Dancing in the rain: Jharkhand student protesters take a leaf out of Bihar

As students in Jharkhand marched towards the state Assembly demanding recruitment exam reforms, they danced. Security forces deployed water cannons on the protesters, and they jumped into an impromptu dance under the water.Security forces deployed water cannon to disperse the crowd.Somewhere, a police control room is quietly updating its manual: water cannons, it turns out, no longer count as a weapon for crowd dispersal during protests. In Bihar, and now Jharkhand, they’ve become crowd entertainment (and where is the lie?). Turns out, Jharkhand's protesters (protesting against paper leak and corruption, more on this later) didn't dream this up on their own, they took a page out of a playbook written a few weeks earlier during the CJP protest, a few states away. Here's where it started.The Bihar storyStudents had gathered in huge numbers in Patna to protest the NEET-UG paper leak and demand the resignation of then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The protest came amid a wider wave of student anger, with the CJP’s demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar adding a distinctly irreverent visual language to the protests. In Patna, some of the most-shared clips showed police firing water cannons to disperse the crowd. But that’s not the interesting part.Instead of scattering, a large chunk of the protesters broke into song and dance under the spray, as the rest cheered them on. Somewhere off-camera, a rope meant to hold the crowd back reportedly turned into an impromptu tug-of-war, with the police holding the other end. Videos of the “protest turned pool party” clocked millions of views within hours.Battling the heat, in those videos, protesters could be heard needling the police with lines like: "Sir, water cannon ka bandobast nahi hai kya? Garmi lag rahi hai." (Sir, is there no water cannon arrangement? It's rather hot out here.)"Arey sir, tear gas ka arrangement nahi hai? Water cannon chalaaiye na." (Hey sir, no tear gas planned? Go on then, turn on the water cannon.)The Jharkhand story Now, Jharkhand has entered the chat.As protesters neared the state Assembly, demanding reforms in the conduct of recruitment examinations, fasting activist Devendra Nath Mahto joined the march after being brought to the protest site in an ambulance, following a nine-day hunger strike. The police response was the standard playbook: water cannons, deployed to stop the crowd from advancing towards the Assembly.But clearly, they had not seen the viral Bihar videos.What followed next was not very surprising, actually. Instead of retreating, the protesters did what Patna’s protesters had done — they danced. Phones came out, reels were shot, and the water cannon briefly became the day’s DJ.But don’t dismiss them yetClips of the Jharkhand crowd dancing as water gushed from the cannons are already doing the rounds online, drawing the same “peak Gen Z” commentary that followed Patna.But it’s worth remembering what the dancing is standing in for. The Jharkhand protest isn’t a flash mob — it’s a continuation of a serious demand for accountability in how recruitment exams are conducted, with a hunger strike that has now stretched well beyond a week. The dancing isn’t protesters forgetting what they’re angry about; if anything, it has become their way of staying visible, viral and unbothered while the actual demands - a probe, reform and answers - sit with the people in charge.Water cannons were built to make protesters go home. Somewhere between Patna and Ranchi, they've started making them go viral instead.- EndsPublished By: Tiasa Bhowal Published On: Aug 10, 2026 14:06 IST