From IAC to paper leaks: Why anti-system movements pose a unique political challenge | Explained

The story so far: The student-led protests over recurring examination paper leaks and the conduct of the NEET examination have inevitably drawn comparisons with the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement that rattled the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government between 2011 and 2013.

The immediate triggers are different: corruption under the UPA and the credibility of public examinations under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Yet both movements display the potential to disrupt politics by presenting an outsider’s challenge to the political establishment.

Just as allegations of corruption came to symbolise perceived governance failure during the latter years of the Manmohan Singh government, recurring examination leaks have increasingly become a test of the BJP-led government’s promise of efficient and transparent governance.

Battle of narratives

Established parties carry ideological baggage, the trappings of power and electoral compulsions, making it difficult for them to convincingly channel public anger against the political system itself.

The IAC movement consciously projected itself as a citizens’ campaign, even though the Congress-led UPA maintained that it represented a collaboration between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and civil society activists. Regardless of the competing claims, the movement’s carefully crafted narrative of political independence enabled it to attract support cutting across ideological and social divides.

A similar dynamic is visible in the present agitation. Although Opposition parties have backed the students’ demands, the protests derive much of their legitimacy from remaining student-led rather than party-led, with innovator-turned-activist Sonam Wangchuk emerging as their principal public face.

Once a movement is seen as an extension of an Opposition party, governments can more easily dismiss it as routine political mobilisation instead of acknowledging it as an expression of wider public discontent.

It is perhaps for this reason that sections of BJP supporters have alleged that the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which has emerged as a principal force behind the students’ protests in Delhi, is being guided by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke had earlier volunteered for AAP and worked with Manish Sisodia.

Whether or not such allegations are substantiated, they reflect a familiar political strategy: questioning a movement’s claim to independence by portraying it as a proxy for an established political rival. The Congress, meanwhile, has sought to remind students that it has been raising the issue of paper leaks “not for weeks or months but for years”. The contest, therefore, is not merely over paper leaks but also over who owns the political narrative.

The paradox of the system

Indian politics also illustrates the paradox of anti-establishment movements. Their moral authority stems from standing outside the political establishment, but translating public anger into policy ultimately requires entering the electoral arena.

The Assam Agitation culminated in the formation of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which came to power in 1985 promising to redefine Assam’s politics. Over time, however, it became another participant in the conventional political system it had sought to transform.

AAP followed a similar trajectory. Born out of an anti-corruption movement, it built its identity around clean politics and accountability. Once in office, however, it found itself confronting allegations of corruption, particularly in the Delhi excise policy case, which the BJP used to question its anti-corruption credentials. AAP consistently maintained that the investigations were politically motivated.

Whatever the legal outcome of those cases, they underscored a larger political reality: once protest movements become governments, they are judged not by the standards of activism but by those of governance. Movements gain legitimacy by challenging the establishment, but enduring political influence often requires becoming part of it. In doing so, they inevitably become subject to the same scrutiny, compromises and accusations they once directed at those in power.

That is why every new anti-establishment movement is both politically disruptive and, eventually, politically vulnerable.