“There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.” – ShakespeareOur country is in shambles. Having wrested control over large tracts of our land in Ladakh, China is now an ominous presence in Arunachal Pradesh, a menacing situation that, typical of this regime’s deceitful style, was kept under wraps until the ITBP Director General recently blurted it out.Manipur is on the boil due to the protracted ethnic conflict and several districts in Nagaland have been declared “seriously disturbed areas”, a situation further inflamed by the covert actions of China.On top of all this, communities in Arunachal, including Gen Z, are staging intense protests against the Siang Dam project, torching vehicles, damaging public property, and even ransacking the homes of the local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and another MLA. It’s a full-blown crisis in the Northeastern region.Elsewhere, the regime’s nakedly crony-capitalist leanings, its overpowering contractor raj focus, its extravagance on glitzy projects meant for the privileged few and its embrace of a foreign policy that is hostage to the prime minister’s personal frailties have ruined the economy, aggravated unemployment to an all-time high and deepened inequality.Watch | ‘World is Losing Confidence in India’s Currency and Market’: Former Finance SecretaryBut Vishwaguru has turned his back on all these existential crises. He is busy cursing Rahul Gandhi and his Congress party, inaugurating garment factories, attending air displays and holding a road show in Varanasi – basically playing the fiddle as the country burns. But the haunted look on his face tells the story of a troubled soul. He knows he has been found out and will, sooner or later, be called to account.Never before has there been such a devastatingly effective assault on Modi’s persona as in the last few months. We have seen a precipitous diminution of the non-biological being and his bogus grandeur, meticulously choreographed over the past decade by his corporate and media minders.The man who strode the world like a Colossus has been reduced to a chhota bandar. And we owe this potent dynamiting of the Vishwaguru image to Gen Z, who relentlessly mocked and satirised him. It was easily the greatest takedown of an insufferably pompous public personality in recent history.And mind you, credible allegations about his fake degrees have not yet been seriously probed. Today the emperor wears no clothes!The latest “Gyanu must go” protests have also captured the public imagination and are generating a groundswell of support. They have driven a desperate regime to unleash its repertoire of dirty tricks against citizens protesting peacefully.The second round of peaceful protests that kick-started on October 2 – the Mahatma’s birth anniversary – were met with the unprecedented punitive might of the state. It is so obvious that the regime feared that the protesters, if they were allowed to assemble, would descend on him the way they barged into the mansions of the tyrants in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.Also read: To Save Himself, Modi Must Get Rid of His LiabilityApart from imposing Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) across swathes of New Delhi, over 50,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed in the national capital, key metro stations were closed, mobile internet was suspended, roads leading to Jantar Mantar were blocked, drones were used to monitor crowd movement and a wave of preventive and on-site detentions were made.Yet scores of protesters gathered around Jantar Mantar on that day.What we have witnessed during the relay of protests this month is illegitimate police brutality designed to intimidate, beat and persecute protesters so that, under duress, they cede their democratic right to assemble and protest peacefully. Apart from the standard tactics of gratuitous beatings, abuse and detentions, the police was seen side-by-side with right-wing goons, some dressed to look like Muslims, and attacking protesters. Women were dragged, beaten and molested.On October 10, the next day when protests were called, it is estimated that over 7,000 people were rounded up, roughed up, or taken to remote areas and abandoned, their access to legal counsel denied or severely restricted. Facial recognition tools, jammers and tracking technology were deployed to terrorise the youngsters.India has lived through a version of 1984.Neha Bora, the iconic face of the young protesters, has recounted the Kafkaesque treatment she was subjected to during her night-long detention. How much worse must it have been for the scores of unknown protesters subjected to the brutality of the criminals in uniform.Also read: The Vishwaguru Complex: Supremacist Rhetoric and National DeclineFrom all appearances, the government has now decided on a two-pronged strategy that, according to the assessment of the New York Times, “appears to be working”. Those are to continue to crush the Gen Z movement and to direct public attention towards its political rival: the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi (who have, admittedly, rarely been a match for Modi and the BJP’s juggernaut).All India Students’ Association (AISA) National President Neha Bora being detained by police personnel during a protest against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, October 3, 2026. Photo: PTI/Karma Bhutia.While the youth leaders are being harried by the iniquitous police-judiciary nexus, the terrible twins, pulling out all stops, have been attacking the Congress and Rahul Gandhi in particular.The received wisdom is that the government has regained control over the situation and that it is now business-as-usual, punctuated by an occasional protest that can be brushed off. Such a simplistic assessment ignores that the polity has already seen a massive mutation: The Modi regime is no longer the fearsome beast that it was till a few months ago. Gen Z has killed the fear of the regime.The greatest setback for the authoritarian has been the scandal relating to the plundering of the Ram temple’s coffers by his henchmen. As a consequence, he has had to forfeit his trump card – religion – by fostering societal schisms and diverting attention from every other issue. After all, crooks spouting religion and religiosity would inevitably invite scorn even from the most devout believersNot only have Gen Z cut Modi down to size, these astonishingly brave and irreverent youth have restored free speech in the country. Then came the cataclysmic Indian Express revelations about the shenanigans of the Chief Election Commissioner. That, coupled with the Gen Z (and Sonam Wangchuk) protests broke the shackles that had citizens tongue-tied for close to a decade. A country that lived in mortal fear of the regime has suddenly found its voice.Also read: EC Ducks, Tries to Make Light of Serious Questions Emerging From Revelations of Differences in CommissionIn this context, the gossip that the Gen Z movement has gone cold due to the pressure exerted by the regime is wishful thinking.It is now time that Rahul Gandhi is also given his due. His privileged upbringing and electoral defeats (we now know why) now sound like echoes of IT-cell meanness, which treats his trips abroad like a serious crime, conveniently ignoring the hard yards he puts in around the year.Since the Maharashtra election in 2023, Gandhi has been warning us about vote chori (vote theft). He has fearlessly laid bare the crimes being committed against the constitution and the people by Modi and his gang – and he has paid a huge price for it. His leadership and conduct during this crisis have been absolutely brilliant. He has carried the entire Opposition with him, barring the Aam Aadmi Party, and he has held the hands of Gen Z in a show of genuine camaraderie. For months, he has kept relentless pressure on the regime, which is at its wit’s end on how to respond.The quintessential social activist Ralph Nader, described as America’s “national scold”, said that an equal and just society is impossible without the active participation of its main stakeholder, i.e., civil society. “There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship,” he said.What we see today is the citizen revolting against injustice, demanding the rights that come with citizenship. The protests have drawn all sections of society to protect democracy – social activists, teachers, lawyers, housewives, journalists, trade unionists, farmers, celebrities, even the superannuated with one foot in the grave.Let’s face it: this is an existential battle between a regime that will go to any lengths to hold on to power and a people’s movement that seeks “regime change” in the form of an India for which the founding fathers sacrificed everything they had. Guys, for heaven’s sake, don’t blow it!Recall these memorable lines of the great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney:“History says, ‘Don’t hopeOn this side of the grave.’But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise upAnd hope and history rhyme!”The writer is a former civil servant. The views are personal.