Moving Mountains

On the morning of Monday, July 20, as the monsoon session of India’s parliament opened, tens of thousands of protesters surged down the radial streets leading to the heart of official New Delhi. Most of them were young people marching in response to a call issued by Sonam Wangchuk, a well-known climate activist, to bring their demands for education reform directly to lawmakers and leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Police met them with batons and tear gas. More than a hundred were treated for fractures and other injuries at area hospitals. Parliament’s first day in session was dominated by opposition lawmakers’ blistering criticisms of the government’s response.Two days earlier, Delhi police officers had descended on Jantar Mantar, the eighteenth-century astronomical observatory and frequent site of protests in the nation’s capital, where Wangchuk had been on an indefinite hunger strike since June 28. His fast was in support of a swiftly growing youth movement called the “Cockroach Janta Party,” which demanded that the education minister resign in the aftermath of the government’s controversial decision to cancel medical college examinations for more than two milli...