(Adnkronos) – The country with the highest number of young people in the world. A high youth unemployment rate. A prime minister in power since 2014. This is India where, as the New York Times summarizes, the government’s problems with young people are not over. For more than a decade, according to CNN’s analysis, Narendra Modi seemed politically unassailable, leading a government that reduced space for dissent in the world’s largest democracy. But now he has had to give in to the youth, after Generation Z made its voice heard, while the spotlight turned on the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ (Cjp), on the ‘cockroaches’, on the anger of Generation Z.
Over the weekend, the education minister resigned, a sign – notes Anupreeta Das for the New York Times – that Modi (76 in September) knows that Indian youth have real power and if perhaps in the immediate future they cannot improve their living conditions, they can at least complicate Modi’s life.
According to official data released by the BBC, in June the unemployment rate among young people aged between 15 and 29 reached 16.2% compared to 13.8% the previous year. According to a study by Azim Premji University, also cited in the NYT, about 40% of young people aged between 15 and 25 who have completed their studies are unemployed. In India, the newspaper highlights, the median age – which is not the average age and divides the population into two equal halves between the younger and older populations – does not exceed 29 years, more than 40% of Indians are under 25, and the vast majority of the population is between 15 and 64 years old.
India’s economy, the American network highlights in its analysis, remains among the fastest-growing in the world, and during Modi’s three terms in power, much has been invested in infrastructure, technology, and manufacturing, but many young Indians complain that the Asian giant’s success has not translated into opportunities for them.
And if the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ achieved what few imagined possible, CNN concludes, its long-term legacy could depend on the ability of India’s Generation Z to transform this victory into a broader movement, capable of maintaining pressure on issues concerning their future in an India where Modi remains popular and the political force, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a formidable machine.
The next general elections will be in 2029. Meanwhile, the name of Abhijeet Dipke, a thirty-year-old Boston University graduate and ‘father’ of the online campaign ‘Cockroach Janta Party’, continues to make headlines worldwide. “It’s not the end,” he said. And he hinted that he would continue.
