The spectre of unrest has returned to the streets of India, and with it, a familiar political calculus from the Prime Minister’s office. Facing a groundswell of youthful dissent over employment, Agnipath military recruitment reforms, and a perceived hollowing out of democratic space, Narendra Modi appears to be reaching for a well-worn playbook: the deliberate elevation of a defeated opponent to serve as a convenient foil. It is a strategy that carries significant risk, betting the stability of the world’s largest democracy on the assumption that polarisation remains a more potent electoral adhesive than performance.
The Architecture of a Distraction
For months, the narrative of the “New India” — digital, aspirational, globally ascendant — has clashed violently with the lived reality of millions of young Indians. The flashpoint was the Agnipath scheme, a radical overhaul of military recruitment that replaced lifetime service with four-year contracts, shattering the dreams of a generation raised on the promise of a stable, pensionable career in the armed forces. The backlash was immediate, visceral, and geographically vast, burning trains in Bihar and blockading highways in Haryana.
But the government’s response has been notable not for its engagement with the substantive grievances — the lack of jobs, the inflation eroding wages, the anxiety of a demographic bulge with nowhere to go — but for its political choreography. Senior ministers and party spokespeople have increasingly directed their fire not at the policy critiques, but at a single individual: Rahul Gandhi.
The Leader of the Opposition, recently re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Rae Bareli and Wayanad, has been cast by the Treasury benches as the architect of the chaos. Accusations of “instigating violence” and “playing into the hands of anti-national forces” have flowed daily from the dispatch box and the television studios alike. It is a targeted campaign designed to personalise a structural crisis, transforming a referendum on governance into a binary choice between the Prime Minister and a man the BJP has defeated comprehensively twice before.
A Rival Reanimated
There is a certain strategic elegance to the manoeuvre. Rahul Gandhi, despite his party’s improved tally in the 2024 general election, remains a polarising figure within the Indian electorate. For the BJP’s core base, he is the embodiment of dynastic entitlement and political incompetence — a caricature cultivated over a decade of relentless messaging. By placing him at the centre of the unrest, the government achieves two objectives simultaneously.
First, it rallies the faithful. The sight of the Congress leader embracing protestors, or his Bharat Jodo Yatra footage spliced into news cycles alongside burning tyres, validates the worldview of the Modi voter: that the Opposition is inherently destabilising, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Second, it fractures the opposition unity that briefly flickered into life during the election campaign. Regional satraps — from the DMK in Tamil Nadu to the TMC in Bengal — are wary of being tethered too closely to a Congress-led agitation, fearing the “dynastic” label in their own fiefdoms.
Yet, this reanimation carries a hidden cost. It grants Gandhi a relevance he has struggled to command on his own terms. Every denunciation from the Prime Minister or the Home Minister elevates the Congress leader to the status of the primary antagonist. In a political theatre where oxygen is scarce, the government is handing the Opposition its most valuable currency: attention.
The Demographics of Despair
Beneath the parliamentary theatre, the fundamentals remain grim. India’s “demographic dividend” — once the envy of ageing Western economies — is curdling into a demographic time bomb. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data consistently places youth unemployment at levels that would trigger political crises in any other major democracy. The formal sector creates a fraction of the jobs required to absorb the 12 million young people entering the workforce annually.
The Agnipath scheme was sold as a modernisation imperative, a shift towards a leaner, tech-enabled military. To the aspirant in a dusty village in Uttar Pradesh or Rajasthan, however, it looked like a betrayal. The “Agniveer” returns to civilian life at 23, without a pension, without the prestige of a veteran, and often without the skills the private sector demands. The protest was not merely about a contract; it was a howl against a social contract that feels broken.
The government’s refusal to countenance a rollback, or even a meaningful modification, suggests a calculation that the political cost of retreat outweighs the cost of repression. But repression — whether through police batons, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or the bulldozer justice meted out in BJP-ruled states — radicalises. It turns a demand for jobs into a demand for rights.
The European Echo
There is a disquieting familiarity to this dynamic for a European observer. The weaponisation of a “defeated” opponent to consolidate a base, the reframing of economic anxiety as a cultural or security threat, the marginalisation of street protest as the work of foreign agents or internal saboteurs — these are tropes that have migrated from the capitals of Central Europe to the banks of the Yamuna. The “illiberal playbook” is no longer a regional curiosity; it is a global template.
Modi’s dominance is undeniable. His personal popularity ratings remain the envy of democratic leaders worldwide. But popularity is a depreciating asset when the contract between state and citizen frays. The youth on the streets are not the traditional Opposition voter. They are the “Aspirational India” the BJP claims to represent. They voted for Modi in 2014, 2019, and many did so again in 2024. Their rebellion is not ideological; it is existential.
Why it Matters
By choosing to fight a ghost of elections past rather than the reality of the present, the Indian state risks a profound miscalculation. Polarisation can win elections, but it cannot create jobs, lower food prices, or restore faith in institutions. If the government succeeds in making Rahul Gandhi the face of the protests, it may win the news cycle. But in doing so, it ignores the faceless millions whose patience is not infinite. A strategy built on distraction rather than delivery does not defuse a demographic crisis; it merely delays the reckoning, ensuring that when it arrives, it will be far less manageable than the burning trains of today.
