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Cockroaches are quite widespread in India. They can be found in halls of residence as well as in five-star hotels, and as they reproduce rather quickly, even those who prioritize animal welfare and vegan diets have been known to resort to fly swatters or chemical pesticides. But nothing really helps; sooner or later, they will crawl out again from some leaky drainpipe. Cockroaches are invincible.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently learned this lesson as well. For a period of 36 days, young people engaged in protests under the banner of the recently established Cockroach Janta Party (Cockroach People’s Party) in the capital of New Delhi and other major metropolitan areas, until the government acquiesced to their demand for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. “We’ve done it,” cheers 25-year-old Simpi Yadav, who had arrived in Delhi by train from the industrial city of Nagpur just days earlier.
Cockroach Protests Take Over Delhi
Alongside tens of thousands of others, Yadav established a temporary encampment at Jantar Mantar – a location in Delhi that can be compared to London’s Hyde Park “Speakers’ Corner” – painting placards and singing protest songs, even as the police employed batons and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. “Many of us have never protested before,” says Neha Bora, a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi and a leader of the accompanying hunger strike. Neha’s family has expressed support for Modi; nevertheless, her mother, like many other parents, came to Delhi to lend her daughter moral support. “We have come to realize that politics is an inevitable phenomenon in our lives, even for those who self-identify as apolitical,” says Neha.
Indian media and intellectuals are thrilled that a generation has reached political maturity where they themselves have failed in countering the hegemonic “post-political” rule of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But what will happen next remains an open question.
“For the first time in years, it is a positive experience to be Indian. Just when all hope seemed lost, they arrived: young cockroaches, washed in by the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke,” writes the author Arundhati Roy, never one to pass up an opportunity for an eloquent turn of phrase.
Corruption and the Cost of India's Jobs Crisis
The protests were initiated in response to the corrupt leak of exam questions for the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) for medicine. After the questions surfaced a number of students who had spent years preparing for the exam took their own lives. But the real problem goes even deeper: the Indian education system and the labour market are failing to adequately address the needs of a substantial young population – around 950 million Indians are under 35 years old.
The Cockroach Party, which had been founded on a lark at the start of the year, has now given the public outcry momentum and a voice. The party is a satirical movement founded by Abhijeet Dipke, a marketing student in Boston, who was incensed by the fact that India’s Chief Justice, Surya Kant, had described unemployed young people as “cockroaches” and “parasites”. He successfully reached an audience of millions with a series of hastily assembled memes that featured cockroaches delivering speeches in front of national symbols such as Parliament and the Indian flag – and flew straight back from university to Delhi to lead the protests.
The “Cockroaches” produced humorous online content at lightning speed, singing and reinterpreting popular songs ranging from Bollywood hits to patriotic songs of the Indian independence movement and revolutionary classics.
He was supported by Sonam Wangchuk, a prominent 60-year-old activist and educational reformer from Ladakh, who went on hunger strike for 26 days before the police forcibly admitted him to hospital. Six students, members of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Liberation), joined the hunger strike. Yet it was not the tactic of the hunger strike, popularized by Mahatma Gandhi, that contributed to the success of the protests.
The “Cockroaches” produced humorous online content at lightning speed, singing and reinterpreting popular songs ranging from Bollywood hits to patriotic songs of the Indian independence movement and revolutionary classics. In doing so, they succeeded in placing the protest within the tradition of the struggle for independence from British colonial rule, thereby reaching various segments of the population. Neighbouring gurdwaras (Sikh temples) provided meals and accommodations for the demonstrators, while nearby restaurants delivered complimentary meals. The often rigid communal boundaries between religions and castes began to dissipate.
Dalits, Caste Politics and the 'Jai Bhim' Protest Movement
The 36-day protest in central Delhi became an event that will likely remain in the participants’ memories for a lifetime as a political rite of passage.
Ajaz Ashraf writes in the newspaper The Hindu: “On all my visits to Jantar Mantar, I found a microcosm of the nation in which the labourer caste, Dalits and indigenous peoples significantly outnumbered the privileged castes.” The fact that Cockroaches founder Abhijeet Dipke himself belongs to the lowest caste of the Dalits contributed to this. The slogan “Jai Bhim”, honouring the founder of the Dalit movement and father of the Indian Constitution, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, could be heard daily at Jantar Mantar.
40 percent of university graduates aged and 20 percent of those aged 25 to 29 are unemployed. 83 percent of all unemployed people in India are young individuals.
“The slogans we chant, the leaders we remember and the stories we celebrate – all of this gradually becomes part of our collective imagination,” says sociologist Shruty Harilal. “For a long time, ‘Jai Bhim’ was regarded as a concept reserved exclusively for Ambedkar’s supporters. The fact that this chant is now being raised by people from all walks of life suggests that Ambedkar’s ideas are gradually finding their way into a much broader public debate.”
While Judge Surya Kant merely articulated a sentiment shared by a segment of the ruling class, he probably underestimated just how many young people in India actually have no prospects for the future. According to a study by Azim Premji University, 40 per cent of university graduates aged between 15 and 25 and 20 per cent of those aged 25 to 29 are unemployed. 83 per cent of all unemployed people in India are young individuals, according to the 2024 “India Employment Report”, published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development in Delhi. “With a median age of 28 years, India is among the world’s youngest economies. However, as the proportion of young people is gradually declining, the window of opportunity to benefit from the demographic dividend is becoming ever narrower,” the study states.
India’s Wealth Gap Lands Hardest on Gen Z
“There is a massive unemployment crisis, yet every company and every institution seems to be suffering from a shortage of staff. The economic disparities between the affluent and the impoverished are escalating. Corruption is pervasive, yet the public seems indifferent. Public services either cost us a fortune or make us look like fools. When I think about our future, it all seems very hopeless to me” is how a representative of Generation Z sums up the state of India’s economy on the platform Reddit.
To date, all Indian governments have placed their faith in the neoliberal belief that economic growth will increase prosperity for all. Although India has been the world’s fastest-growing economy for several years (currently at a rate of 7.7 per cent of gross domestic product), the prevalence of inequality is escalating, mirroring global trends. According to a 2023 report by Oxfam International, the richest one per cent of the population owns more than 40 per cent of the country’s total wealth, whilst the bottom half owns just three per cent.
Between 2022 and 2025, a series of youth protests in neighbouring countries overthrew their governments.
Yet India’s Generation Z has only recently begun to articulate its distinct identity. Between 2022 and 2025, a series of youth protests in neighbouring countries—Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal—overthrew their governments. Although the specific circumstances differed in each case, the pattern is similar: well-educated young people suffer from limited opportunities, while seeing an abundance of material possessions and lifestyles that are typically associated with affluent social classes on social media. “Why are there no handbooks on gormandizing and the other comforts that the lower class doesn’t know about, as if the lower class wouldn’t know Kant!”, Bertolt Brecht asked in his “Refugee Conversations”. That handbook is now accessible via Instagram.
Given India's comparatively stable institutions and the Modi government's substantial parliamentary majority, it is plausible that the Indian government initially took a straightforward wait-and-see approach to the crisis. It was only after police violence had failed to drive the cockroaches away that Modi addressed the youth in a video he had recorded himself on his smartphone and urged Minister Pradhan to resign. It is a curious twist of fate that the video of Modi was initially removed from Facebook due to the platform's automated system erroneously identifying it as a deepfake.
Modi Promises Exam Reform. But Will It Be Enough?
With a hastily convened task force led by the entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani, founder of the IT firm Infosys, the government now intends to overhaul the system of centralized university entrance exams. “This was just a moment, not a social revolution,” says Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor of Sociology at JNU. “The education system must be made transparent and accountable.” This assessment is shared by Amitabh Mattoo, Professor of International Politics at JNU. “We cannot expect students to believe in meritocracy whilst the institutions regularly abuse their trust,” says Mattoo. “The task of the committee under Nilekani will be to create a fraud-proof system for entrance examinations. The task for the Republic is greater: it must prove itself worthy of the trust that the younger generation places in it.”
This perspective is also held by the young cockroaches. “The minister’s resignation is not the end, but a beginning. We’ll be back if something happens again in the future,” says 17-year-old Sona Malik, who took part in the protests and wants to become a lawyer. Meanwhile, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and his team are exploring the potential of transforming the satirical movement into a genuine political party: “In Indian politics, you should never say never.”
