Introduction: Looking Beyond the Fog of Protest The recent protests led by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) have emerged as one of the largest youth-led mobilisations in contemporary India. The movement is primarily centred on allegations of corruption surrounding the NEET examination, including paper leaks, irregularities in the examination process, and the suicides of students allegedly linked to this crisis. The principal demand emerging from these protests has been the re

Every nation-state sustains its authority by exercising control over the bodies of its people. The nature of this control determines whether individuals live as rights-bearing citizens or as subjects under coercive power. The French philosopher Michel Foucault described this process as biopolitics , where power operates not only through laws and institutions but also through everyday practices that regulate human bodies and behavior. Similarly, Franz Fanon argued that

Every human society produces elites. These elites design, dominate, and reproduce political, social, economic, ecological, and cultural institutions in that society. History is shaped either by these elites or by resistance against them. In South Asia—home to more than one-fourth of the world’s population—understanding power requires a comparative examination of elite formations across national borders. Despite sovereign separation, the ruling classes of India, Pakistan, Bang