For years, organising grand spectacles, setting narratives, displaying self-belief has been the prerogative of the 56-inched state, its fingers holding fast to all possible reins of state power. For years falsehoods have been dumped so unchecked that the truth-sayers hacking way through have stumbled, dismayed and exhausted, before getting up and resuming the Sisyphean labour of rolling solid facts up the slippery, shifting trash hill of lies.For years, the masses – hungry and jobless, bulldozed and lynched, incarcerated without trial and unheard and silenced – have been forced to snort on a bizarre Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh fantasy of civilisational redemption by way of mandir inaugurations and DJ dances before mosques that substitute for governance. For years the possibility of zoned-out masses confronting injustices despite the country being broken in every way, has seemed not just remote, but impossible.Then came the July 2026 youth-led NEET paper leak protests, which dealt the first crack in the 56-inched state fantasy. At Jantar Mantar, the fear of this all-powerful state was vanquished by an exuberant Gen Z. Since then, every day, little by little and then all at once, the very things that once made the state invincible – their need for total control, their sly strategies of lies and media control, their refusal to do dialogue – have turned into their biggest liabilities. Once the aura of invincibility cracked, the state could have mellowed, changed tack, tried a strategy of greater responsiveness and genuine engagement with citizen’s questions. But a state whose central conceit over the past decade has been unhearing the vocals and silencing the suffering locals, the uncontested stupidity morphs and hardens into a rigidity both of which are essential to its brutality. Once this chain is set in motion it’s impossible for the long practiced ‘Chanakya Neeti’ of intransigence to suddenly flow into dialogue. Thus, despite the shattered aura, in the past two months whether tribal children die in Balaghat or PG students die in Delhi or ethanol is cleared for vehicles or the digital India boast of free UPI is up for a whack or women students get raped, the response is familiar. No one deserves a hearing, nothing will be answered. In this scenario, emerged the Indian Express fact-checked report on the unilateral deletions in electoral rolls made by the Chief Election Commissioner. Something that was dismissed as crying, when raised by the opposition. Predictably, the state stayed mum and now, when the protests have begun, they’ve moved to stymie them with an even more buffed up 56-inch stance without realising that times had changed.It is said that the legitimacy of any authority rests on a tacit understanding that people being asked to obey and comply would be heard if they voice a grave concern. For this reason, even medieval emperors kept a gong at fort gates for ordinary subjects to ring if when their pleas went unheard. Further, the governing laws should be predictable and with precedent. Even subjects have a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority must be fair, not arbitrary. Clearly, with Gyanesh Gate, all conventions are in shambles.And at Jantar Mantar 2.0, the legitimacy of the state has stepped into a morass.The manner in which protestors were barricaded and detained and manhandled by Delhi police on Gandhi Jayanti, has once again made both the amockness and mockery in our democracy visible to the world. It is universally acknowledged that once a legitimacy crisis begins, use of force loses force. In fact, the more the use of force, the greater will be the defiance. The state and police force long accustomed to chit bhee mera, pat bhee mera might have got on a treadmill to their own downfall. And the downfall might be led by women power.The July protest threw up a slew of young leaders like CJP’s Abhijeet Dipke, Sourav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, all of whom have great organisational, strategic and legal insights. But AISA President Neha Bora, who fasted for 23 days in protest, stands out for her passion and intelligence, the clarity and conviction she brings to political discourse. For long, while dealing with powerful politicians who bay for blood and bulldozer every time they open mouth, the discourse of their opponents has sounded anaemic and feeble.All India Students’ Association (AISA) National President Neha Bora being detained during a protest carried out by political parties and members of AISA, SFI, NSUI and other student bodies against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, demanding his resignation over the irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and mass deletion of voters, at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi, Friday, Oct. 2, 2026. Photo: PTI /Karma Bhutia The remarkable thing about the full-bloodedness Neha Bora brings to discourse is the immense dignity and an ability to connect dots and articulate that even seasoned men lack. With steely conviction that rises far above strategic rhetoric, she unhesitatingly calls out perpetrators by their true names (lampat, dangai, gunda). In assertions that brim with love for the nation and rightful rage against what has been done to it, her words fall on ears like a cleansing ragefall of truth, touched by which, every wronged heart is restored and spiked with hope. This ability to scale up heartbeats and awe with simple truths spoken out loud matters, because the citizens have stood mired in a cesspool of lies for long, forced to swallow any mann ki baat, which is how fascists destroy truth.Under fascism, ordinary citizens constantly grapple with the inadequacy of language to match the feelings evoked by the bizarre reality around them. Truth becomes contested and meaning becomes impossible to articulate. We feel locked out of all sense. Even proven facts and history are treated as just another opinion while lies and absolute nonsense is deified. Deployment of language by the fascists is designed to cause such a collapse of civic and constitutional values. They deploy vague, hyperbolic, meaningless speech modes, coined phrases, nonsensical acronyms that serve to signal power to those who use them and to silence anyone who dares question them. Such language befogs minds of ordinary citizens, builds an atmosphere of fear in anyone who dares question them and enables loyalists to carry on unquestioned with their questionable agendas. These tactics though predictable, shock, numb and exhaust people till their ability to distinguish truth from falsity is completely compromised and a river of nonsense streams unabated from the seats of power to the chosen mobs. As receivers, we know what is being peddled is utter nonsense (double-engine triple-engine Vishwaguru, G-20, Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, Har Ghar Tiranga, Desh Ki Mitti) but have no choice but to attend to it as the nonsense undergirds everything – from policy decisions on how to spend, what to tax, whom to punish, whether students can write an exam, a retiree access pension. The vitiated discourse creates the impression that truth has ceased to exist because they have kicked it out. For years only a handful of journalists and a growing tribe of political satirists (may they multiply) have clawed at the wall of meaninglessness by breaking every shocked silence with a smart question, by puncturing the spectacle of misinformation and hysteria with a sly dig and by bringing out the pathos and absurdity of everyday happenings by delivering them with deadpan seriousness. They schooled a generation adept at countering every manufactured meaninglessness with their own homegrown, irreverent meaning making video to pose questions. Now in every nukkad of every gali, little kids are gleefully picking out threads from the tissue of lies and showing it to the world. Today with the rise of Gen Z and the truth speaking young leaders, and those long-isolated rays have come together in a luminous column of inquilaab.Varsha Tiwary is a Delhi-based writer and translator. She has recently published 1990, Aramganj a translation of the best-selling Hindi novel Rambhakt Rangbaz.