Protests in India have taken the front seat. Indian citizens – children and adults – have come out and put their point of view and are fighting for their rights. From students in towns to villages in rural areas, each battle is its own, but everybody asks the same fundamental question. Are we being consulted, or are we aware of decisions that affect our future? Are we really citizens of India, or are we just puppets of the Indian government? “
Starting with education, what began as an outrage over exam paper leaks has become a nationwide flashpoint over accountability in Indian testing systems. The protests were not confined to campus gates – they spread, forced political debate, and prompted the center to announce fast-track courts for paper leak cases. However, students say this is a task of correction rather than a solution.
The Ken-Betua Link National Project in Central India – a long overdue solution to water problems – is a major irrigation project that adopts a compact underground pipe irrigation system aimed at supplying water to the Bundelkhand region at the cost of thousands of homes and the widely known Tiger Sanctuary in Panna. However, for thousands of families living under the river link project, the issue is no longer about official safeguards. It’s about their homes, their forests, their land. The Villagers facing submergence and relocation were not provided as promised, and therefore are demanding that environmental and social costs be reviewed before the project continues.
The Shivallik hills have been witnessing a a different version of the fight. Environmental groups and local residents have been warning authorities to check construction and deforestation in the ecologically sensitive belt, which could trigger unwanted slide… landslides, water scarcity, and soil erosion like that in Uttarakhand and Himachal.
Punjab’s farmer unions are back on the road too — MSP legal guarantee, loan waivers, better procurement, the same set of demands that were supposedly settled after the earlier andolan. Unions say the government’s promises from last time were never honoured, so they’re mobilising again.
Manipur’s protests run deeper and darker. Even as the state limps toward some normalcy, civil society groups continue to demand justice and rehabilitation for conflict-affected families — and there’s visible frustration that central intervention hasn’t matched the scale of the crisis.
Then there are some peaceful agitations that rarely make it to the front pages of the media houses. Families in Chhattisgarh resisting the Nakti demolition drive without adequate notice or rehabilitation. Karnataka farmers are opposing the AI townland acquisition on fertile agricultural beds. While Gujarati farmers have been a similar dispute over industrial land deals and opposition against the Karuphar Sawan project and a proposed Amazon data center. Both facing questions over displacement groundwater use.
Several states, same story–injustice, threat to common man and decisions taken by the people in power, without bothering to ask first. For the government at the centre and state alike, it is not whether the project is a success, it is if they keep up the trust of the people which decides the fate of their government.