China’s Hainan beach resort expands COVID-19 lockdowns

France’s violent student uprising has captured headlines in recent weeks. Yet India’s strongman Prime Minister Narendra Modi is struggling to tame an upstart gen Z challenge of his own — and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Youth-led protests beginning on Oct. 10 paralyzed central New Delhi for several days as demonstrators called for India’s election commissioner to resign over unexplained database changes that deleted 130 million people from voter registries. Many accuse Modi’s Hindu-first ruling party of ramming through the changes for its own benefit. Mass arrests were carried out by the 25,000-plus security forces brought in to lock down the capital.

It’s just the latest headache the Cockroach movement has caused for Modi.

At a court hearing in May, India’s top judge called jobless youth “cockroaches” and “parasites” for criticizing the country on social media. His offhand comments triggered instant fury, as Indian graduates often struggle to find work in their field in an economy dominated by low-skilled sectors. Their unemployment rate is three times higher than the country’s average — 40 per cent for graduates under 25.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’ve been trying to learn to drive in busy traffic. My boyfriend said he would teach me, but he gets too playfully amorous while I’m trying to drive his new car in busier areas like downtown. He thinks it’s a big joke, but when I yelled that he was distracting me, he said, “Good.”

So I pulled over, slammed on the brakes and got out, thinking he would get back into the driver’s seat and drive us home, but he didn’t budge. He was being a real jerk.

I got back in, drove us to my place in silence, left the keys in the ignition and went inside and locked my door. Now we’re not talking and neither one of us is apologizing. What do you think?

— Still Mad, St. James