1991: Youth, Protest, and the Mandal Commission

1991 was a historic flashpoint in the economic and social reform of India, the country at this point had reached the brink of socio-political turmoil. The trigger was the Mandal Commission and its recommendations to expand reservations in government jobs and education based on caste. With India at the time largely following a command economy structure where government jobs were the only opportunities most had, the country erupted in anger across urban India--particularly among students; who saw the policy as deeply unjust. 

“The whole country erupted,” recalls a participant. “It was about caste-based quotas—jobs, opportunities. People like me refused to accept it. And that refusal spilled onto the streets.” 

Because the initial inequality that people from lower castes had faced post independence in 1947 had by this point incrementally reduced, expanding these reservations would not prove to help them much more, but it could affect what those who did not fall under this category would be able to access. 

The protests quickly turned violent. Riots broke out. Students clashed with police. Stones were thrown. For many teenagers, it was their first experience of political anger—and of state authority pushing back.

This unrest came just months before another pivotal moment: India’s economic liberalisation. Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation (LPG) would soon redefine the nation’s economic direction. But in early 1991, that future was not yet visible. What was visible instead was fury.

At the time, the students were barely fifteen years old. Many had just completed their 10th grade examinations in March 1991 and entered college a few months later—unusually young by today’s standards. Still in what should have been their 11th grade year, they found themselves swept up in student politics and protest, not science and academics. 

“I was throwing stones at the cops,” says one participant. “Then I went to college, and there were student riots again.”

One incident stands out. Walking into a packed lecture theatre—two to three hundred students seated in a large, gallery-style classroom—he interrupted a professor mid-lecture.

“I just said, ‘Everybody out.’”

The professor stared in disbelief. He was small, thin, and young—“this Chintu (small) guy,” as he puts it—but the room responded. Students began filing out.

Then came the moment that still feels surreal in retrospect. He climbed onto the lecturer’s table, dragged a chair up for balance, reached toward the ceiling fan, and bent its blades—a symbolic act of defiance against the system he believed had failed him and his peers.

“This was the youth protesting against the Mandal Commission,” he reflects now. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I could’ve landed in serious trouble.”

Looking back, the episode captures the intensity and impulsiveness of youth at a volatile political moment. It also serves as a reminder that India’s path to economic reform was preceded not by calm consensus, but by rage, confusion, and a generation struggling to make sense of rapid change—often in reckless ways.

A stark contrast as to what political defiance is to teenagers in the status quo, who often can not get away with such actions due to the fear of being watched by a largely digitized community where surveillance and tangible videographic evidence has become more prevalent.