In Pune, the long wait for a government job

At 2 p.m., the protest site in Pune is close to empty. An hour later, around 200 people gather, many grouped under trees flanking Pune’s S.M. Bridge. The crowd comes with the evening, as does a breeze. With the ebb of the day’s studying, women and men in their 20s begin to arrive. By night, Rushikesh Dhode, 25, estimates that between 500 and 700 students have gathered on the bridge over the Mutha river.

Students sit and stand on one half of the bridge, facing a stage, where seven people are on hunger strike. Many of the women don’t want to be photographed or quoted. “Our families do not know we are here,” says one, asking not to be named.

Two or three people say plainly: if a photograph is published, and they go on to clear the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) entrance exams and reach the interview stage, an officer on the panel might recognise their face from a protest. That would be “very, very problematic,” says a man.

Aspirants to the MPSC-conducted entrance exams, which are a gateway to government jobs, are here to protest against corruption in the recruitment process. They began protesting on October 1. “We are demanding the resignation of the MPSC chairman (Vivek Bhimanwar) on moral grounds, just as Nipo Nabam in Arunachal Pradesh had given his resignation on moral grounds,” says Akshay Kamble, one of the protest organisers. He speaks of the chairman of the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission who had resigned after a paper leak in the State in 2022. Kamble is one of the 15 organisers against whom the Pune Police has filed first information reports citing laws related to unlawful assembly and being a public nuisance.

The protesters also demand that 70,000 vacancies be filled, and that Maharashtra adopt a system like Rajasthan, which allows applicants to take four exams for ₹100.

Every year, MPSC conducts exams for jobs in various departments and different levels in the Maharashtra government. In 2026 alone, three exam papers have been leaked: two for 5,707 Group C posts (clerk, peon, havildars in the Home Guard or Maharashtra Police) and 109 medical drug inspector posts (Group B). In the Group B exam, all three levels of exams had been taken and the results declared, when students came to know of the paper leak.

Across the world, student protests are on the rise: in France, students are voicing dissent against failing school systems; in Argentina, students are demanding a reversal of funding cuts to public universities; in Chile, students and teachers are marching against education budget cuts.

In India, protests in June and July took place against paper leaks, demanding Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, which took place. This was followed by school children across the country, predominantly in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, demanding better schools. In Maharashtra, this August, students from Scheduled Tribes asked for humane hostels.

Students protest against Maharashtra Public Service Commission Chairman Vivek Bhimanwar in Pune. | Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini

The arithmetic of a shared room

“Fifty study centres got notices from the police via (social media platform) Telegram, telling them to ask students not to take part in the protest. They said this is now anti-social activity, as permission for the protests had only been obtained for three days,” says Vivekananda Patil, one of the students at the protest.

Once darkness descends, people let their guard down. Where protests around the country have seen sloganeering and tongue-in-cheek commentary, here, life is a ledger of accounts: of rent and mess fees, of years spent studying for the exam, of what a family can, but more importantly, cannot afford. The anger on the street, they say, had two sources: a leaked paper and a calendar that shifts each time there is a paper leak. This shifting calendar of exams means more money must be spent.