Patna, India – As 20-year-old Ajay Kumar scrolled through social media on his mobile phone in Muzaffarpur district in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, he came across rumours that a crucial examination for a government job he had appeared for had been compromised.Ajay is a Dalit, a community that falls at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy and has suffered centuries of marginalisation. He had pinned his hopes for the future on a job reserved for his community under the government’s affirmative action programme.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBut the leaking of the examination paper in December last year dashed those hopes.That’s when he came across a video of students as old as him – and just as angry – protesting the paper leak in state capital Patna, some 75km (46 miles) away. He immediately hopped on an overnight bus and found himself among thousands of protesters the next morning.Ajay spent the next 100 days in biting cold, demonstrating and often sleeping in the open, huddled with hundreds of other students. Their demand was simple: A re-examination. But in April this year, India’s Supreme Court dismissed the students’ petitions to conduct the re-examination.A furious Ajay contained his anger for months. On November 6, as he voted in the first phase of a two-part election to choose Bihar’s state legislature, Ajay pressed a button on the electron …
