TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - As students filled India's streets to demand accountability from the government, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to have realized that he needed to connect more effectively with the country's youth.
Modi posted on Instagram a rare selfie video in which he said he was pained by their suffering and promised remedial steps. But it was not enough to satisfy the protesters' concerns, and five Gen Z-style reels later, that gap seems as wide as ever.
"We ain't friends," one comment under the first reel read. It echoed thousands of others reacting to a midnight video drop from the PM.
In one of Modi's lesser-produced videos, he addressed the youth as "friends" before finally speaking about the exam at the center of the protests.
It was the prime minister’s response to the biggest political crisis he has faced in his third term so far, over a cancelled high-stakes medical entrance exam which affected millions of aspirants.
Since the first video, he's improved camera angles and lighting, tried varied backgrounds, and even started and ended the videos himself like a one-man content creator. The response remains tepid.
For Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the protests came at the peak of its power, but the unrest has dimmed that shine, and the disconnect with the youth is substantial, experts told DW.
Young voices sidelined
In 2024, the average age of MPs elected to India's Parliament reached a record 56 years, which is a problem, said Shipra Baduni, CEO of Young Leaders for Active Citizenship, because there is not much youth representation in the legislature.
The second shift is in the nation's youth politics.
India has traditionally had vibrant youth participation at the university level, where student parties have long been affiliated with national and regional parties.
"Student politics has not only given a pulse check, or given a platform for young people to be able to express frustration, or anger, or dissent," said Baduni. "It's also given some of these parties and leaders today."
"We've seen systematically over the last one decade that it has been cut down," she added. "There is a very evident push to say that students should only study, and there is no need for students to engage in politics."
"Where is the space for a young person to express their frustration? If you go on social media to criticize the government, there is a crackdown. Offices are screening your social media."
But Baduni believes the responsibility to connect with the youth doesn't lie with the central government alone: "It's the job of my ward councillor or my local elected leader to come out and say, 'let me talk to the young people in my locality, what are your concerns?'."
DW reached out to BJP's youth leader for New Delhi and the party's national spokesperson, but did not receive a response from either.
Decoding the Gen Z vibe
Memes and music formed the backbone of reels posted on social media, while some young adults politely made their demands and others used expletives in sing-song slogans.
When the government responded, that response itself became fodder for a new wave of memes and content.
"The BJP does not understand expression of anger through ironic humor/memes, because their strategy was focused on the WhatsApp generation," political scientist and author Amit Julka told DW.
"Even now, let's say the BJP's PR department were to say we are now going to crack the Gen Z code, the result will be fundamentally inorganic."
Over a week after the protests were called off following the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the national conversation has shifted — not to education reform and preventing paper leaks, but to "misguided youths."
Several BJP members and supporters posted messages saying the abuses were against Indian moral codes and had deeply unsettled them. They were referring to a viral video where a teenage girl used abusive language against the Prime Minister and his late mother.
In a reel posted over the weekend, Modi addressed the teenager's words.
"I can fully understand the outrage within society. It comes as a cultural shock to see our daughters using such language," Modi said, adding that he wanted to "forgive them" rather than see them dragged through court proceedings.
Modi's senior ministerial colleague Rajnath Singh said last weekend that the government's "top priority remains to understand our students' genuine concerns, address them promptly, and ensure that they know their voices are being heard."
Julka pointed to this episode as one way the BJP can delegitimize dissenters going forward. "There doesn't necessarily need to be an application of coercion. Sometimes even a veiled allusion is enough," he said, adding that Gen Zs were ultimately "vulnerable" youth.
What can bridge the political gap?
Working at the cross-section of youth and policy, Baduni believes the BJP still has non-coercive ways to bridge the gap. First, by staying on topic.
"The agenda of the protest is the systematic failure of the education system in India that has failed so many people. Why are you, even today, not talking about that?" she asked.
Baduni suggested that the BJP government needs to speak with the youth at various civic levels and make constructive changes while refraining from further crackdowns.
"I'm not sure how much of it is going to reverse the dent that has already been made," she said, adding that it could give the BJP a better sense of the issues that matter to young people and help the party begin addressing them.
"If you tell them that they will only be heard if they're disruptive, then there is no incentive for them to not be disruptive," Baduni noted.
Since the protests against the education minister ended, several smaller demonstrations have been reported across India.
In Uttar Pradesh's Fatehpur, hundreds of students staged a peaceful walkout to bring the district's attention to infrastructure gaps. In a government school in western India, students protested to demand more teachers. In Jaipur, three student leaders began an indefinite hunger strike, demanding restoration of student union elections.
As for Modi's series of reels, both Baduni and Julka said the one-sided interaction wasn't a real solution.
"That will just give Gen Z a lot more content on what's wrong with this government," said Baduni.
Read: How India's Gen-Z Protesters Shifted the Political Debate
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