A protest rarely begins on the day it becomes visible. Long before the streets fill, frustration has been accumulating, often invisibly, in classrooms where promises outpace opportunities, in homes where the cost of living rises faster than prospects, and among young people who are told they will inherit the future but have little say in designing it. They are expected to demonstrate their acquired skills, even as examination papers leak.

I have viewed this question from two vantage points: as an IIT Bombay student reading about France’s May 1968 movement, and later in Paris, where I served with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and witnessed the protests of 1994 and 2006. The echoes I hear today across Southern Europe and South Asia invite a question larger than any one demonstration: are these separate national eruptions, or signs of a deeper institutional and generational strain? Is there, perhaps, a ‘Southern’ dimension to their recurrence?

The histories are plainly different. France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Albania and Portugal do not share one political story, nor do Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India. Their movements have emerged from different triggers, demands and circumstances. Yet, when we place them along a longer timeline—from France in 1968, 1986, 1994 and 2006, through Southern Europe’s anti-austerity protests in 2011, and more recent housing demonstrations, to South Asia’s student-led and youth-driven mobilisations, a pattern worth investigating emerges.

Again and again, questions of opportunity, fairness, trust and representation surface, especially when young people feel that decisions shaping their lives are being made without them.

The most consequential lesson may be this: street protests are often not the beginning of a problem, but the moment when institutions can no longer overlook it. A government may see a sudden eruption; the young people in the streets may see years of unanswered signals. The policy challenge, therefore, is not simply to contain the next storm. It is to build institutions that can listen before anger becomes mobilisation, respond fairly when grievances emerge, and give young people a meaningful, continuing role in designing and evaluating the decisions that shape their future.

France After 1968       

May 1968 is often remembered as a singular rupture, but France’s subsequent history shows that youth protests did not end with it. Student demonstrations in 1986 opposed the Devaquet university reform. In 1990, high-school students protested poor conditions and unequal resources. In 1994, young people mobilised against a proposed youth employment contract. In 2006, students and trade unions helped force the government to abandon the First Employment Contract (CPE), which critics feared would institutionalise precarious work for young people.

Students also joined a much broader mobilisation against pension reform. In 2026, protests over school staffing, class sizes, facilities and university access have again brought young people into the streets.

These episodes are not interchangeable. The 2006 campaign had a relatively clear target and a measurable outcome: the proposal was withdrawn. The 2023 pension protests, by contrast, confronted a reform that the government ultimately enacted. The contrast matters. Mobilisation can force a concession, but it does not automatically win every policy argument, nor does it create a durable channel for youth participation. A government may retreat on one proposal while leaving the relationship between young people and decision-makers largely unchanged.

The 2005 urban unrest in France and the ‘Yellow Vest’ movement that began in 2018 were different in character. Some protests were youth-led; others were broader social mobilisations. What connects them is not a continuous revolution, but a recurring struggle over who bears the cost of policy and whose experience counts in the decisions that follow.

When Protests Change Politics 

The financial crisis and the years of austerity gave Southern Europe another set of lessons. In Spain, the Indignados, or 15-M movement, which emerged on May 15, 2011, fundamentally reshaped Spanish politics, civil society and public debate in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It challenged austerity, corruption and perceived deficiencies in representative democracy.

In Portugal, the 2011 Geração à Rasca mobilisation, often translated as the ‘generation in distress’, made visible the insecurity of young people facing precarious work and blocked prospects. In Greece and Italy, student and youth activism formed part of wider cycles of opposition to austerity and political arrangements seen as unresponsive.

Research on these movements shows that they drew on earlier activist networks and helped reshape public debate and party politics, although their organisational forms and political legacies varied.

The unrest reported across France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Albania in October 2026 adds a new chapter, with education pressures, housing costs, rising living expenses and corruption allegations appearing in different combinations. Contemporary reports suggest some cross-border inspiration, but these movements should not be treated as one unified uprising.

The more defensible interpretation is that separate societies are confronting a similar question: how credible is the promise that effort, education and work will produce a secure future?

How Narrow Grievance Widen

South Asia provides particularly sharp examples of how a specific demand can widen. India’s Nav Nirman movement in Gujarat in 1973–74 began amid student anger over price rises and alleged corruption, then grew into a wider political agitation.

Later student mobilisations in India—including protests over university issues and the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019–20—showed how campus-based action can connect to larger questions of public policy, rights and representation. These movements differed in their aims and outcomes; no single account can represent India’s diverse student politics.

Bangladesh offers an especially revealing sequence. Student protests in 2018 helped prompt the government to abolish public-job quotas. When a court decision reinstated a major quota provision in 2024, student mobilisation returned.

The immediate issue concerned access to public employment, but the protests expanded amid wider economic and political grievances and culminated in a much larger crisis. The sequence demonstrates that a concession can settle a specific demand without resolving the underlying trust deficit. If a policy is reversed without a credible, inclusive and trusted process, the same issue can return with greater force.

Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya emerged during an economic collapse marked by shortages and anger at the political leadership.

Nepal’s 2006 Jana Andolan helped end direct royal rule and opened a new constitutional chapter. The youth-led uprising of September 2025, triggered by a different set of circumstances, exposed persistent frustrations over corruption, opportunity and political privilege.

The two Nepali episodes were not the same movement: one was a broad coalition struggle against royal rule, while the other was a digitally connected youth mobilisation within a republic. Their comparison nevertheless raises a difficult question: why can major political transitions fail to deliver the accountability and inclusion that citizens expected?

Comparative research highlights one important point: the label ‘Gen Z revolt’ can be useful shorthand, but it can also obscure differences. Young people may initiate mobilisation, yet movements can quickly draw in other generations and social groups. Outcomes depend on institutional openness, the response of security forces, divisions among political elites, the organisation of protesters and the availability of credible political alternatives.

Digital platforms accelerate communication; they do not determine the destination.

Southern Storms: An Emerging Pattern?

Across these cases, which I would like to call ‘southern storms’, a three-stage pattern appears to be emerging.

First, there is a trigger arising from longer-term, suppressed grievances. These may include inadequate educational infrastructure, rising living costs, job insecurity caused by emerging technologies, examination controversies, inflation, immigration-related concerns and income disparities between wealthy elected representatives and businesspeople, on the one hand, and Gen Z university students, on the other.

Second, there is a backlog of unresolved concerns: precarious working conditions, unaffordable housing, unequal access to opportunities, corruption allegations, poor public services, or the belief that personal connections matter more than merit.

Third, trust in the system erodes. A triggering event convinces enough people that ordinary channels—including the institutions responsible for law, order and justice—are unlikely to provide a remedy.

Lessons for Policymakers

The first lesson is that early silence is not a reliable measure of society’s consent, particularly among Gen Z. People may remain quiet because they lack time, organisation, safety or confidence that participation will make a difference.

Governments need routine mechanisms to detect problems before they become street crises. These include transparent service indicators, independent grievance mechanisms, student and youth consultations with real influence, and public explanations of how decisions are made.

The second lesson is to distinguish between concession, transformation and renewal.

Concession addresses an immediate demand. Transformation changes the policy or institution that produced the grievance. Renewal gives affected people a continuing role in shaping decisions and monitoring implementation.

The withdrawal of the CPE in France in 2006 illustrates how a focused campaign can secure a concession. Bangladesh’s 2018–24 quota sequence shows why a policy outcome may be revisited when the legitimacy of the process remains contested. Spain’s 15-M movement illustrates how protests can reshape political debate, even when the underlying economic and social problems remain unresolved.

The third lesson is to build youth participation into the policy cycle, rather than bolt it on after a crisis. Their participation must amount to more than a conference panel, applause, invitations to deliver inaugural speeches or photographs of politicians posing with ‘Greta-type slogans’.

The fourth lesson is to manage Gen Z employment prospects through measurable outcomes. Governments should publish accessible indicators on graduate employment and job quality, housing affordability, education quality, access to public opportunities and regional disparities.

The fifth lesson is to protect peaceful dissent and engage in dialogue from the outset, while responding proportionately to violence.

Role of Universities 

Universities are uniquely placed to connect youth energy with public purpose. They should not be expected to depoliticise students or manufacture consensus. Their task is to equip young people to investigate problems, deliberate across differences and demonstrate alternatives.

A campus can function as a living laboratory in which students work with local governments, employers and communities on transport, energy, cooling, water, waste, housing and employment skills. This approach turns participation into practical capability.

The same principle applies to the climate transition, which is also affecting the ‘southern storms’. Young people are routinely told that they will inherit a warming planet and a transformed labour market. They should also have a hand in designing the solutions: measuring campus emissions, improving energy efficiency, developing cooling strategies, restoring local ecosystems and building skills for decarbonisation.

A transition planned without youth participation may feel imposed; one built with them can generate agency, competence and employment.

For universities to play this role, governments and institutions must provide structured pathways into public decision-making. Student research should be able to inform local plans; campus pilot projects should be evaluated and scaled up where successful; and youth proposals should receive reasoned responses.

Elected officials should engage with campus youth in a manner that encourages meaningful deliberation, much as they do in parliamentary forums. This is not a substitute for representative parliamentary democracy. It is a way to strengthen it.

Political El Niños?

In the climate system, El Niño is a natural phenomenon that occurs at intervals and can exacerbate vulnerability. Political unrest is not a climatic event, yet the metaphor helps us recognise recurring patterns of vulnerability and strengthen the systems designed to respond to them.

Real Test of Governance

My years in Paris revealed to me that protest is part of democratic life, not automatically evidence of democratic collapse. The history of France after 1968 shows that protest can win a concession, fail to change a policy or broaden into a larger social movement.

Southern Europe shows that mobilisation can reshape political agendas while leaving difficult economic questions unresolved. South Asia shows that a narrow grievance can become a challenge to the legitimacy of a governing system when trust has already been eroded.

A storm can expose a weakness in a structure, but it cannot rebuild it by itself. The real test of governance is whether institutions learn between storms—before the next generation concludes that the street is the only place where its voice can be heard.

(The author is a noted environmentalist, former Director of UNEP, Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), a contributor to the report recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize, an IIT alumnus, and Founder of the Green TERRE Foundation, Pune. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at shende.rajendra@gmail.com)