Commentary | Monika, India’s Gen Z Moment: From Anger to Political Power?
A generation that was once described as politically apathetic is suddenly making governments nervous. In Bangladesh, students helped turn a movement that began around a quota system into a challenge to Sheikh Hasina’s government. In Nepal, young people took to the streets over corruption, political privilege and restrictions on social media, eventually forcing Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to resign. In Japan, the story has been rather different. As Willy Jou, professor at Waseda University has recently noted, young Japanese voters helped deliver a historic electoral victory to Sanae Takaichi and the Liberal Democratic Party. The same generation that is often imagined as progressive and anti-establishment can, in another setting, lend its support to a conservative political leader.
India sits somewhere between these stories. Much of the discussion, both in academic and public circles, has drawn attention to a younger generation that appears increasingly interested in spirituality, religion and cultural identity, from early-morning bhajans and religious trackings to a greater visibility of religious symbols and a perceived movement towards more conservative ideas in politics. These observations have sometimes encouraged the view that India’s Gen Z is turning away from the more secular and progressive political orientations associated with earlier generations.
However India’s nationwide recent Gen Z mobilization has also complicated some of the assumptions that have been developing around young Indians.
The Bottom-Up Perspective
Under the name “Cockroach Janata Party” — a mocking term ‘Cockroach’ coined by the Chief Justice of India for the young protesters — what began as satire on social media gradually turned into something much larger. The satire drew millions of followers on Instagram and, more importantly, managed to bring together a remarkably heterogeneous group of young people around concerns that went well beyond social media itself. Irregularities in the national examination system, medical student suicides, unemployment, and questions of institutional accountability became common points of concern.
What began as an online joke gradually developed into a wider youth mobilization, eventually contributing to the resignation of Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan and forcing the government to respond to demands surrounding the national examination system.
This also challenges the binary assumption that Generation Z is either politically disengaged or politically active. It suggests that young people may be far more politically attentive than they are sometimes assumed to be. They can organize quickly, turn a grievance into a national conversation and put considerable pressure on political leaders.
But there is something else worth asking. What kind of political engagement is this? The question matters because mobilization itself is not the same as sustained political participation.
It would be easy to read this as the arrival of a new political generation. There is certainly evidence of political energy. What remains less clear is what happens to that energy once the immediate grievance has passed. As we saw with the Israel–Gaza war, Indian young people can be intensely interested in political events without necessarily becoming equally engaged with political institutions. The millions of posts and reposts of All Eyes on Rafah on Instagram are one example.
For many youngsters, social media has become a way of expressing solidarity, anger, and political concern about events far beyond their immediate surroundings. A repost can express solidarity, anger, or a moral position, and can also make someone feel part of something much larger, something that can be termed a digital political moment — an assertion that I am active and aware of global politics.
But this kind of participation is different from following what governments do, engaging with political parties, voting, organizing locally, or trying to change an institution. The difference matters because being politically expressive does not necessarily mean being institutionally engaged.
I would call to distinguish between performative alignment and genuine mass mobilization here. In that sense, deciding if Gen Z is political is not the question. Clearly, they are. Whether its politics can transition from expression to institution is the question.
This is where the Indian experience becomes particularly instructive. Because here online expression did spill into street mobilization and put pressure on the government. Therefore, whether the anger was sincere is not the question. It was indeed.
The question is to what extent this anger can be sustained after mobilization and grow into a more lasting interest in the functioning of political institutions and potential reforms. Sociologist James Jasper’s work on the emotions of protest is useful here. He reminds us that anger is not simply a temporary or irrational response; it can be one of the forces that brings people together and gives a movement its initial energy. But that energy does not necessarily last. A protest can gather momentum because it captures a shared sense of anger or injustice.
Social media is very adept at this. Travel journals, cuisine items, and themes should all be in line with current trends. It can turn a complicated grievance into a slogan, an image, a joke or a short video and circulate it within hours. What is harder is sustaining that energy once the immediate moment has passed.
This is the point when the differences between mobilization and organization start. A movement may fill the streets today and disappear from public attention tomorrow. If young people remain engaged after the protest, if they continue to follow policy, organize around issues, participate electorally, demand accountability and try to change institutions, then mobilization may become something more enduring. If not, it may remain a powerful expression of frustration, however large or visible it was at the time.
Indubitably, Gen Z has acquired extraordinary visibility in public and political discourse that almost every form of youth expression is now being read through the language of a “Gen Z moment”. The danger is that this visibility can create a political hyper-reality around the generation: what is highly visible, widely shared and quickly mobilized begins to appear as evidence of a coherent and enduring political force. The more difficult question is what remains after the moment of mobilization has passed.
By no means do I want to suggest that the anger itself is untrue. The strong emotion can be really real. Instead, I want to know if the level of public mobilization is accompanied by an equally persistent desire to strengthen the political institutions that initially gave rise to the complaint.
A Top-Down Approach
There is another side to this much-glorified Gen Z protest. Political leaders are also learning how to align themselves with Gen Z. Prime Minister Modi’s Instagram activity is a good example. His late-night reels, posts of landscapes and portraits, and messages such as “Hello Friends” show a deliberate shift in the way political leaders communicate with young audiences. But whether this represents a genuine engagement with Gen Z or a new form of electoral outreach is still an open question.
Indian political discourse now moves between two strikingly different images of young people. In one, Gen Z is impatient, disrespectful, addicted to its phones and insufficiently deferential to political authority. On the other hand, it is the generation that will lead India, drive innovation and shape the country’s future. The speed with which political language moves between these two images tells us something about the political value that young people are acquiring.
Perhaps this is a true political adaptation or just a new electoral tactic is the question.
Political parties have always sought to speak to important constituencies. Gen Z is increasingly becoming one of them. The language of youth, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, jobs, education and digital India is therefore not simply a cultural language; it can also become an electoral language. Leaders who once spoke about young people as beneficiaries of policy increasingly need to speak to them as political actors.
But speaking to a generation is not the same as representing it.
A recent C-Voter survey offers an intriguing indication of the shift. Only 13.9% of Gen Z respondents identified political parties as the main determinant of their vote, while 33.3% prioritized issues. A large proportion also felt that political parties did not adequately understand their concerns.
If this pattern persists, Indian politics may face a generation less attached to traditional party loyalties and more willing to judge politics issue by issue. That does not necessarily make Gen Z progressive, liberal or anti-establishment. Japan is a useful reminder of this. Jou’s analysis of the Japanese election shows precisely why generational politics cannot be reduced to the assumption that younger voters will naturally move towards the political left.
The same generation can demand institutional reform in one context and support a conservative leader in another. What connects these apparently different behaviors may not be ideology but a desire for politics that appears responsive to their concerns.
Double Uncertainty
For Indian democracy, this creates a double uncertainty. Will Gen Z’s politics move from viral anger to sustained institutional engagement? And will political leaders move from performing alignment with young people to actually changing the institutions with which young people are dissatisfied?
Neither question can yet be answered. Perhaps that is precisely why India’s Gen Z moment deserves attention. Its significance does not lie simply in the number of young people who can be mobilized, nor in the speed with which a hashtag can become a political force. Its significance lies in what happens afterwards. A generation may be able to make itself heard without yet knowing how it wants to be represented. Political leaders may learn to listen without necessarily learning how to change.
The future of Gen Z politics and state of democracy in India will depend on what happens in that space between the two.
Dr. Monika is an early career researcher, currently serving as a Senior Research Associate at the Comparative Civilization Forum, USA. She recently completed her PhD under the joint supervision of IIT Indore, India, and Boston University, USA. Her research has been published in leading journals, including National Identities, Peace Review, Geography Compass, Democratization, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, and Comparative Civilizations Review.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Monika, “India’s Gen Z Moment: From Anger to Political Power?” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, September 30, 2026; https://doi.org/10.52698/TSTH7480.