NEET Protest: That Changed Indian Politics

For weeks this July, students had camped in the centre of Delhi at Jantar Mantar. And when their march turned toward Parliament on the 20th, the state answered with tear gas, baton charges, the internet cut off street by street. The movement has an odd name — the Cockroach Zinda Party. It began as a meme, a jibe thrown from a courtroom that the young picked up and wore. What turned a meme into a movement was who joined it: students, aspirants, the generation that did everything it was told to do. And what they seized on was education. What set them off was a leaked exam paper — the National Eligibility Entrance Test, NEET, compromised again in 2026. The exam was scrapped and held a second time, throwing an entire year's medical admissions into chaos. In the coverage, someone counted the students who had taken their own lives after the last leak — the number was more than twenty. And this week, the protest claimed its biggest scalp: on the 25th of July, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, saying students' futures must not become victims of a political battle. A movement that began as a meme had brought down a minister. It is a real victory. But hold that thought — because a resignation is a win at the finish line, and there is one question upstream of all of it that no minister's resignation can touch.