Protesters in India, France and Spain have all been taking to the streets for days, albeit over very different grievances. French students demand decent schools and more teachers, Spaniards struggle with unaffordable housing, and young Indians question the integrity of their country's electoral institutions. Yet beneath these differences lies a common frustration: the feeling that those who hold political power are no longer listening to the people they are supposed to serve.
In France, the protests began in late September with students demanding better conditions in their schools. Overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating buildings and shortages of teaching staff have left many young people thinking that their education is being neglected.
The demonstrations have since spread across the country, with hundreds of schools disrupted and clashes with police escalating the confrontation. The scale of the unrest has invited comparisons with May 1968, when student demonstrations grew into a wider social revolt that shook the French political establishment.
“Cockroaches!”
In Spain, the anger has a rather different source. Housing has become increasingly unaffordable for many people there, particularly younger generations who find themselves unable to secure a home despite working and earning a living. The eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her Madrid apartment, where she had lived for more than seven decades, became a powerful symbol of this predicament. When parliament rejected government measures intended to protect tenants on October 2, protests spread across the country. For the demonstrators, however, the issue extends beyond rents and evictions. It is also about whether political institutions are willing to protect people's basic interests when these come into conflict with those of property investors and other powerful economic actors.
In India, young protesters have begun filling the streets over a different set of concerns, including an examination scandal that broke out in May. The chief justice of the world’s largest democracy then compared some unemployed young people to “cockroaches”. Then more recently came a controversial revision as part of which a total of 130 million names have been taken off the electoral rolls because they were duplicate or ineligible. The critics, however, argue that this move undermines electoral fairness and benefits the ruling party. Following a massive crackdown on the protests on October 10, the controversy is now a wider test of public confidence in the institutions responsible for ensuring transparency and accountability.
What does the ordinary man count for?
These are not identical struggles, nor should we pretend that they are. But they point towards a common concern. Whether the issue is education, housing or the integrity of elections, people are demanding that their interests be taken seriously and that institutions fulfill the purposes for which they exist.
Democracy is about more than holding elections at regular intervals. It is also about whether citizens have a meaningful opportunity to influence decisions that shape their lives, whether public institutions are accountable to them, and whether the promise of equal opportunity extends beyond political speeches.
The young people demonstrating in France and India, alongside the generations taking to the streets in Spain, are asking a simple question: if political power is exercised in their name, why do so many of them feel that their voices count for so little?
That, perhaps, is the most important message connecting Paris, Madrid and Delhi in recent weeks. People are not simply asking the ruling elite to solve individual problems. They are asking to be treated as the reason political power exists in the first place.
