{
  "id": 13998658,
  "title": "Emergency Then And Now: The Action And The Government’s Response To It",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/12/emergency-then-and-now-the-action-and-the-governments-response-to-it",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-12T16:00:39.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Press Journal",
    "slug": "free-press-journal",
    "url": "https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/emergency-then-and-now-the-action-and-the-governments-response-to-it"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The pro-democracy protests that gripped the streets of Delhi and other major cities across the nation bear a striking resemblance to a distant era more than half a century ago. This memory surfaces as I reflect on my early days as a city reporter in the early 1970s when student protests in Gujarat and Bihar exploded under the leadership of Jaiprakash Narayan, backed by a diverse coalition of parties, including the Socialists and the Jana Sangh. In 1974, the year I joined a pro-Soviet newspaper, Patriot, the hostel fee hike in Ahmedabad sparked the Nav Nirman movement, ultimately leading to the downfall of the Congress government in Gujarat. This was followed by Bihar, where 11 state governments had risen and fallen in seven years due to student protests against corruption and unemployment. By the time the Bihar assembly in Patna was surrounded, three students were shot dead by the police, causing nationwide outrage and propelling a new champion of democracy, veteran socialist leader Jaiprakash Narayan, who advocated for Sampoorna Kranti, or total revolution, demanding an end to corruption, the cleansing of politics, and the reinvention of the Indian republic based on grassroots democracy. As a city reporter, I had little involvement in these dramatic political developments, which were primarily covered by the Special Correspondents Bureau. However, we were all well aware of the vehement editorial stance adopted by both Patriot and its sister publication Link regarding the student agitations and the opposition against the ruling Congress party and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Notably, both the CPI and the Soviet Union had openly backed Mrs. Gandhi against her detractors. Divergent views on JP’s movement Additionally, Jaiprakash Narayan was a personal nemesis for my chief editor, Edatata Narayanan, an eccentric genius with a personal connection to JP. Narayanan, who had known JP and co-founded a short-lived political party with him before Independence, often criticized the leader for his shifting allegiances between Marxism and Gandhian socialism. While Narayanan lambasted JP in his magazine, Mainstream, my mentor, veteran journalist Nikhil Chakravarty, acknowledged the growing public dissatisfaction with the prime minister and Congress over issues like the agrarian crisis, urban unemployment, inflation, and labor unrest, including the 1974 railway strike. The march to Parliament in 1975 The tide turned in the early months of 1975 when a four-year-old election petition by Raj Narain, who had lost to Mrs. Gandhi in the 1971 parliamentary elections, accusing her of electoral malpractices, resurfaced in the Allahabad High Court. This shift elevated the JP-led Total Revolution in Bihar into a nationwide uprising that shook the central government. On March 6, I joined other city reporters in covering a massive people's march led by Jaiprakash Narayan through Delhi's streets to Parliament House. The march, one of the largest ever seen in Delhi, with an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 participants mostly young from various parts of the country, was both boisterous and peaceful. Thousands of onlookers, including government employees, street hawkers, and shopkeepers, lined the four-mile route, cheering the marchers. The frail, ailing JP headed the procession in a jeep, waving to the demonstrators and bystanders as they raised slogans against Mrs. Gandhi and hailed him as their leader. The magnitude, scale, and spontaneous enthusiasm of the crowd were difficult to convey in my report, which was inevitably relegated to an inside page. From political crisis to Emergency The events that followed unfolded rapidly after the march, culminating in Jaiprakash Narayan presenting his charter of demands to Parliament, which included electoral reforms, equitable land distribution, and the elimination of external emergency measures still in place since the 1971 Bangladesh war. Faced with the march, Mrs. Gandhi was grilled in court a week later, becoming the first Indian Prime Minister to endure such humiliation. Barely three months later, in a groundbreaking judgment, she was disqualified as prime minister, plunging the nation into a constitutional crisis. In less than two weeks, I was reporting from the vast public rally in Delhi's Ram Lila Maidan, where JP urged citizens to besiege the prime minister's residence until she resigned and called on the police and security forces to defy unconstitutional government orders. By midnight, Emergency was declared, and the rest is history. Comparisons between then and now Drawing parallels and contrasts between the crisis of the past and the present, both pro-democracy protests and government responses share striking similarities and differences. The JP movement's calls for electoral and educational reforms more than 50 years ago echo the grievances of today's protesters backed by the entire Opposition. In both cases, youth-led protests have spiraled into nationwide campaigns targeting a discredited ruling party and administration, challenging a larger-than-life prime minister and destabilizing the central government. The government's assertions about a CIA plot to destabilize Mrs. Gandhi during the 1975 crisis are reminiscent of current accusations surrounding the current administration.",
  "summary": "The pro-democracy protests, sweeping the streets of the capital, Delhi, and other cities across the country, have an eerie echo of a long bygone era more than half a century ago. It takes me back to my first few years as a city reporter in the early 1970s when student protests in Gujarat and Bihar rapidly escalated under the leadership of Jaiprakash Narayan, supported by a motley group of…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}