertain, but the sheer scale of outreach marks a watershed moment for a government usually insulated from external critique. The political vacuum created by this unrest has been masterfully exploited by the opposition. Capitalizing on the opening created by the CJP protests and climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, Rahul Gandhi has seized the political advantage. By deploying an emotional narrative—particularly regarding the use of pellet guns—Gandhi has effectively targeted Amit Shah, leaving the Prime Minister cornered. The optics in Parliament have been equally jarring for the ruling party. For the first time in twelve years, fumbling, elderly figures within the BJP found themselves outmatched by the scathing, articulate assaults from Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. Armed with quick wit, finesse, and an undeniable superiority in content, the Congress leadership is dictating the terms of the debate, forcing the BJP onto the defensive. This sudden vulnerability has blown the lid off simmering discontent within the ruling party. Insiders are now openly arguing that the hyper-centralization of power by Modi and Shah is fundamentally flawed. The strategy of installing dependent "yes-men"—leaders who shine merely in borrowed light—in key state positions is backfiring spectacularly. While this iron-fisted strategy yields dividends during favourable times, the current crisis proves that an artificially sustained leadership cannot withstand a genuine storm. Many within the party lament the sidelining of softer, grassroots-connected leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan. A leader of Chouhan's calibre, possessing natural empathy and a deep understanding of the masses, could have offered a sympathetic and appealing rebuttal, contrasting sharply with the shallow, dry rhetoric currently being peddled by the party's younger, yet out-of-touch, defenders. The immediate consensus is that the party desperately needs to replace its aging heavyweights with articulate voices who can genuinely connect with an evolving electorate. Perhaps the most shocking revelation from the fallout is the catastrophic failure of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) legendary feedback and feed-forward mechanism. For decades, the RSS has served as the eyes and ears of BJP governments, but this time, the machinery completely failed to gauge the scale of the impending unrest. According to senior insiders, the root cause lies in a deep-seated rot within the RSS itself. As the organization celebrates its centenary year, it is grappling with an internal crisis. Unlike previous BJP regimes where the political arm bore the exclusive brunt of corruption allegations, the malaise has now reportedly crept into the highest echelons of the RSS leadership. This unprecedented internal decay has severed the organization's vital connection to the ground, leaving the BJP flying blind during a crucial socio-political upheaval.Despite the prevailing anxiety within the corridors of power, the newly initiated feedback-gathering exercise is being hailed as a much-needed course correction by veteran leaders within both the party and the RSS. Long-sidelined stalwarts view this desperate measure as a vindication of their long-held grievances against the centralized high command. While the designated OSDs and professionals remain cautiously optimistic about the immediate impact of their data-gathering, these old-guard insiders sense a rare opportunity. They believe that confronting the unvarnished truth from the ground might finally force a complete and necessary overhaul of the Parivar organizations, dismantling the fragile, sycophantic structures currently in place and returning the party to its grassroots origins.

Code for the Many

India wants artificial intelligence to serve development rather than deepen divides

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with his Bhutanese counterpart Tshering Tobgay in New Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with his Bhutanese counterpart Tshering Tobgay in New Delhi.

New Delhi: As the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026 enters its third day, India appears to be pressing a case that cuts against the grain of much global AI discourse. The summit has been framed by the Sanskrit maxim sarvajan hitaya, sarvajan sukhaya (for the welfare and happiness of all) and seeks to move the debate beyond safety alarms and corporate rivalry towards a more pointed question: who, exactly, should benefit from artificial intelligence. Building on its advocacy in 2023 for fairer digital and financial access for the Global South, India is now positioning itself as a steward of a more democratic, human-centric AI that is meant to narrow, rather than entrench, global and domestic inequalities.


That ambition builds on India’s posture at earlier global forums. In 2023, New Delhi argued that digital public infrastructure and concessional financing should be treated as global public goods, particularly for poorer nations. Three years on, the argument has sharpened. If AI is to shape growth, productivity and governance in the coming decades, India insists that its benefits must not mirror the inequalities of the industrial and digital revolutions before it.


This sets India apart from the dominant poles of AI power. The United States and China have raced ahead with proprietary models and compute-heavy ecosystems. India, lacking the same scale of capital or chips, has instead emphasised deployment by asking how AI can be applied cheaply, widely and with human oversight. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often argued, AI is a double-edged tool: transformative when governed well, corrosive when left to markets alone.


Stark Contrast

The contrast with earlier summits is deliberate. Britain’s 2023 meeting at Bletchley Park fixated on catastrophic risks and frontier safety. South Korea’s Seoul summit in 2024 focused on scientific cooperation to mitigate harm. France’s Paris meeting in 2025 tried to tether AI to sustainability and public interest. India’s turn is broader and more political. The question it poses is not merely how to restrain AI, but how to distribute it.


At the heart of the summit is an effort to make AI legible to ordinary citizens. Demonstrations are expected on its use in schools, hospitals, farms and welfare schemes, with particular emphasis on small towns and rural areas. The aim is to narrow what Indian officials increasingly describe as an “AI divide” between those who can exploit algorithms and those who remain invisible to them.


The economic case is straightforward. AI-driven tools can raise productivity by automating routine work, improve hiring by reducing bias, and conserve energy through smarter consumption. In education, adaptive learning systems promise to personalise instruction in overcrowded classrooms. In agriculture, predictive models can guide farmers on soil health, pests and weather, lifting incomes while improving food security. In healthcare, AI-assisted diagnostics, from cancer detection in scans to remote patient monitoring, could compensate for India’s chronic shortage of doctors, especially outside cities.


One of the summit’s most politically charged themes is road safety. India records between four and five lakh road accidents a year. According to figures cited in Parliament by Nitin Gadkari, 2024 alone saw 1.77 lakh fatalities, a third of them on national highways that make up just 2% of the road network. Officials argue that AI - through speed monitoring, pre-collision alerts and predictive traffic management - could dramatically cut deaths and emissions alike. Panels on data-driven transport policy will test how far such optimism can be translated into enforcement.


Critics note that India still struggles with patchy data quality, weak local capacity and uneven internet access. Grand visions, they warn, risk dissolving into pilot projects. Yet that is precisely why New Delhi is pressing its case internationally. By pooling models, datasets and best practices, especially among countries of the Global South, it hopes to reduce costs and avoid dependence on a handful of foreign platforms.


If successful, the IndiaAI Impact Summit will mark a shift in the global AI conversation. From fear to function; from concentration to diffusion. India is betting that the future of artificial intelligence will not be decided solely in data centres and boardrooms, but in classrooms, clinics, fields and highways. Whether the world follows is another matter. But New Delhi has made clear where it wants the argument to go.

Comments

bottom of page