Let me give you a reality check. India has seen protests before. But this one is different. Earlier, many mass movements were led by people who already had stable jobs, financial security, and a safety net. They could afford to spend days on the streets because losing one week didn’t mean losing their future. Today’s youth don’t have that privilege. Many of the faces you saw at the CJP protest weren’t just NEET aspirants. Some were former aspirants. Some had spent 6, 8, even 10 years preparing for one competitive exam after another. Some crossed 30. Some exhausted their savings. Some watched friends move on while they remained trapped in an endless cycle of forms, postponements, paper leaks, vacancies that never came, and recruitment processes that stretched for years. People mock them by asking, “Does a 30 year old look like a NEET aspirant?” No. They look like the outcome of a broken system with nothing to lose. They look like someone who was told since childhood that education would change their life, only to discover that merit means little when exams are repeatedly cancelled, recruitment is delayed, and opportunities keep shrinking. History shows the same pattern. The JP Movement of the 1970s wasn’t just about politics. It was fuelled by students angry over unemployment, inflation, corruption, and a government that had stopped listening. The Mandal Commission protests were about more than reservations, they reflected deep anxiety over limited government jobs and a generation terrified about its future. Across the world, whether it was the Arab Spring or student-led movements in Europe and Latin America, prolonged unemployment and the feeling of having no future became powerful forces behind public unrest. When an entire generation starts believing that hard work no longer guarantees dignity, the problem is no longer individual failure. It becomes a failure of governance. A government cannot promise every citizen a government job. But it is responsible for creating opportunities, conducting fair and timely recruitment, protecting the integrity of examinations, and ensuring that young people don’t spend the best years of their lives waiting for a result that never arrives. Hope is not built through slogans. Hope is built when effort is rewarded. And when that hope disappears, frustration doesn’t stay inside coaching classrooms forever. One day, it reaches the streets. When thousands of young people decide that protesting feels more meaningful than studying for the next exam, that should alarm every government, regardless of which party is in power. Because the biggest crisis isn’t unemployment. It’s a generation slowly losing faith that tomorrow will be better than today 🙏🏻