(theatre artist)
Enough said:
What the global youth are fighting for, against, and with
A new rift of anti-establishment protests have shaken across the world. The youth are demanding education, scholarships and a stable income. The solution seems self-evident, but the right-wing administrations in power seem bent on salvaging a failing economy at the cost of the student community.
The protests across India, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and France have objectives and characteristics of their own. But they all agitate against a similar enemy: a right-wing government in power attempting or ready to disable the structure of public services in favour of privatisation and profit. The question is who bears the cost? When public institutes and services are privatised, the brunt is transferred to the consumer through higher costs and reduced decision-making power. Meanwhile, the business tycoons enjoy a monopolized market, meaning they get to solely dictate the prices. While the conservative powers turn a deaf-ear to public outcries, they are often quick to satisfy the demands of the wealthy, by granting juicy tax-cuts and loan waivers.
Now-incarcerated Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro cut down $450 million from the federal university budget in 2022 before losing power to the left candidate Lula in the same year. Bolsanaro 's fund cuts targetted education, culture and environmental studies which he claimed was 'leftist-breeding grounds'. Earlier in 2019, he faced massive student protests for another fund cut, which he shunned saying it was propagated by 'naive kids'. A parallel of this was seen in India when student protests rocked the national capital leading to the resignation of then-education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The resignation followed brutal police and military crack down on student protestors who initially faced deliberate oversight and a defensive stance rejecting any accountability from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who similarly claimed the protests were incited by kids who were misled. Now in Brazil is a waving movement of support for incumbent left-candidate Lula who is in the presidential race against Jair Bolsanaro's son, Flavio Bolsanaro.
In Argentina and France, there are historic protests, stemming again from budget cuts in education: The Argentinian government cut back 41% of their education budget, while France's public education system is already crumbling with cancelled classes and pest infestations in classrooms. The proposed 2027 budget by French PM Lecornu isn't doing much to aid the situation. Economic crisis, inflation and poverty plague Argentina, where President Milei's reckless austerity budget has added to the woes through reduced subsidies, pension payments, and dwindling job opportunities to an already burdened populace, who now are revolting against his policies which seem to improve the crisis merely statistically. Yet, the poverty rate is projected to reach 35% in Argentina this year, resulting all the hardships endured by the citizens in none-the-better living conditions.
Chile is another nation battling the goverment for educational rights, which's President Jose Antonio Kast, a far-right politician, proposed a new budget with significant rollbacks in the area of education. One alarming absentee in the proposed 2027 budget is the Yo Elijo mi PC scheme, which was started to provide free laptops to seventh-graders in 2009. Last year alone, it benefitted 96,100 pupils in Chile, and now it lies in danger of being discontinued.
Albania and Spain have emerged as the latest centres of the developing anti-establishment struggles in Europe, with their peoples fighting for education and unemployment, and housing-rights respectively. Albanian supreme Edi Rama, while recognised politically as centre-left, had proposed his new budget which saw education become further underfunded with university conditions already being substandard. His plans to build a luxury resort in an unhabitated island of the Albanian coast along with US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner sparked the student agitation demanding his resignation.
Barricades, battons, and bullets: The right to protest
When politicians seek to benefit from acting against public opinion, their response to dissent has historically been force. The establishments across all protesting countries have acted with a single-resolve, to unleash police and military repression on the mobilizing public to discourage or hopefully disperse them. 160+ students were injured on July 21 when the CJP and the allied-left student organizations like AISA, SFI and AISF took to a peaceful march against the irregularities in the NEET exam which caused 20 student suicides. Pellet gun injuries were sustained by at least 9 protestors, with one severely injured leading to sight-loss in one eye. In Paris and across France, 6000+ protestors have been arrested over the last couple of weeks, and Argentinian students are facing water cannons and tear gas to voice against the newly proposed budget. Albanian authorities detained 500 protestors and hundreds of students were injured in clashes.
Out of all the characteristics of these protests, one mutual trait of the authorities is overwhelming force, and that of the protestors is relentless resistance.The choice to resist is made easier when the threat of economic policies strangle the public more than the threat of the physical brutality waged on the protestors.
The demographics of the mobilized masses:
Amidst the outpour of the general public onto the streets, a demographic overlap can be seen.While students are the largest mobilizing group in India, Chile, Brazil, France and Argentina, teachers are out on the streets too. In Chile, the Teachers' Union is jointly organizing the movement along with student associations. Their concerns are the growing burden on teachers and students, who have to fund their own resources with subsidies stopped and education funds cut down, whereas the budget for Public Security was pumped by 7%. Argentinian professors and teachers on the streets face a similar predicament, with the proposed budget drastically halting scholarships and salaries. Teachers and trade unions have massively united against the French administration too, while in India the united opposition parties, lawyer unions and farmer unions have joined the protests, and left-aligned trade unions across the country have been expressing support for the agitations.
There has grown a general discontent over education becoming increasingly expensive at the same time teachers being increasingly underpaid. Initially a student-led protest, all these movements have garnered a rapid show of support from the urban-working class. Left-wing outfits have decried such neo-liberal policies for long and have readily backed the protests in every country.
Shift in public opinion:
While neoliberal economic policies were long-deployed diplomatic methods by right-wing factions to maintain social heirarchies, the high-visibility use of brute action by the incumbent governments to suppress protests has swayed public opinion against them more than before, sending more people to the streets. The recent denofication of Jantar Mantar as a protest site and lockdown of areas surrounding it has created outrage among the public and rewritten headlines against the ruling BJP, usually commanding favourable news in mainstream-media. As a generation skillfully equipped with social media, the students around the world are better prepared to counter the negative narratives set by compromised media houses and have discourse.
The verdict:
The GenZ protestors, beyond the taunts and belittlement, have set forth a mandate-- to reclaim education
and public services. There is a greater collective conciousness to have an
economy that serves the public in exchange for the people serving the
economy. In the face of violent, draconian violence subjected against them
across the continents, the young have chosen to brave against it to win a
war against economic inequality and a system which favours the privileged.
A call for a people-centred economy and a permanent shift away from
neoliberal. imperialist policies and towards socialism is echoing across
the streets in the world.