New Delhi, July 26 -- "We did it!" shouted 25-year-old Simpi Yadav, beaming, as news broke Saturday afternoon of Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation as India's education minister. Just four days earlier, she had quietly boarded a train from Nagpur to Delhi and headed straight to Jantar Mantar, the beating heart of the student uprising this year.

Yadav joined students from across the country who had begun gathering in Delhi in late June to demand Pradhan's resignation over this year's undergraduate medical entrance exam papers being leaked, which had forced millions of students to re-take the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).

While that was the trigger, the broader issue raised by the protesters, including Yadav, centred around...