It’s after two weeks that I ventured into Delhi’s Connaught Place, near Jantar Mantar, the protest site of the Indian capital’s Gen Z protests. What’s generally a walk through colourful, dense street markets, loud traffic, pedestrians, street dogs and monkeys in search of newspapers, magazines, street food and paraphernalia was laden with thoughts about the just concluded protests.
The thoughts and questions turned louder on Wednesday, July 29, as I sighted riot control vehicles and police manning the otherwise very-crowded but otherwise peaceful bazars. I stopped at a street vendor selling colourful earrings near the iconic Regal Cinema building. While selecting a few and paying through India’s innovative UPI digital payments gateway I struck a conversation with the bearded vendor.
“Were you open during the protests?” I seem to have hinged a question on the pocket of this low-volume man because for a long time my interests in these open-street markets have been about their unorganized or informal nature. Everyday morning by 10 a.m. vendors put up their wares on the footpaths of the Connaught place — the colonial period market near Jantar Mantar, the site of the Gen-Z protests that kept India louder on the global news charts for more than a week and led to the resignation of its Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
The protesters were demanding his resignation for the controversy surrounding the NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) paper leak. The NEET is a nationwide exam in which this year 2.3 million Indian students had enrolled before its question paper was illegally accessed by some before the scheduled exam leading to its cancellation by the India’s National Testing Agency on May 12.
Due to the leak, the agency declared that a re-examination would be conducted.
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NEET selects students for admission to undergraduate medical colleges around the nation. Protests started on the same day in Delhi and expanded in a few days demanding a fair re-test and investigation into the officials and mafia involved. On July 20 the protests turned violent as protesters decided to march to the Indian parliament–on the first day of the Indian legislature’s monsoon session and were stopped by the police.
By the end of it at least 60 protestors and 118 police personnel were wounded while 70 protesters were detained. Some media sources cite 80 injured protesters and 130 law enforcement personnel wounded. Street markets were virtually all closed for a week during the unrest.
Sparse eyewitness accounts
However, today during my walk through some of the now pacified corridors of those protests, I’m hearing other stories — eyewitness accounts from street vendors, public bathroom staff, and a few newspaper and book sellers. They are a part of the massive unorganized Indian economy that accounts for over 45 percent of its GDP and over 80 percent of its labor. There could be no better and more visible example of it than the street vendor community of Connaught Place.
So as I struck a cord with the earring seller I was gently reminded that he needs me to buy more to make up for eight days of his loss. “I had to remain closed. “Bahoot nuksan huya,” he said, which in Hindi means “I had to endure a heavy loss.”
As I walked through that street, I had a quick glance at his shop — his bag hung against a nail on the wall of the Regal Cinema, right next to the image of the Hindu goddess Laxshmi — put in place to prevent defilement by urinators and tobacco spitting pedestrians. Next to him was another fat vendor selling clothes and behind him were a few law enforcement personnel standing beside an empty police bus. A black-and-white spotted street dog sat nearby. I sighted a little wound on its back.
The street lacked something. Maybe it was the lack of its usual fervor — or was I experiencing something that I can only term as a post-protest syndrome? Probably because of the thinner crowds, the presence of the riot police, and a visible tension on the face of the vendors who were by now all extending their hands towards me to make a louder marketing pitch: the handkerchief seller, the vendor selling wallets and belts and those little stands selling water, aerated drinks, and chocolates.
I walked past a restaurant called Daryaganj, tempted by its window selling Kulfi (culturally an Indian-flavored ice cream), towards the Jantar Mantar looking for newspaper vendors. I wanted to check how Indian magazines and print media covered or are covering the protests. In times of digital media, these streets and its vendors still put out their wares like they did decades ago.
As I walked ahead I saw a man sitting by the road side, scratching his ears with a matchstick, with a tall bundle of books by his side. Right opposite to him, outside a corporate bank, sat a man selling newspapers and magazines in English and Hindi. I asked him about protests coverage and he raised a copy of the latest edition of the weekly news magazine “India Today” with a cover page that read, “The Rage of GenZ–Why Youth Anger Erupted. What the political fallout will be. How the Centre [Federal government] should respond.”
I struck up a conversation again and the old man who has been selling newspapers at that place for four decades said, “I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime. I had to remain closed [for the last eight days of protest].” When I asked if there was any damage to the public property around him, he pointed at the cement grill lining the footpath that was visibly torn and missing.
I expressed my sympathy for his economic loss and walked ahead surprised that only one English magazine has covered the protests. About 20-30 meters ahead, right across the intersection of that footpath and a street, I came across another book and newspaper vendor, Ram Vilas Singh, who has been selling at the spot for 45 years. He gave me the latest edition of another weekly news magazine, “Week” whose cover said, “Anger Spills Over–Restless protesters insist on accountability.”
I asked Vilas Singh, “What was good and what was bad about this protest?”
He replied, “The protests were good but the bad words [expletives] used were too much.” He said he refused to close his make-shift shop as he also delivers newspapers to offices around. When asked how he protected himself from rioting that unfolded between protestors and police, he said he parked his bike by his side as a shield.
“This protest was hundred times bigger than the Anna protest. My sales were impacted because the internet was shut down across a radius of 1.5 kilometers (one mile) from the protest site and people couldn’t make the digital payments,” he said pointing at the UPI payment machine nearby.
By “Anna protest,” he was referring to a 2011 anti-corruption protest called “India Against Corruption (IAC) movement” by veteran activist, Anna Hazare at the same Jantar Mantar–several activists linked with the protests later led to the formation of a new political party called the “Aam Aadmi Party (AAP-Common Man’s Party)” in 2012. AAP went on to win a majority in three subsequent Delhi state elections until it lost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) in last year’s state election.
Vilas Singh raised his hand to point at the main road to his right–a site that remained heavily crowded during the mid-July protest days. “Violence happened only on July 20. Not after that. Students were beating the police but some were also helping the injured cops.” His hands gestured showing how some students lifted cops who had fallen on the road during clashes.
Next to Vilas Singh sat a Bhel Puri (spicy street snack) vendor who also said that he refused to shut down. He smiled when I asked if his business was hit, shyly indicating that even protesters needed to eat and that people were paying in cash.
“Yahan pey saab uplabh tha (Everything was available here),” he said. He was referring to food being sent by hundreds of anonymous donors from around India and even abroad to the protest site through online delivery service.
I couldn’t help but feel excited about the power of India’s burgeoning gig economy or more specifically the platform aggregator economy in the case of this food delivery service.
India’s gig economy, largely unorganized, operational through its digital revolution managed through telecoms key gateways systematically controlled by the government, boasts of 12 million gig workers in 2025. This includes 1.5 million food delivery partners alone.
What protesters called manifestation of love and anonymous support was not as simple as orders coming from anonymous participants and supporters — it was gig workers earning daily wages while feeding gig protesters and while their brethren in the unorganized sector in and around the protest site remained closed for the last eight days of tension! Do you see a labor shift, a massively increasing service demand and a transforming consumerism, or do you see only the protests?
A conversation with a toilet management worker
I left Vilas Singh’s shop and crossed the road to make my way to a public toilet on the other side, which read, “Only for women and children.”
Inside, Anita Kumari, a contract staff of the city municipality was sitting on the floor along with Pooja Nagar who sells hair accessories on the street nearby.
Kumari was a witness to a crowd of girls rushing to the public toilet after tear gas shells exploded during the protests on July 20. “About 50 of them rushed in looking for cover and some fell over me,” she said.
Sitting beside her, crosslegged was Nagar who kept pushing Kumari to be more vocal, “Bata na (Tell more).”
Nagar started loudly, “A water and aerated drink street vendor had stored his products nearby. Some protestors were hiding behind the bathroom [on July 20]. They saw the packed bottles nearby. They opened the stack and started hitting the law enforcement with the Banta bottles.” Banta is a popular local aerated drink in north India that sells in codd-neck thick glass bottles sealed with a marble–it predates Coca Cola and Pepsi in India.
“That poor man lost bottles worth 7000 rupees ($73 USD). He had just acquired an umbrella [parasol]–I helped him get an orange-white one for 1150 rupees ($12 USD). The protesters even took that away. We got it for him as shelter from sun and rain on the street,” said Nagar, adding that another cigarette vendor nearby lost products worth 1000 rupees ($10.5 USD) to the protestors.
I asked Nagar if she could take me to the water vendor and we walked to him nearby. This vendor turned out to be a Kashmiri Pandit refugee from Pampore [saffron growing town] who had fled the Kashmir valley after the ethnic violence of 1989 and came to Delhi looking for a job. Since 1993, the man has been selling water and aerated drinks on Delhi streets.
Nagar kept on pestering him to tell his story and about his loss but he kept on refusing to be vocal.
“Instead he offered free water to the protesters,” said Nagar while the man added he offered water out of his goodwill but he didn’t dare to tell his wife about their financial loss. Nagar earns 150-200 rupees [$1-1.15 USD] a day while the water vendor earns 500-700 per day [$5-7 USD].
Protest graffiti on the sub-way walls
As I walked past the Kashmiri-refugee water vendor through a green street, I remembered my conversation one early morning on the same street with a samaritan who was scattering wheat flour under the trees. Perplexed, I asked him, “What are you doing?”
“I’m feeding ants,” he said as I walked under a Bodhi (Ficus religiosa) tree. I have seen samaritans feeding abandoned cows, dogs and whatnot on Indian streets but I had never thought of someone laboriously feeding ants under Bodhi trees. A few years ago the traffic square nearby was a popular spot for feeding pigeons — a few were earning their daily income selling food for the pigeons to the pedestrians until the Indian government replaced that square and multiple others like it in the Connaught Place area with fountains and plants.
On Wednesday as I walked by that spot, I spotted at least ten law enforcement personnel in blue uniforms standing between the potted plants on what once was a pigeon feeding spot.
I walked past that street and took an underpass in Delhi called sub-way to make my way to food joints near the Janpath road. The almost empty subway was freshly clean, its wet floor appeared to be mopped and swept but its walls remained to be cleaned of the protest graffiti that was largely expletives directed at the police. One said, “F**k the Police.”
Following the protests, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) cleared 52 metric tonnes of waste from the protest site on Saturday, according to news reports. I understand the council will have more beautification work to do around the area.
A few hours later as I walked back the same path while the street markets were closing after dusk. I decided to check with the street vendors if their products were from China. I started with what appeared to be an Indian embroidered shoe selling vendor — my confidence was shattered when he told me that a shoe worth 300 rupees was “Made in China” — I checked twice to be sure.
Perplexed, a little ahead I checked with a pajama seller if he had “Made in China” clothes. He pointed at two rows of pajamas at the same price: one he said was made in China and another, adorned with the silver stars, was made in India.
What fascinated me was the way a textile supply chain largely organized inside China percolates down to unorganized markets and informal sellers of Delhi streets.
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