"The crowd now holds the camera and tells the story first. Four things an officer in the first row can do about it"

The Gen Z protest is on a world tour, like Taylor Swift and Diljit Dosanjh. It has played Dhaka, Nairobi and Kathmandu, then Antananarivo, Jakarta, Manila and Lima. This season it is in Europe. On 31 October tens of thousands of young Germans marched in more than 30 cities. The same day in The Hague the police arrested 34 protesters and said most were aged 15 to 18. French students have been on strike for weeks. Germany marches again this Saturday.

The comparison is not a joke at the marchers’ expense. A tour has a format that travels, and so does this. The protester is the same age in each city, and carries the same phone and often the same flag: a skull in a straw hat, borrowed from a Japanese comic. There is no office, no leader and no single demand. Nobody books the venue. A group chat does.

I spent 33 years in the Indian police, a good part of them standing in front of crowds. One thing about this tour is upside down. For as long as there have been police, it was the state that watched the crowd. It took the photographs, kept the file and wrote the report. Today the crowd holds the camera, and the state is the one being filmed. The crowd also publishes first. By the time a control room has its facts in order, the public has made up its mind.

Two scenes show what that does to force. In July 2024 a student named Abu Sayed stood before advancing police in Rangpur, Bangladesh, spread his arms and was shot at close range, on camera. Within hours he was the face of an uprising. Within three weeks a government of 15 years had fallen. In September 2025 Nepal blocked 26 social media platforms to quiet the noise. It summoned the crowd it feared. The prime minister was gone within days, and more than 70 people were dead.

The old rule was that fear disperses a crowd. The new rule is that the crackdown is the recruitment poster. Every death filmed in portrait mode brings a fresh wave the next morning.

Three things defeat a state built for the old crowd. Speed: outrage now gathers in hours, while official time is glacial, and rumour fills the silence. Visibility: every posture is archived and replayed with commentary. Leaderlessness: there is nobody to arrest, and nobody to buy. Most governments lose the first 72 hours, and in the same two ways: by going silent, and by reaching for force.

In 2001 I faced an agitation in a Haryana village called Kandela. We had brought muscle and no ears. It ended in stones and lathis, and nothing was settled. I came away knowing that force is not the floor that order rests on. Pulled too early, it is the trapdoor.

What would I say to a colleague in the first row, in Frankfurt or anywhere else? Four things.

First, there are never enough boots. No force can compel an unruly crowd into line on its worst day. Order comes from inside the crowd or it does not come at all. Most people in any gathering want it to end peacefully. Build the whole plan to keep them on your side.

Second, a leaderless crowd cannot be telephoned, so know people before they gather. In 2015 we gave each station house officer a target that had nothing to do with arrests: 50 real contacts in his area. The village head, the school principal, the coach, the young man others listen to. Word of trouble reached us early, over tea, while it was still small enough to settle with a word.

Third, separate the few from the many, and do it by name. Frankfurt shows why. The marches were peaceful by day. After dark came looting and petrol bombs, and the police say more than 100 officers were hurt. Those who did that were not the crowd. They were individuals using it as cover. A force that answers both alike does the arsonist’s recruiting for him. Europe already knows this from football, where the many walk in freely and the few are met at the turnstile.

Fourth, do not cut the wire. Nepal tried. Out-communicate the lie instead. Speak early and speak plainly, before someone else’s clip becomes the record.

The objection is obvious. Petrol bombs are not a misunderstanding, and a police force that only listens will be walked over. I agree. Nothing here argues for rule from the roads. The man who comes to burn must be stopped, arrested and prosecuted. But that is an argument for precision, not for volume. Force aimed at 20 people protects a march. Force sprayed over 2,000 ends it, and starts the next one.

There is a quieter half to this. We began meeting the restless young before they had any reason to march: on playing fields, on streets closed to cars, in marathons. None of it looked like law and order. All of it was.

The proof came in Hisar. In February 2016 Haryana tore itself apart, and 30 people died. That November, before dawn, I stood on a footbridge over the highway and watched the road below fill with runners, teenagers and grandmothers together. I had stood over many crowds, most of them braced for trouble. This was among the first I watched without fear. The young who fill a riot and the young who fill a start line are very often the same people.

India has seen these crowds too, and will see more. Ours is a young country, and almost every young Indian carries a camera. The crowd is no longer an event that visits a government now and then. It is the permanent weather of power. You do not fight weather. You build for it.

The tour will reach every city in time. The only choice left to a police force is whether it meets the audience for the first time at the gate. / DAILY WORLD / 

( The writer is a former Director General of Police, Haryana, is Chief Executive Officer of the SANKALP Anti-Drug Society, Government of Haryana.)