Bora's story reminds us that student politics is not necessarily a rehearsal for mainstream politics. It can be a laboratory for a different kind of politics, one in which the boundary between campus issues and national questions is increasingly blurred.
A more instructive comparison is India’s own protest wave of the mid-1970s -- and the political reckoning it produced for former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The BJP might be on the backfoot now but the protesting students are aware of how long their struggle to reform education might take.
When chronically online youth took to the streets, they stripped the state’s harshest response of the fear it was meant to inspire.
For many youngsters, political awareness began with doubts, arguments with parents and learning to think for themselves with the help of social media.
