Dreaming of a Gen Z Rebellion

WHY DOES Pro­fessor Presbury’s wolfhound, Roy, endeavour to bite him? Sherlock Holmes wonders aloud to Dr Watson in The Adventure of the Creeping Man. But sometimes it is the dog that doesn’t bark that calls for an explanation. There is, of course, an endless number of mysteries where barking dogs are pointers to some underlying phenomenon. But these days a large number of persons, ranging from active politicians to journalists to academics, appear to continu­ally wonder why India’s Gen Z does not rebel against the government? It is a curious and credulous speculation that has no historical and sociological basis.

On November 5, during one of his rounds of allega­tions of “vote theft” by BJP, Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition said, “I want Gen Z to take this seriously, because your future is being taken away from you.” He concluded his presentation thus: “India’s Gen Z and youth have the power to restore our democracy with satya and ahimsa.” With less than a day to go for polling in Bihar, he repeated his message on the social media site, X.

Within hours, there was a furious reaction from the ruling BJP. A Union minister rebutted Gandhi and his asser­tions about Gen Z. He alluded to nepotism, “control by a family” and the faith of Gen Z in Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

If one leaves aside the political barbs and carping, there are plenty of reasons to doubt the alleged thesis of Gen Z restiveness being an across-the-board phenomenon. Ex­trapolations in space (country-to-country comparisons) and time (historical allusions) are not just erroneous but make a mockery of explanations.

First, it is worth noting that current and future prospects for Gen Z in the West and else­where have indeed receded badly. Some summary statis­tics are enough to sketch this dreary picture. Research shows that in the US, UK and Canada, bouts of joblessness have fuelled social isolation, leading to “deaths of despair”. The latter expression was coined by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton who analysed the phenomenon of death by suicides and drug and alcohol consumption among middle-aged Americans. These “deaths of despair” have now infected a younger cohort in Western democracies. There is more bad news: In France, the relative income of pensioners is now higher than that of the working-age population. The trend is catching up across Western Europe. Canada and the US are not far behind. This speaks of the strange inversion in these societies where the productive, younger, popula­tion has a smaller share of the economic pie compared with those no longer at work.

It is one thing for these so­cieties to witness diminishing prospects for their youth, but something entirely different to transpose this ferment to India.

In2025, a quarter of the estimated 1.46 billion Indians fall in the Gen Z bracket, roughly 370 million in number. But that is where comparisons break down. International Labour Organization (ILO) statistics on youth (24-29 years) Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) data shows the figure for India to be 23.5 per cent (ILOSTAT, November 2024 edition) while India’s own Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) pegged the unemployment figure for the 15-29 age group at 10.2 per cent in 2023-24. The govern­ment claimed this was “low” in comparison to the global level. These data are not strictly comparable either as they are based on different concepts and methodologies for assess­ing unemployment.

Whatever one may say, these are high numbers for India. But that is not at question here: what is being asked is why this population is not rebelling as in Nepal, Bangladesh and else­where? The fact of significant youth unemployment is distinct from youth not rebelling against authority. Politicians, journalists and academics are mixing two very different facts. A pre­liminary, partial, answer is this. Going by ILO NEET data, the unemployment figures in Nepal (32.6 per cent), Bangla­desh (30 per cent), Pakistan (34 per cent) and Afghanistan (55.4 per cent) are much higher than those for India. That difference alone is enough to account for the wildly different outcomes. Even here, Pakistan and Afghanistan, that have much higher levels of unemployment, stand out. Afghanistan has seen 46 years of continuous violence due to foreign interventions in the country. Pakistan has multiple insurgencies in differ­ent parts of its territories. Yet, in both countries, there are few, if any, signs of Gen Z unrest. It is facile, if not downright mis­leading, to extrapolate youth unemployment from one country to another and then imagine that Gen Z will some­how fulfil political dreams of the Opposition in India.

The fact that India is a very diverse country makes a col­lective, national effort on part of Gen Z to mount a coherent opposition to the government very difficult. But even as a matter of strategy, the Opposi­tion—especially Congress and caste-based regional outfits in north and eastern India— should take a pause before pressing the pedals on its Gen Z speculation. On the one hand, these parties have left no stone unturned to divide Indian society along caste lines, the allegation being that a handful of “upper castes” dominate all economic opportunities. Demands for caste-based reservations, way beyond the constitutionally mandated 50 per cent level prescribed by the Supreme Court, are now rou­tine demands of these parties. On the other hand, the very same parties dream that Gen Z, an age group undifferentiated along caste lines, will rise up in rebellion against a lawfully elected government at the Cen­tre. These two, wildly different desires—mobilising support on the basis of caste and then demanding collective action from the undifferentiated mass of youth—are the stuff of political daydreaming.

Historically, India has seen youth unrest and ‘rebellions’ only under very specific conditions. There are only two known instances of large mobilisations of youth that have led to political upheaval. These were in Gujarat and Bihar in late-1973 and mid- 1974, in close succession to each other. They took place against the backdrop of acute economic distress and unsettled political condi­tions in the country. Since then, leftist academics across Indian universities have tried hard to push students in the direction of rebellion and unrest, often in questionable and dangerous directions. But these have been to no avail. As any economics student who has read the “Lucas Critique” named after Robert Lucas, another Nobel Prize-winning economist, knows well: the past is never a good guide to the future. This is the sum and substance of dangers and risks in extrapolating spatial and historical analogies to current situations, something that Indian commentators and politicians alike are so fond of. Why they continue to repeat these errors is a different story.

India has witnessed protests by farmers and religious groups from 2020 to 2021. But these were hardly Gen Z revolts and were, instead, much more insidious attempts to dislodge a legitimate government. That they did not go anywhere is well-known. The reasons for their failure are also different from why India’s youth are peaceful and absorbed in building their future: Those agitations were about main­taining the status quo; the youth in India, by its nature, wants to change the present, making the two very different in outlook and goals. There was, of course, a “youth com­ponent” in both agitations but their nature was very different from what has been witnessed in Nepal and Bangladesh in re­cent times. India’s Opposition should work harder instead of looking at shortcuts for win­ning political power.