New Delhi, July 31 -- The resignation of India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan after weeks of relentless student protests will be remembered as one of the defining political moments in contemporary India. Much has already been written about the spectacle itself: the Instagram reels watched by millions, the unlikely rise of the Cockroach Janata Party, students occupying Jantar Mantar in Delhi, satirical slogans, brutal police action against the youngsters and, finally, the minister's exit.

Yet the resignation was never the real story; it was just Act 1, Scene 1. The larger story is that India may have entered a new phase of democratic politics with Generation Z beginning to challenge one of the oldest assumptions of representative...