When Streets Speak Louder Than Power: How Outlook Magazine Covered Protests

The pulse of discontent now finds its fullest expression in what is happening in Nepal: a long-overdue conversation between youth, power and protest. It shows us that the lexicon of protest does not have to include the word violence, but it can.

Nepal has had a fairly tumultuous transition to a democracy. Since 2008, it has had 13 governments. Now, its Prime Minister, KP Sharma Oli, has stepped down.

The reason is a protest by youngsters, over grouses that have built up over years, finally spilling over on Monday and escalating into deadly violence. 

Nepal saw a political churn last week when Oli’s government put a ban on 26 social media platforms, with the Prime Minister saying the party is not against social media, “but what cannot be accepted is those doing business in Nepal, making money, and yet not complying with the law."

19 protesters have been killed so far, with hundreds injured.

But the frustration of Nepal’s predominantly Gen Z protesters extends far beyond the social media ban. The young people in Nepal have been unhappy, and the simmering discontent has taken over the streets.

The protest has become about the same set of politicians, shifting hands at power while corruption deepens across the country. At the same time, it has tapped into a cultural flashpoint online: “Nepo Babies.”

Social media users are circulating photos of younger members of influential families, questioning how their privileged lifestyles are sustained and highlighting the gap between political elites and ordinary citizens.

While unemployment and government’s economic inefficiency is the case in Nepal today, just a year earlier, Bangladesh experienced a parallel upheaval. The movement — later remembered as the July Mass Uprising or the Student-People’s Uprising — claimed the lives of nearly 1,400 people. Yet, it succeeded in toppling long-time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, bringing an end to her 15-year rule.

What links these two protests is the composition of their participants: young people, students, even school-goers, united in their disillusionment with the status quo. While dissent and campus demonstrations have long been part of university life, there are moments when such movements spill beyond academic grounds—transforming into wider social upheavals.

When people decide that formal political structures in place have failed to respond, protest becomes their language. Outlook has extensively covered protests in their many forms — from campus demonstrations and mass dissent to movements across the Ivy Leagues in the United States.

Dissent has increasingly come to be seen as an act of “indiscipline” in the administrative parlance of Indian universities, whenever the conversation has pivoted on government policies, writes Apekha Priyadarshini in ‘Thought Police: Is Penalising Dissent The New Normal In Indian Universities?’

She explores whether Indian universities are turning into suffocating spaces where constant censorship and surveillance is leaving no room for protests or dissenting voices. “What really is the purpose of “critical thinking”—taught enthusiastically in classrooms, condemned and punished when applied to the larger society?”

Campus unrest had swept across America’s Ivy League universities as well. In ‘Young And Angry: Columbia Student Protests Continue To Rattle The Powers That Be’, Seema Guha speaks about the student protest in the US in 1970s over foreign wars, Vietnam War to be precise, which then accelerated US withdrawal from Vietnam. 

As pro-Palestine protests against the US administration’s iron clad support for Israel’s war on Gaza continued, Guha writes, “University authorities across the US  are grappling with the complexities of balancing the much vaunted ideals of free speech and students' right to  protest, (All guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution) with  the need for safety for all students. Many particularly Jewish students feel unsafe on campuses where protests are on.”

Rabiul Alam writes about the 2024 protest in Bangladesh that ended Hasina’s reign in Behind Bangladesh Protests, The Weight of Deep-Seated Frustrations. Alam writes, the air was thick with tension. At Dhaka’s Mirpur-10 roundabout area, an elevated metro station in the national capital, a massive crowd had gathered, their thousands of voices united in a single cry for freedom.

“Then, a sharp crack pierced the evening air—a bullet fired into the throng. The world seemed to slow down as Shazid was struck. The bullet entered the back of his head, tore through his brain and exited through his eye. In an instant, the energy of the protest shifted from defiance to panic.”

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya In Bangladesh, Will The August Of Liberation Last? chronicled how the student protest not only ended Hasina’s reign but also the aftermath.

He also writes about the raw language of the road safety movement’s slogans, which often included expletives. “Amar Bhai Roktey Laal, Police Kon Chya**r Ba*l, which loosely translates to ‘my brother is covered in blood/ who the f*** are the cops’, was painted on roads and walls and rented the air. “Police ch*** na, lathicharge ch*** na” (translating to ‘we don’t give a f*** to police or lathicharge’) went clear and loud.”

Protests are not just moments of resistance but turning points where societies confront their own contradictions. Each wave of dissent leaves behind a trace that reshapes politics, even when the crowds disperse.