please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
we can still save her. but only loudly.
reblog. share. don't scroll past.
I would also like to add: prior to 2014 (BJP coming to power) India under Congress' rule was globally known by the 'annoyingly smart tech geeks' stereotype or even the 'call center/salespeople' stereotype. The entire wave of India (and Hinduism as well) being seen as dirty, unpleasant, uneducated, and creepy has risen and peaked during BJP's rule.
In a country where politicians spend billions to make their children study in the best schools abroad, students work day and night to sit an exam that gets cancelled because of the government's incompetency, then the exam is rescheduled only for the results to be wrong.
Exam papers were wrongly printed, answer sheets had no space for certain questions, correct answers were marked as incorrect. All because of the education government's inability to correctly print 22 million sets of paper. Students used to getting an A+ got a D on the NEET because their answers were graded incorrectly.
And this isn't just about NEET. Many other government exams faced similar issues in 2025-2026.
Many students killed themselves due to all of this.
"Oh they could just request a re-check or resit it" -- that costs 100,000+ INR. A lot of students who sit such exams are from middle or lower class families, some even from families under the poverty line. They cannot afford such solutions, and even if they can, it often takes months or years to get a proper solution.
And when we tried to just peacefully protest all of this? The Delhi police spent days beating students from ages 6 to 26 with batons, sticks (with nails in them), bats, electric batons, pellet guns, tear gas, and more. Students have been detained, arrested, beaten up till their head is covered with blood. All for standing together peacefully with books in their hands and justice on their tongue. All for hosting a peaceful protest that is one of our constitutional rights.
India has had enough. Gen Z Indians have had enough. We are fighting for our rights not just in Jantar Mantar (Delhi) but almost every other major city in India. Yet the media hides this. Bollywood largely remains silent on this matter as well.
If global stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Aliyah Bhatt and Deepika Padukone even made one instagram post on the matter they could propel this movement to new heights. But they don't care. BJP doesn't care. Our education minister who refuses to resign certainly doesn't care either.
The government calls us anti-national. The police call students terrorists for walking the streets. During such times we need all the support we can get.
Be our voice on the global stage. Spread the message.
