What we are witnessing is an archetypal watershed moment in the life of the nation, a tipping point that portends a cataclysmic change in the near future.The tumult of unforeseen events in the last three months has everyone guessing, nobody quite sure where we are headed. But anyone clued into our political scene knows that the status quo can no longer hold. Of course, there are the usual naysayers like my dear friend who claims oracular knowledge of Indian politics. He is bullish that once the hullabaloo dies down, we will end up where we were at the start – the tyrant will hold sway!Looking back at history, there was this other watershed moment in Indian politics when Indira Gandhi – whether secure in the belief that her authoritarian Emergency rule had benefited the nation and was endorsed by the majority, or because her conscience was disturbed by her own despotism – called for snap general elections in January 1977 and released all her political opponents.In the elections that followed, a united opposition, fortified by the democratic impulse of the ordinary citizens of India, crushed the Congress and restored our democracy. The tyrant was shooed away!But today what torments us is not the straightforward goonda raj of the Emergency but a beast that is infinitely more insidious and dangerous, Kafkaesque! What does one make of a ruthless, mafioso regime that is a cesspool of crime, bigotry and injustice, whose security personnel recently rained down lathis and fired pellet guns at the peaceful protesting students at Jantar Mantar? It’s frightening that there is no outrage!For 12 long years, the country has been in thrall of a dangerous fascist conman and charlatan. The Feku has wielded untrammelled power that he has used to tyrannise and bamboozle his people. Murderous hate and distrust between communities have been deliberately fostered for holding on to power.His Hindutva-based project of ushering in a Hindu Rashtra, marinated in an environment of nameless menace and fear, has captured the social space with unconditional support from a loyal retinue of totally compromised judges, bureaucrats, media lapdogs and the awful middle-class and corporates.A nation of cowards, soaked in hypocrisy and double standards, has been singing his tune. He has gone about wrecking everything – values, kinship, institutions – for his own gain and that of his cohorts. Can any society ever live down the ignominy of meekly submitting to the Feku imperiously orchestrating the country-wide banging of thalis and lighting of candles to ward off the coronavirus?Never in history has asatya, blind worship and rank stupidity been so all-pervasive and public! Even those who know better have played along because that is the politic thing to do. To borrow Martin Amis’s description of what became of Germans under Hitler, we have got used to living without honour – and without justice, freedom, truth and reason.The Mahatma, whose understanding of human nature was nothing less than Freudian, has an explanation for the kind of power that the tinsel Vishwaguru has wielded over us: “Where there are cowards there will always be bullies.”Till Gen Z upset the applecart, the Vishwaguru and his acolytes were closing in on taking complete control of the political executive of the country on top of the capture of all the institutions of governance. In a relentless series of “mergers and acquisitions” using the ‘carrot and stick’ method, the ruling party had succeeded in splitting the Trinamool Congress, further bleeding the Shiv Sena (UBT) and successfully acquiring Aam Aadmi Party MPs. There were reports of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam joining the NDA and of rumblings within the Samajwadi Party.With the Election Commission in its pocket, the regime’s definitive plan on getting an absolute majority in parliament was to pass major constitutional Bills on matters such as delimitation, the Uniform Civil Code and once and for all, to institute hegemonic Hindu rule – the holy grail of a Hindu Rashtra – where the minorities live on sufferance.But these monsters had not reckoned with Gen Z, who have thrown a monkey wrench into the works. These irreverent, profane idealists, speaking the language of Gandhi, Ambedkar and Marx, have called out the fraudsters and how!The taking out of the inept Dharmendra Pradhan notwithstanding, the greatest achievement of Gen Z hitherto has been the ‘dimagi’ diminution of the PM from Vishwaguru to chhota bandar by mobilising humour, caricature and lampoon in ingeniously crafted memes, slogans, videos and Instagram posts.And how deadly effective have they been in ripping apart the carefully manicured, corporate-designed image of the superman! They have reduced him to a pathetic old man, a “naraz phupha” seeking sympathy and goodwill through cringe-worthy Instagram videos released at the witching hour, forgiving girls for abusing him and his mother, promising strict punishment of those guilty of paper leaks, and what not.It signalled a complete meltdown of the 56-inch ‘ghar me ghuske maroonga’ strongman! An old saying rightly holds that ‘the arrogant fear ridicule more than confrontation; because nothing unsettles ego more than being made small without violence’.Gen Z have taken down a host of other high-profile abettors of this tyrannical regime. Top of this list of infamy is the rabidly communal Mohan Bhagwat whose forked tongue and double-speak are legendary. Gen Z has got him to obsequiously rally to their cause and talk democracy. He publicly stated that he “would trust Gen Z blindly”, that their grievances are genuine and not anti-national and that they are more honest than the young of past generations.But the real screamer was his outrageously hypocritical statement, contradicting the core ideology of Hindutva, that unity in diversity was central to India’s identity, and that “if any Hindu thinks there should be no Muslims in Bharat, he is not Hindu”. This guy is insanely duplicitous, but thankfully, nobody believes him!The once haughty CJI, who baptized Gen Z as ‘cockroaches’ and declined to hear petitions on police brutality as a waste of the court’s time, is now bending over backwards to accommodate all Gen Z demands including carte blanche withdrawal of all FIRs. Most recently, he has sought an explanation from the Noida authorities (the chief election commissioner’s daughter is district magistrate) for issuing a notice to a student for joining the protests. Of a sudden, judges are on the side of justice!Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, many staunch Modi bhakts among journalists have turned critics. So compromised is the mainstream media that most politically conscious citizens have turned to social media in search of authentic news.The regime has been fighting back to regain control. But it’s not working out as planned. The greatest setback is the fact that Mota Bhai and his underlings have been found out.The unprecedented backlash against the state-sponsored violence unleashed during the protests, the Delhi police’s use of facial recognition technology implying according to one report that a number of Jantar Mantar ‘disruptors’ were in jail at the time of the protests, the duplicitous but abortive ploy to whip up the anti-reservation stir in order to split the Gen Z movement, even the harassment of a retired bureaucrat because he had exposed the internecine battles within the regime and his doughty response, are clear evidence that Mota Bhai can no longer “terrorise and rule”!The Vishwaguru’s persistent comical attempt to win over Gen Z by parroting their lingo has been met with absolute disdain. His “friends” greeting has youngsters responding with howls of “we are not your friends” and abuses galore! His bizarre Independence Day speech attacking Gen Z and other “Dimagi Naxals” boomeranged badly.Flailing and at a loss for ways to counter the blowback against his regime, he is now spinning half-truths and falsehoods about his regime’s performance – the GDP at 7.8%, which is false; taking fulsome credit for completion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor despite knowing that the project was conceived and put on stream by the UPA government.He boasts about his ‘Tughluqi’ schemes like the highfalutin but wasteful bullet train project, the Statue of Unity, and the Central Vista Redevelopment Project involving demolition of solidly built government buildings and their replacement with like but glitzier infrastructure with, one worries, the sole purpose of extending and boosting the “Contract Raj” that is the lifeblood and primary resource for filling his party’s illicit coffers! It’s no wonder that the country’s debt burden has increased from around Rs 55 lakh crore in 2014 to around Rs 200 lakh crore today. The country is in a bad way!It is such a monstrous shame that at this dire moment, we have left it to Gen Z – who should be studying and having fun – to reclaim our democracy. But on their own, they have already buckled down to the task. Their focussed “school thik karo” campaign has state governments scurrying to improve infrastructure in educational institutions.Following the building collapse in Delhi that killed seven and injured several students, it is the Cockroach Janta Party intervened with a list of seven demands, based on painstaking research, that ought to galvanise the state government to launch a drive to seal and demolish the unsafe structures it should have torn down a long time ago.These fabulous young women and men are guys after my heart! While the rest of us – intellectually compromised and utterly amoral – have been complicit through collaboration or silence, their courage and noble intent have given us cause for hope! Will they break this creeping darkness around us and help the country recover its democratic mojo? Of course, they will!The writer is a former civil servant. The views are personal.