VOICES DEVDUTT PATTANAIK SHEILA KUMAR RAVI SHANKAR ANAND NEELAKANTAN GAURAV YADAV SWAMI SUKHABODHANANDA MAGAZINE BUFFET PEOPLE WELLNESS BOOKS FOOD ART & CULTURE ENTERTAINMENT NEW DELHI AUGUST 23 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 worry about the price to be paid. “I raised him to be honest. I just don’t know if the world will reward him for it,” says one Delhi mother of her 19-year-old son. A father whose daughter routinely challenges college administrators tells her: “Fight if you’re right. But have a Plan B.” Their anxiety is not irrational. According to the India Employment Report 2024, 82 per cent of youth were unemployed population in 2022. Unemployment among graduates was 29.1 per cent. Meanwhile, India ranked 91 out of 182 countries on the Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index. Delhi-based Shubhrat Roy 22, puts , it bluntly: “Fear? We’ve already sacrificed everything; what do we have left to lose?” His father had appeared for railway recruitment exams decades ago and still tells him about of examinations cancelled, sometimes repeatedly Roy grew up . believing such chaos was a relic of the past. The reality check came when he began preparing for government job exams himself. Adjustment was a survival mechanism for older Indians. Institutions were imperfect, but the assumption was that individuals had to navigate them. Gen Z has inherited the consequences of that bargain, and watched it fail. “We, as Gen Z, witnessed the protests firsthand and saw exactly how the state manages its youth— pellet guns, tear gas, lathis, online trolling and more. What’s left to threaten us with?” says Roy This is a . generation that has fundamentally changed its relationship with authority Their demand is authority . must explain itself. The Fearless Generation They have grown up with screens, skepticism, and a front-row seat to institutional failure. Now Gen Z is taking its politics to the streets—and laughing in the face of authority A UNBOWED & UNBOTHERED By MEDHA DUTTA YADAV & TANISHA SAXENA new India has taken to the streets. And more are coming to take on the establishment. The older generation is worried—and more so because Gen Alpha has caught on and is following the lead of Gen Z. Raised with a smartphone in one hand and a world of information in the other, Gen Z has little patience for what they perceive are obsolete rituals of deference to elders who don’t get them. Titles, hierarchies, and institutional gravitas no longer automatically command respect. If something seems absurd, they say so. If it feels hypocritical, they call it out. And when authority tries to shut them down, there is always a screenshot, a meme, a ditty a parody account, or a , mocking video that makes the original reprimand a joke. The government may take online insults down; but by then, they have already been downloaded, reposted and re-reposted. Starting at Jantar Mantar in July fear appeared to have lost , its grip. Fear of FIRs, arrest, and parental censure evaporated. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests offered a glimpse of this new defiance. “My father is a crook, and a BJP leader, “ said the boy who had come to Jantar Mantar from Uttar Pradesh. “He told me if some students committed suicide over the NEET exam paper leak, it doesn’t affect me. But it does.” AI GENERATED Him, and many youngsters who are taking on the establishment have no patience for rhetoric. Television channels, derisively called “Godi media”, became targets of ridicule and, in some cases, physical confrontation. This fury is more than a generation gap. It is a moral gap. When Gen Z is told something is forbidden, its instinct now is to ask: why? Yet this “fearless generation” does have fears. It worries about jobs, money , climate change, relationships, social pressure, and an uncertain future. What has changed is its unwillingness to be obedient simply because authority demands it. The old bargain—respect authority , follow the rules, keep your head down—has lost its power. When after weeks of silence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a midnight video asking the youth to stop protesting, “Frainds” memes sprang up mocking him. It is not that leaders are not trying to reach out; it is that they simply do not get it. This generation celebrates solidarity and speaks its own visual language. Spiderman and Superman mingle with Pride activists dressed in bright colours at protest sites, turning dissent into something that is as much about community and expression as it is about politics. BORN TO QUESTION Every generation grows up with its own catalogue of what it is taught to fear. The policeman represented the law, the bureaucrat the state, the parent the final word. Even disagreement had etiquette. The previous instinct was to avoid trouble; now Gen Z is asking why the rule even exists. Take 17-year-old Rhea Mehta of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar. After a teacher allegedly humiliated her classmate, she challenged the school. Her mother, Neha, panicked: “What if the principal makes an issue of it?” Her father, Amit, warned: “There are consequences to everything.” Rhea shot back: “There are consequences to staying quiet too.” When the school threatened her with disciplinary action, she asked her parents to show her exactly which rule she had broken. “If I had broken one, I’ll take the punishment. If I didn’t, why should I be scared?” The school eventually settled for a strict warning and counselled the teacher to be “gentle in class”. Not all parents oppose such courage. Many of them admire it but That shift in attitude is visible in humour. The “Bal Narendra” songs around Prime Minister Narendra Modi turn a powerful political figure into a pop-culture character, collapsing the distance between the leader and the joke. Humour is not an accessory to Gen Z politics; it is part of its operating system. That belief changes the meaning of shame. The Chief Justice of India calling young people cockroaches, “who don’t get any employment and RTI activists,” started the CJP backlash. It is notable that a once-hallowed guardian of justice is not an idol. PM Modi’s quip about “Dimagi Naxals” caused a Dimagi Naxal Party to pop up online and already has almost 60k followers on Instagram. The insult becomes a caricatured screenshot, a joke, a meme or a mocking slogan. A company’s promises can be compared with employee reviews. A university’s reputation can be investigated by student groups on social media. Institutions no longer have complete control over their own narratives. Status, therefore, does not automatically translate into credibility “My parents, like many people of . their generation, are conditioned by society to believe we have to bow down to certain people,” says Sakshi Tiwari, 28, a freelance photographer from Kolkata. “They are not taught about their rights with the same emphasis. Today young people want , to know of their rights. They simply don’t want to succumb without fighting back.” The same confidence spills into careers, too. A 19-year-old girl in Bengaluru can tell her parents she wants a game designer’s career; a student in Jaipur can build a jewellery business on Instagram; someone in Kochi can work remotely for a Singapore company When . former Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan described Gen Z as “our children” and blamed “outside forces” for misleading students during nationwide protests, they responded with memes rejecting his idea of puppet-masters. His claim that he stepped down so that students could refocus on their studies and careers was mocked too. The political response is visible now. Parties are reshuffling leadership and foregrounding younger faces, but the problem is deeper than age. Youth does not necessarily recognise itself in leaders simply because they are young, but not ‘that young’. As one Gen Z youth puts it: “We don’t need leaders who speak like us. We need leaders who understand what our lives actually look like.” When Dharmendra Pradhan finally resigned, CJP leaders were seen partying and dancing at a five-star hotel, only to be called out by the older generation for not being serious enough. In effect, they just don’t get it. That may be the real generational rupture. Their slang reflects this shift: “be so for real”, “it’s giving”, “delulu”, Turn to page 2 EVERY GENERATION GROWS UP with its own catalogue of things it is told to fear. The policeman represented the law, the bureaucrat the state, the parent the final word. The old instinct was to avoid trouble; Gen Z’s tendency is to ask why the rule exists in the fist place.