It Could Happen Here Weekly 245

In July 2026, student protesters in India accomplished something unprecedented in Narendra Modi's twelve-year reign: they forced a government minister to resign. The protests, which began as a joke meme page called the Cockroach Janta Party, grew into the most significant challenge to the BJP's power in years, centered on a series of scandals in India's education system that exposed how the country's already brutal exam system had been rigged in favor of the wealthy.

The NEET Scandal and a System Under Strain

The immediate trigger was a scandal involving the NEET exam, a high-stakes pre-medical test that nearly 2.3 million students take each year for fewer than 130,000 spots in medical colleges. For working-class students, performing well on this exam is often the only path to upward mobility—private universities are too expensive, and coaching centers require families to sell ancestral lands to afford. This year, the answers were leaked ahead of time and sold on Telegram channels. When the government forced students to retake the test, eleven students died by suicide.