Neha Bora: “We want a complete rollback of the NEP”

Neha Bora, a doctoral student, is the president of the All India Students Association, which is affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) (Liberation). During the recent student protests at Jantar Mantar—which culminated in the resignation of the union education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan—Bora carried out a 23-day hunger strike alongside two other AISA activists and the Ladakhi educationist Sonam Wangchuk.

The movement emerged from the massive popularity of the Cockroach Janata Party, a satirical social-media platform started by Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old who had previously worked with the Aam Aadmi Party and was studying in the United States. In early June, Dipke returned to India, and the CJP called for protests. The protesters’ demands coalesced around education, especially the leak of the examination papers for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test held earlier this year, which was then cancelled. At least twelve students took their lives in the aftermath of the cancellation. Student organisations such as AISA, the Students’ Federation of India and the All India Students’ Federation provided crucial support in organising the agitation. The CJP demanded Pradhan’s resignation and compensation for the deceased students’ families. The student groups also called attention to the Narendra Modi government’s educational policies, opposing the formation of the National Testing Agency and the implementation of the National Educational Policy, 2020. Videos of the protests, including memes and reels criticising and mocking the government, went viral for days on platforms such as Instagram.

The CJP protests swelled after the police forcibly removed Wangchuk from the site and later cracked down on young people who continued to protest in massive numbers. As one of the student leaders of the protests, Bora has become a prominent face of the youth movement. Shahid Tantray, a multimedia reporter at The Caravan, spoke to them several times over the course of the agitation, when they were on a hunger strike, as well as after Pradhan’s resignation.

What was your first reaction when you heard Dharmendra Pradhan resigned? What does it mean in the broader political context, especially given Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rarely accepted ministerial resignations under public pressure?