The Morning After the Revolution
By Ayesha Jamil Rao
The recent protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) have reignited debate over the state of governance and education in India. Backed by students, artists, educators, public intellectuals, and activists including education reformer Sonam Wangchuk. The movement reflects not only dissatisfaction with education policy but also growing concern about the functioning of public institutions. For many protesters, the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan marked a symbolic victory. Yet it also raises a more fundamental question: has anything truly changed, or has one political actor simply been replaced by another operating within the same institutional framework?
Replacing an individual rarely changes the character of an institution. At most, it creates a vacancy for someone else to occupy the same office. History repeatedly shows that leaders who enter politics with reformist ambitions can gradually become defenders of the very system they once challenged. Dharmendra Pradhan’s own political journey illustrates this paradox. As a student, he participated in protests against irregularities in the 1986 Odisha Board examinations. Decades later, he found himself at the centre of another wave of student discontent. His story is a reminder that institutions often shape leaders more profoundly than leaders reshape institutions. If that is true, then meaningful political change requires more than replacing ministers or governments; it requires reforming the institutions through which power is exercised.
India is far from unique in facing this dilemma. Democracies across the world have witnessed protest movements that successfully remove leaders but struggle to transform the institutions that produced them. Bangladesh’s 2024 student-led movement offers one of the clearest recent examples. What began as opposition to the quota system for public-sector jobs gained momentum after inflammatory remarks by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina toward protesters. The movement eventually culminated in Hasina’s resignation and the formation of an interim government under Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. It also compelled the authorities to reduce the controversial quota allocation from 56 percent to 7 percent. These were significant achievements. Yet history reminds us that changing a government is not the same as changing a political system. The departure of a leader does not automatically reform the institutions that enabled that leader to accumulate power.
The Bangladeshi experience raises a broader question. Why do youth-led movements repeatedly succeed in bringing down governments but struggle to transform the institutions that generated the public grievances in the first place?
The answer lies in the slow nature of democratic decline. Democracies seldom collapse overnight. More often, they weaken gradually as institutions become vulnerable to political capture, allowing successive governments to consolidate power regardless of who occupies office. This pattern can be seen in India’s debates over institutional accountability, Bangladesh’s uncertain transition, and Pakistan’s recurring cycles of political instability. Public discourse often centres on individual leaders, while far less attention is given to strengthening the constitutional, judicial, electoral, and administrative structures that determine how political power is exercised. As a result, governments change, but the deeper institutional weaknesses remain.
None of this diminishes the importance of protest. Public demonstrations remain one of democracy’s most powerful instruments of accountability and, in many cases, the only effective means available to citizens confronting unresponsive governments. The challenge, however, is to ensure that protests do more than produce changes in political leadership. Their long-term success should be measured by whether they make it harder for any future government—regardless of ideology or electoral mandate—to manipulate state institutions for partisan advantage.
The lessons extend beyond South Asia. The Arab Spring demonstrated both the promise and the limitations of revolutionary politics. Popular uprisings removed long-standing rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, but the outcomes differed dramatically. Tunisia initially achieved a negotiated constitutional transition. Egypt saw the return of military dominance. Libya descended into prolonged civil conflict, while Yemen entered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Together, these experiences underscore an enduring lesson: removing rulers without strengthening institutions rarely produces lasting democratic change.
For South Asia, sustainable democratic reform depends less on replacing individual leaders than on rebuilding the institutions that organise political power. Youth movements can play an important role by advocating transitional constitutional and institutional reform commissions that bring together young lawyers, academics, technocrats, policy professionals, and civil society representatives. Their agenda should also include judicial independence, electoral integrity, civil service reform, stronger oversight institutions, and more effective legislative accountability. Digital mobilisation can amplify public grievances, but it cannot by itself draft constitutions, reform public institutions, or build resilient democracies. That requires broad and sustained coalitions involving labour unions, bar councils, journalists, academics, and civil society organisations long after the energy of street protests has faded.
Bangladesh’s 2024 movement, alongside similar experiences in India, Pakistan, and the Arab Spring, shows that removing a government is only the first step. Toppling a government is an event; building institutions is a generational project. In the end, the true measure of democratic success is not which leaders fall, but whether stronger institutions emerge in their place.
