The ‘lazy’ generation held power accountable

There is a lazy consensus about India’s Gen Z, repeated so often in drawing rooms and Op-Ed pages that it has calcified into fact: that they are distracted, entitled, allergic to hardship, more fluent in memes than in civics, and raised on instant gratification, and they could never organise, let alone sustain, anything requiring discipline.

However, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation on July 25 is the empirical refutation of that theory, delivered not by argument but by five weeks of evidence on the ground at Jantar Mantar. A demographic dismissed as apolitical assembled, sustained a peaceful sit-in through summer heat and police batons, absorbed nearly hundreds of injuries without abandoning non-violence, and extracted a Minister’s resignation from a government that has otherwise shown remarkable imperviousness to public pressure. If this is apathy, democracy should wish for more of it.