The protests in New Delhi that led to the resignation of the then Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan have understandably been interpreted through a political lens. Yet, beneath the debates over demands, slogans and governmental response lies a more enduring story.
For many observers, the protesters’ temperament was the most striking during the entire episode. Their willingness to question authority, their irreverent language, their ability to convert internet culture into collective action and their apparent indifference to traditional political hierarchies have generated both admiration and anxiety. Much of the public discourse has, therefore, become a referendum on Gen Z itself.
That would be a mistake. Apart from a political event, the protests should be read as a sociological one. They reveal a generation whose relationship with authority has been shaped by social conditions fundamentally different from those that shaped the managers, policymakers and institutional leaders now attempting to understand it.
Those differences will outlast the politics of any particular protest. They will increasingly define India’s workplaces, universities and public institutions over the coming decade.
Different understanding of authority
The conflict has already entered the workplace. Most senior leaders currently running Indian businesses belong to Gen X or the older half of the Millennial generation. They entered the workforce when organisational hierarchy was rarely questioned. Authority was largely positional. Experience commanded deference. Information flowed asymmetrically from the top of the organisation to those below it. Employees accepted that strategic decisions would often remain inaccessible to them because the legitimacy of authority itself was seldom contested. Organisational life was built around an implicit bargain. Loyalty and disciplined execution would eventually be rewarded with stability, progression and long-term security.
Now, Gen Z has entered the workforce with a profoundly different understanding of how authority operates. This difference cannot be explained merely by age. It is rooted in the environments in which this generation has been socialised. Unlike previous generations, Gen Z has spent its formative years inside digital networks rather than institutional hierarchies. The architecture of these networks has reshaped its assumptions about knowledge, legitimacy and influence.
Algorithms do not privilege formal credentials. Every opinion competes on the same screen. A professor, a cabinet minister, a founder and an anonymous content creator occupy identical digital real estate. Social media platforms reward engagement over expertise, disagreement over consensus, and originality over conformity. Influence increasingly accrues through persuasion instead of designation.
Over time, this has altered cognition. Authority is no longer presumed. It must continually justify itself. This observation is increasingly supported by empirical evidence. Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey found that 86 per cent of Gen Z employees identified purpose as an essential component of job satisfaction, while nearly 66 per cent reported rejecting prospective employers whose values conflicted with their own. These findings challenge the persistent caricature of Gen Z as disengaged or unwilling to work. The issue is not commitment to work itself. It is commitment to institutions that fail to demonstrate legitimacy.
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Adapting to a new social order
This distinction deserves careful attention because it explains many behaviours that organisations frequently misinterpret. A generation that readily questions organisational decisions is often perceived as lacking discipline. A generation that expects continuous feedback is described as impatient. Lower organisational loyalty is interpreted as an absence of commitment.
Yet these behaviours emerge from a coherent worldview. If authority derives from competence rather than position, questioning becomes an expression of engagement rather than insubordination. If knowledge is continuously evolving, feedback cannot remain unidirectional. If careers increasingly belong to individuals rather than organisations, loyalty inevitably becomes conditional rather than permanent.
The resulting tension is therefore structural. Organisations continue to operate through hierarchies because complex systems require clear accountability. Decisions cannot be democratised indefinitely without sacrificing speed, coherence and responsibility. Every effective institution ultimately depends upon recognised decision rights.
At the same time, younger employees increasingly expect these decision rights to be continuously explained rather than asserted. The traditional managerial instinct of invoking designation or seniority carries diminishing persuasive force among employees who have grown up questioning every claim to authority.
This places an unexpected responsibility upon contemporary managers. The challenge is neither to abandon hierarchy nor to demand unconditional deference. Both responses misunderstand the nature of the transition. Hierarchy remains indispensable to institutional effectiveness. What is changing is the basis upon which hierarchy acquires legitimacy.
Authority that once flowed automatically from office increasingly flows from competence, transparency, consistency and intellectual credibility. The manager who explains difficult decisions without diminishing decisiveness will command greater influence than the manager who relies solely upon formal position.
Business history repeatedly demonstrates that organisations fail because managerial assumptions remain unchanged after society has moved on. The arrival of Gen Z represents precisely such a moment. The workplace is no longer absorbing a younger workforce. It’s confronting an entirely different sociology of authority. Managing Gen Z is therefore not principally an exercise in adapting to a new workforce. It is an exercise in understanding a new social order.
Suresh Prabhu is a former union minister and parliamentarian. Shobhit Mathur is the co-founder and vice-chancellor of Rishihood University.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)