India, July 27 -- Indian politics has always been highly sensitive to students' protests. There is good historical reason for it. Much of the country's current political leadership, especially those who came of age opposing the Congress, can trace the roots of their political careers to the anti-Emergency movement of the 1970s. While multiple forces came together to unseat the Congress for the first time in 1977, students' protests played a critical role. Many of those protestors went on to become prominent political leaders.

With the protests over the NEET paper leaks that concluded on Saturday, the question is back in focus: how important can students and their larger demographic cohort, the so-called Gen Z - those born after 1996 - be...