India, July 28 -- Cockroaches, Cinderellas, and a cloistered Cabinet

Strap: The student protests were the reckoning for eight decades spent treating education as India's most disposable portfolio

Gautam R. Desiraju and Deekhit Bhattacharya

On July 25, 2026, following weeks of protest by students against exam paper leaks that the government expended significant energy ignoring, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced his resignation. Twelve years into the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this was a first. Not because a minister finally fell over an exam leak - India has absorbed leaks and quiet reshuffles before without so much as a murmur - but because this resignation was extracted by the street, rather th...