Don’t mistake Instagram for India: Why Gen Z is not deserting the BJP

While young Indians are deeply frustrated over unemployment, paper leaks and economic uncertainty, frustration does not automatically translate into electoral rejection. To confuse Instagram trends with voting behaviour is to mistake the loudest voices for the largest constituency — and to misunderstand both Gen Z and Indian politics

Every protest season produces a new narrative. Today, the narrative is that Gen Z has turned against the BJP.

If you spend an evening on Instagram, scroll through X or flip through reels, the conclusion appears obvious. Young Indians are angry. They are protesting. They are mocking the government. Hence, they must also be abandoning the BJP.

We live in an era when social media has become an alternative to political science. However, the loudest voices are rarely the largest constituency.

India’s Gen Z, made up of those who were born between 1997 and 2012, is not a monolith. It is close to 400 million people. It includes IIT and Civil Service aspirants in Kota, delivery riders in Mumbai, coders in Hyderabad, farmers’ children in eastern Uttar Pradesh, nursing students in Kerala and first-generation graduates in small towns that rarely trend on Indian social media.

To assume that all of them think alike is to misunderstand both India and Gen Z. However, what can be assumed is that young Indians are frustrated.

The reasons are legitimate: youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. Examination paper leaks have fostered disillusionment. The rise of AI has added another layer of insecurity about future jobs. These are not imagined grievances; they are real, and the BJP has paid a political price for appearing slow to respond to them. The recent protests over the NEET exam paper leak have forced a rare government retreat and led to the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

But here is where the narrative leaps far ahead of the evidence.

Being angry with the government is not the same as voting against it.

One of the more revealing surveys conducted before the 2024 general election was the Lokniti-CSDS Youth and Politics Survey, which interviewed young respondents aged 18 to 22.

Its findings complicate almost every lazy assumption.

Nearly 65 per cent of respondents who expressed a voting preference said they would vote for the BJP if an election were held immediately. Congress attracted under 8 per cent, while AAP was at around 7 per cent. The survey, interestingly, was focused on the demographic that has been credited with the protests at Jantar Mantar — students specifically. A section of Gen Z, it must be noted.

The same survey asked another revealing question.

Which party focuses most on the problems of young people?

Forty-four per cent chose the BJP.

Which party is most capable of generating employment?

Again, roughly 45 per cent chose the BJP.

Only on education did AAP edge ahead by a whisker.

These are hardly the findings of a generation in political revolt.

Nor is this entirely new.

Previous National Election Studies over the past decade have consistently shown that younger voters have often been as supportive of the BJP as older voters, and in some elections even more so. Young Indians were critical to the BJP’s victories in both 2014 and 2019, suggesting that youth support has historically been one of the party’s strengths rather than weaknesses.

Even Reuters’ reporting ahead of the 2024 election painted a far more nuanced picture than the social media narrative. Young voters overwhelmingly listed jobs, inflation and communal harmony as their biggest concerns, and many also viewed Narendra Modi and the BJP as better placed to deliver economic growth, even while expressing disappointment over employment.

This is the contradiction commentators struggle to understand and often results in sweeping conclusions like — Gen Z is transactional.

It has no emotional memory of the Emergency.

It has no recollection of the UPA years.

However, what is a fact is that, for millions of first-time voters, governance has always meant Narendra Modi.

A circumstance that makes this generation more demanding and less ideological.

They are perfectly capable of protesting against paper leaks on Tuesday, criticising unemployment on Wednesday and voting for the BJP on polling day because they remain unconvinced by the alternative.

Political analysts often confuse issue-based mobilisation with electoral realignment.

The NEET protests were issue-based, not ideological.

It would be hasty to connect the two.

American students protested against Joe Biden over Gaza, but many still voted Democrat.

British students protested against Conservative governments while remaining divided among Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

Young Indians, too, can oppose a policy that directly impacts their interests without abandoning a party.

Another easy error is mistaking urban digital India for electoral India.

Instagram disproportionately amplifies English-speaking metropolitan youth. Elections, however, are won in places where politics is also shaped by roads, welfare benefits, electricity, caste equations, law and order and aspirations for upward mobility. Viral reels amplify and engage but are not necessarily a substitute.

For a young voter in a Tier-III town whose family received a pucca house, cooking gas, tap water or direct benefit transfers, governance is experienced differently from the way it is debated online.

None of this means the BJP can afford complacency.

Far from it.

Youth unemployment is arguably the single biggest long-term political risk facing the government. If India cannot generate high-quality jobs at scale over the next decade, no amount of political messaging will compensate for the experience of lived economic frustration.

But that is a very different argument from saying Gen Z has tuned out.

The evidence simply does not allow such certainty.

Perhaps the real lesson is this: commentators keep trying to fit Gen Z into neat ideological boxes.

This generation refuses to accept those boxes.

It is more impatient than previous generations.

More digitally connected.

Less deferential.

But also more pragmatic than commentators would like to admit. The protests displayed that — demands met, protest called off, party the following evening.

And anyone who mistakes Instagram for India risks learning the oldest lesson in Indian politics: elections are decided in polling booths, not comment sections.

Instagram disproportionately amplifies English-speaking metropolitan youth. Elections, however, are won in places where politics is also shaped by roads, welfare benefits, electricity, caste equations, law and order and aspirations for upward mobility. Viral reels amplify and engage but are not necessarily a substitute

The writer is an Indian author, screenwriter and columnist; Views presented are personal.