Gen Alpha students take to streets over school infrastructure, teachers and basic facilities

New Delhi: The summer of student discontent is moving into autumn... from Jantar Mantar to obscure muddy paths, from the heart of the Indian capital to villages and towns fighting for a place on the education map, and from Gen Z to Gen Alpha. And the sounds of protests are getting ever louder.

Picking up from the June-July Cockroach Janta Party-led agitation focusing on alleged corruption in NEET exams, hundreds of much younger school students have taken to the streets to highlight their problems. Bringing up issues such as no fans, no toilets, no teachers and no infrastructure, not even a proper building.

Across India's social and political landscape, Gen Alpha students – those born between 2010 and 2024 -- have taken it upon themselves to improve their learning environments. The reports have come in from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh with students finding their voice, even in the midst of adverse circumstances, to spotlight problems that are immediate and personal.

Rajasthan school protest brings results

A major win came last week from a primary school in a village in Rajasthan's Jaipur where students were attending classes from a cattle enclosure. Following a confrontation between members of the CJP, who wanted to inspect a school in Rampura Kanwarpura village, and some villagers, the state government announced the construction of a new building.

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The Rampura school building, it admitted, was declared dilapidated in September 2025 and classes were being held in a cattle enclosure. Reacting to the announcement, CJP co-founder and spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said the party's immediate demand over the Rampura school had been addressed, but its campaign on the condition of government schools would continue.

"We had not gone there to seek votes. We had gone to talk about getting the school fixed. Now that the government has approved the start of work from September 1, that issue, including our 48-hour warning, is over," Ranka said. "We are not here to fight, but we will neither retreat nor be intimidated," he said. The inspection was part of CJP's "School Thik Karo" campaigns running across Hyderabad, Telangana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh to demand better infrastructure and teaching facilities in government schools.

Students protest over safety, facilities

The successes, big and small, have been many. On August 17, girl students at a government school in Rajasthan's Ajmer rose up against the principal for allegedly molesting them. The students and their parents blackened the principal's face and staged a protest demanding his arrest. The police said a case of molestation would be registered against the accused.

On August 5, hearing- and speech-impaired students of the Government Anandilal Poddar Senior Secondary School for the Deaf in Jaipur staged a protest over alleged poor infrastructure and lack of basic facilities. The students came out of the school building and staged a dharna, alleging through sign language that they had been facing problems due to unhygienic toilets, shortage of drinking water and a dilapidated school building. They claimed that repeated complaints to the school administration had gone unaddressed. The Education Department later removed the school's principal.

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Educationists flag deeper policy failures

Commenting on the growing number of student protests, Prabhu Mohapatra, educationist and former professor of history at Delhi University, said the developments reflected a larger failure to treat students as stakeholders in education policy.

For years, he said, education had largely been approached as a "top-down policy" exercise without "adequately taking students' interests into account". "The protests also reflect the decline in the priority given to education. The deterioration was visible not only in infrastructure but also in teacher availability and the quality of learning. The problem had become particularly evident in northern and eastern India," Mohapatra told PTI.

Madhya Pradesh students join protests

In the Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, Gen Alpha and Gen Z students along with teachers from 36 districts sat on a protest on August 21 against dilapidated buildings and the closure of a large number of government schools in the state. Students and teacher aspirants at Bhopal's Neelam Park alleged that over 25,000 schools have shut down across the state and planned to intensify the "Save Schools" movement and warned of an indefinite sit-in protest.

UP sees school protests

Similar protests led by school students erupted across Uttar Pradesh over the last few weeks. Students took to the streets, carrying placards, and blocked major traffic intersections in different cities, including Fatehpur, Hamirpur and Kannauj, each finding a place on social media platforms and news headlines.

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On August 20, hundreds of students of PM Shri Composite School in Gugrapur, for instance, boycotted classes and held a protest against the principal for alleged caste discrimination and ordering the felling of trees inside the school campus. District Basic Education Officer Sandeep Kumar said the complaints raised by the students and parents were being investigated.

Teacher shortage triggers Lucknow protests

On August 14, students of the Jai Prakash Narayan Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Lucknow staged a protest over a shortage of subject teachers, briefly blocking traffic on the road. The students returned to their school after police administration and state minister Asim Arun agreed to hear their grievances. What appeared to be a truce did not last long, as girl students took to the streets three days later on the same demands.

Undeterred by heavy rain, they blocked two roads in the city, carrying posters and banners and raising slogans on a range of issues. One of the students, Anamika, alleged that despite a large number of science-stream students, the school had only one chemistry teacher and no teachers for physics and biology. "Board examinations are approaching, but studies are being affected because there are no teachers. Students are also facing difficulties in attending online classes," a furious Anamika told reporters.

Next door in Unnao, hundreds of students of a government-run residential school staged a protest on August 19 over alleged poor quality food, inadequate drinking water, shortage of teachers and the principal's behaviour, briefly disrupting traffic. The officials assured them that their grievances would be addressed, following which the students ended their protest.

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Kishanpur protest raises wider concerns

On July 28, barely three days after the high-tension Jantar Mantar protests ended with the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, nearly 1,800 students from Class 6 to 12 from the Sarvodaya Inter College in Uttar Pradesh's Kishanpur staged a demonstration. The students claimed the school lacked safe drinking water, clean toilets, reliable electricity, functional fans, adequate furniture, a computer lab, library and sports facilities. They also accused the administration of collecting unauthorised money during admissions and demanding payments for issuing marksheets and other documents. The protest ended after District Inspector of Schools (DIOS) Rakesh Kumar reached the campus, held talks with the students and gave written assurance that work on the pending issues would begin within 24 hours.

Student protests signal larger shift

The significance of the protests is beyond individual grievances, said Mohapatra. The protests, in his view, are a sign that young people were refusing to passively accept the decline of public education. Along the lines of CJP's "School Thik Karo" campaign, the Students' Federation of India (SFI) has announced a nationwide 'School Bachao Andolan' campaign over the next three months, highlighting what it described as the deteriorating condition of public schools and demanding greater government investment in school education.