The Gen Z left the city in awe and shock with a mass movement at Jantar Mantar. However unorganised it may look from the outside, it checked all boxes in smooth functioning as machinery held together by allyship and solidarity. For many years to come, the historical landmark in Delhi’s heart will tell tales of how a generation battling excessive screen times, brain drain and tech disruptions-driven unemployability mobilised the masses to uphold the ethos of democracy.
The volunteers at the site who ran parallel to the core team of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) didn’t fill any forms. They were there simply to fill a gap in management on the ground. Many didn’t even meet the party founders. These foot soldiers behind the movement worked in informal shifts, spontaneously without any instructions.
American sociologist Randall Collins, in his widely cited essay “Simmelian Numbers”, stresses the group size of 7-10 people being the borderline between informality and formality. A group of this size usually carries a single conversation wherein everyone pays attention, whereas a group beyond 10 breaks into micro-interactions carrying their own conversations.
None of those rules explain a sit-in protest which sustained itself for over 40 days with a mere strength of 150 formally associated members of the nascent CJP. Muffled speeches travelling around by loudspeakers may only cover enough distance, while social media does the rest. Determination did not falter, and victory was certain in the minds of those who supported the cause. The result: a minister resigned, and some amount of faith in the system was restored.
The beginning
On the morning of June 6, when 30-year-old CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke made his way out of Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport with jet-lagged eyes and Dr B R Ambedkar’s autobiography held high in his hand, he was greeted by supporters in the hundreds. They joined him at Jantar Mantar for the first sit-in, without any chain of command that would mentor them to handle the protest. As days passed by, more volunteers joined in, and everything that should have been systematic management became a voluntary arrangement with people just helping each other.
“When Dipke and others arrived at the protest site, most of us didn’t even know where to set up the stage. That underlines the demographic we were dealing with—first-time protesters,” said Vaishali, a social worker of over 11 years, who was among the first few members who joined the movement.
Later, she rose up the rank into the core team. She was among the 50-odd people who took up the task of managing affairs beyond the stage as the protest swelled beyond their imagination. She said that there was little room for a top-down approach. “Strictly volunteer basis. I can’t stress it enough,” she said, asserting that the movement was driven entirely by volunteers rather than directives.
The volunteer’s impulse
Throughout 36 days of protest at Jantar Mantar, dozens of volunteers who joined the movement were holding together the chaos, running on instinct. While the movement had a hierarchy for managing political affairs, with Dipke at the top, the everyday logistics was run by a troop of volunteers who seemed to operate through an informal arrangement within their groups. They just showed up in tranches to help the crowd with food, water, fans and much more as the protest gained momentum.
Among them was Prem Kumar, 31, a high-school teacher. “I joined the movement after July 19 and have been coming here every day after work. I have my own reasons for standing with the students, but what’s at stake now is much bigger. If we want to prove we can sustain a movement like this, it starts with something as simple as cleaning up the site every day,” he said while changing the second pair of gloves for the day. Equipped with trash bags and a mask, he had distributed safety gear to others.
At the entry gates a group of over 20 volunteers armed with hand fans welcomed supporters with fresh air. The volunteers quietly assembled into a human chain at the entry and exit gates, steering thousands of supporters through the barricades. A few steps ahead, some individuals offered bottles of water, packets of food and a welcome breeze from handheld fans. No one shouted commands, no visible chain of command existed, yet the crowd kept moving.
“We brought at least 100 fans a week ago and kept passing them on as shifts ended. Three shifts in a day was sufficient for crowd control at the entry and exit routes,” said one of them, who was keen on meeting Dipke when the protest was seemingly coming to an end after Sonam Wangchuk called off his fast.
People from all walks of life volunteered their service. Some helped people find their way, some helped to carry water bottles inside, while some got medicines in bulk and set up a makeshift clinic within the venue.
Inside such a medical-dispensary-cum-emergency unit stood Aafreen (name changed), donning a bright neon utility jacket as a volunteer. A political strategist and election manifesto designer for a Gurugram-based firm, she had worked extensively during the 2024 general elections and this year’s Tamil Nadu and Kerala Assembly elections.
“Before you ask, I did work for the much-obvious parties. None of it changes my determination to show up here every day,” she said. Aafreen was among many groups, usually the size of around 10, who showed up every day without any compulsion.
Realisation after Parliament march
Approaching a month into the sit-in protest and political tensions high through the power corridors, Dipke announced a march to Parliament ahead of its monsoon session. At this point, emotions were skyrocketing. Wangchuk was more than 20 days into his indefinite hunger strike and had lost almost 10 kg of body weight. At this point, six students from left organisations joined in the hunger strike.
The CJP management was in a state of an unannounced emergency ever since. Calls were made within core circles to increase formal resources in and around the stage area. “There is only that much we could do with the limited number we had. We could not risk a violent confrontation. The supporters had gathered around for a democratic protest,” said A K “Ek Hindustani” Singh, closely grounded in the core management team since Dipke landed in Delhi.
What followed was deliberation and formal expansion of the logistics team. The management team swelled to 200-odd people after the July 20 Parliament march, mostly consisting of young students and working professionals between 20 and 25—much similar to the demographics the movement catered to and drew from.
This included dedicated teams for logistics, which looked into management, storage and distribution of donated food; security, which was tasked with the fortification drive in and around the stage area to avoid any miscreants; and communications, which was to relay information among the core members on the whos, whats and hows of managing the protest.
A complete internet shutdown, alleged police snooping, and threats of legal action on donors were among the many snags—big and small—that always disrupted operations. Requests from affected families from the NEET fiasco, sympathisers travelling from Chhapra to Calicut and politicians who came to support the movement swarmed the team, which later added a team of 16 designated for stage management.
“We sometimes worked day in and day out,” said Ritesh, 21, a final-year BTech student from Noida. “I am primarily on the logistics team, but sometimes all of us have to pitch in for stage management. Ever since Sonam sir was picked up, Saurav and Ashutosh (CJP media spokespersons) have been addressing the media more,” he said before the protest ended while picking up a 30 kg pot filled with biryani, which had been donated by unidentified persons. “This is the third such pot of food we received today. By God’s grace, we never have a shortage of food here,” he said on Thursday.
Confusion around fast
On the night of July 23, when news broke out that Wangchuk had ended his fast, disbelief strayed across makeshift tents and tarp mattresses—not any thicker than the skin of those who used them. “We don’t want to believe it without verification. The government has made sure of it by illegally blocking off all the internet services in and around the protest site,” said Kartika, a transgender final-year DU law student, the day after Wangchuk broke the fast. Their companions in the tent, which read “queer friendly” on its entrance, hurriedly started calling friends at home to verify the news.
This was the exact moment when volunteers took charge and calmed the anxious nerves. Wangchuk had broken his fast in the dead of the night. Though a large crowd was present at Jantar Mantar at that time, the news still needed to be relayed through credible sources. Fortunately, there was no untoward incident, but the volunteers were ready for the eventuality.
On the next day, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das addressed the press. Apart from the much-deliberated party line expressing relief that Wangchuk’s fast had now ended, Das faltered when questioned about how the CJP team planned to take the movement forward. In the ensuing confusion, while the stage he and Dipke laid on was surrounded by known, trusted companions, reports of miscreants trying to enter and incite violence in an already agitated crowd were increasing by the day.
The strength of volunteers came in handy at this juncture, who may be young but seemed to have developed maturity overnight. A generation that wakes up to pop-up notifications and curated algorithms and is mobilised through what they saw unfold through their screens—the movement carried on by “trusting in the process”.
“When people choose to show up every day despite personal commitments, there is no merit in arguing against our generation’s passion towards questioning authority. We are equally accountable as citizens to complement the Opposition in asking for accountability from the state,” said Aisha Khan, a volunteer in the stage management team who had quit her job a day before Wangchuk broke his fast.
They regulated the crowd around the stage, and maintained discipline while thousand of supporters gathered near the barricades. None of her peers had any instructions, yet somehow, everyone knew their jobs.
The professionals’ contribution
“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognise the truth at all.” The famous opening monologue by Jared Harris’s Valery Legasov from HBO’s limited series Chernobyl deftly imparts the feelings of millions that were affected by the compromise of the NEET-UG admissions. Yet, among the many volunteers that witnessed, managed and sustained the Gen Z movement at Jantar Mantar was a collective of doctors. Unfazed by the system that required them to merit despite deep-rooted systemic rot.
“A day before my NEET-UG exam in 2023, my elder brother was contacted by a local physics crash-course institute. They offered us a PDF file of three-quarter sections of the entire exam paper for `50 lakh. The only dignity they had in such a bizarre offer was to only accept payment if I qualified,” recalled Varun (name changed), an MBBS student interning at a private hospital in south Delhi who was among over 20 doctors volunteering on a day shift at the protest site. “The corruption has been ingrained and flourishing for years. Despite this, we will not give up on our dreams and fight back.”
Supervising Varun was Dr Mosanna. The 29-year-old general physician was in his 11th hour of volunteering for the day. “We have seen how busy the core team is, so we have set up our kiosk right around the corner. I have been here for weeks, and we’ve had emergency medicines, oral rehydration sachets and safety equipment non-stop coming in from donors,” he said as he checked the pulse of one of the stage management personnel who had fainted in the crowd.
“We have treated deep cuts and injuries, but as the humid weather is testing everyone, viral fevers and skin infections are increasing. But we have all that we need – the people and the medicines. The josh has never been higher.”
While Dr Mosanna looked after Arjun, a 17-year-old student from Begusarai who had been sleeping, volunteering and eating right at Jantar Mantar round-the-clock for over three days now, his peers broke the news of Dipke and Das announcing the end of the protest after Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan had tendered his resignation.
Revelry spread across Jantar Mantar and the adjacent Tolstoy Marg. In the middle of festivities were dozens of volunteers whose primary concern was waste management. The job wasn’t yet done; the place had to be restored back to its original form. Beyond the hashtags, memes and outrage was a massive, uncoordinated workforce of spontaneous volunteers who kept the stir alive.