Examine the role of social media in shaping contemporary protest movements. How should democratic states respond to legitimate dissent without resorting to delegitimisation?

The Supreme Court in Anuradha Bhasin (2020) held that speech through the internet is integral to Article 19(1)(a) [4]. Recent Gen Z-led upheavals in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal show why: social media has become the organising infrastructure of protest, making state responses to it a test of democratic maturity.

How social media reshapes protest

• Lowers the cost of assembly: hashtag campaigns on TikTok, Discord and Reddit replace party cadres, enabling leaderless, rapid mobilisation without prior organisation.
• Frames grievance: it converts diffuse anger over corruption and blocked mobility into shared symbols; the ILO finds two in three young workers in developing economies hold qualifications mismatched to their jobs [1].
• Amplifies triggers: Nepal's 2025 unrest was sparked by a platform ban itself — suppression supplied the mobilising symbol rather than removing it.

Its limits

• Mobilising capacity is not governing capacity — movements that topple governments lack candidate lists or manifestos, leaving the incumbent machine to inherit the vacancy.
• Underlying conditions persist: globally 57.8% of workers are informal [1], and India's own 10.2% youth unemployment (PLFS 2023-24) [2] masks discouraged and care-burdened youth, since 20.4% of the world's youth were NEET in 2023 [3].
• Virality also carries misinformation, making the state's task discrimination, not blanket blocking.

Responding without delegitimisation

• Apply the proportionality test of Anuradha Bhasin — necessity, least-restrictive means, published orders and periodic review under the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services Rules, 2017 [4].
• Branding protesters "anti-national" forecloses early warning, since a grievance defined as sedition cannot be conceded; parliamentary standing-committee hearings and grievance petitions offer a non-securitised channel.
• Address substance: publish a NEET series alongside PLFS [3] and redesign skilling around placement-fit, as the ILO's India Employment Report 2024 urges [1].

Social media has changed the grammar of dissent, not its causes. Democracies that read discontent as data — and answer with responsiveness rather than repression — convert protest into reform, advancing the Article 19 freedoms and SDG 8.6 commitments they already profess.