01.10.2026

Students protesting outside parliament in July

Cockroaches dent Modi’s veneer

A single tweet turned into a mass movement that removed India’s education minister and shook the BJP regime to its foundations. But where now? David Lockwood looks beyond streets, strikes and protests

In July, Indian premier Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party government decided to smash up a mass student protest in Delhi, refused talks with student leaders, temporarily closed parliament and arrested the two most important opposition leaders plus a number of other MPs.

Earlier, in May, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Surya Kant, had issued his opinion on India’s young unemployed from the bench. He said that they often became “activists” and described them as “cockroaches” and “parasites”. He said: “There are youngsters like cockroaches who don’t get any employment or have any place in a profession.”

Two points to note here. Surya’s comment might have been dismissed as an intemperate remark by a crusty old judge. But the Modi regime has worked assiduously to eat away at the independence of the Indian judiciary, so that now it is regarded as a front for the regime. Secondly, graduate unemployment is an enormous problem in India. For the eight or nine million graduates annually, it is estimated that there are only 2.8 million jobs. And the system keeps on churning out more graduates, year after year - and 40% of the 15-25 age group are unemployed.¹

Unemployment

The weakening state capacity (a result of neoliberal policies) leaves few tools to remedy the problem. The expansion of universities (for the tiny minority who can afford them) has created large numbers of educated youth who cannot find work. Some of them are pushed into jobs offshore - an option many are beginning to resist.

Many more can only find work in the informal sector - the ‘gig economy’. Meanwhile, the expansion of agribusiness and the destruction of small farms pushes youth into the cities, where they join the ranks of the potentially insurgent unemployed. The university-educated youth of the global south and those pushed into manual jobs, labouring in the Middle East or elsewhere as guest workers, makes this generation a truly international grouping, with experiences across the globe.

So, in view of the potential size of this discontented cohort, for a leading judge to issue such an insulting broadside was unwise, to say the least.

More than 11,000 kilometres away, in Boston USA, Abhijeet Dipke, a master’s student in public relations and marketing, noticed Surya’s comment. He tweeted in response: “What would happen if all the cockroaches got together?” The message went viral and Dipke - clearly no slouch in these matters - had soon established a website and an online ‘political party’, the Cockroach Janta Party.² This party was to be “secular, socialist, democratic and lazy”.

Its original five demands took aim at senior judges, opposed Modi’s attack on the electoral system and demanded that 50% of the parliament and cabinet be women. These demands were swiftly overshadowed by what became the main focus of the campaign: the abolition of the India-wide examinations that are necessary to pass in order to get into ‘the professions’ (eg, doctors, engineers) and government positions. These exams are a nightmare for candidates, requiring months and sometimes years of preparation, along with expensive special coaching.

For decades, they have been mired in an extensive network of corruption and bribery. Over the past few years the papers were leaked, followed by demands that they be cancelled. And, while these tests are not taking place, or the results not being released, the mountain of the graduate unemployed gets higher and higher.

In recent months, with further revelations of cheating and abuse, there was a general sense that the government’s education department and its BJP minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, had entirely lost control of the graduate education system and so the demand for Pradhan’s resignation came to dominate the Cockroach Party’s agenda.

Cue an extraordinary outflow of Cockroach online propaganda - manifestos, demands, cartoons, memes - together with a certain amount of support from the ‘great and the good’ (film stars, etc). The government at first ignored the phenomenon and then tried to shut it down electronically. Neither worked.

Demonstration

There followed an interesting lesson for those who promote ‘online activism’. This movement (for such it had become) started to burst out of its internet fetters and surge into physical manifestation. The Cockroach leaders had to give it human form. They called for a public demonstration in support of its demands in Delhi. By this stage the demand for Pradhan’s resignation or sacking had overtaken everything else and many thousands gathered to press it home.

Dipke flew in from the US on the day. But the government did not arrest him and he led the demonstration, which turned into a familiar Gen Z-type revolving occupation. Several activists from left youth organisations declared a hunger strike. A well-known environmental activist and social campaigner, Sonam Wangchuk, joined in and his hunger strike became the centre of attention.

And so it was for two more weeks until the Cockroach Party leaders very sensibly realised that the movement was stagnating and called for a march on July 20 to the parliament. Things were revitalised, as people began to pour in once again. Cue the panic among India’s rulers. Negotiations were out of the question - that is not the Modi way. When the size of what was going to occur became apparent, something had to be done. The government sent in a snatch squad on July 18 and bundled Sonam Wangchuk, who had led the Student Educational and Cultural Movement back in the 1980s, off to hospital.

Game over? No such luck for the BJP. This action simply infuriated the protestors and set things up for a huge demo two days later. The demonstrators managed to break through the police barricades that were hemming them in (no mean feat) and started marching towards parliament. They did not make it because of the massive lathi-charge and teargas offensive that the riot squad unleashed. After several hours of fighting (and many injuries) the Cockroach Party leaders again demonstrated their good sense, calling their supporters to head to Jantar Mantar park, where they established the protest camp. The numbers steadily increased over the next day or so until it was bigger than ever.

Inspiring as it is, our admiration for this movement cannot be uncritical. Before we bring the story right up to date, there are a few aspects that deserve critical examination.

Strategy: Of course, this suffered from being made on the run, under the pressure of fast-moving events. My guess is that the Cockroach leaders did not set out to form a party (such as it is), nor to conjure up thousands of supporters, nor to threaten the BJP government.

There was a naivety about the Cockroach Party’s demands. According to Anand Teltumbde, writing in Frontline magazine,

The five-point manifesto … read like the output of any reformist organisation … These are reasonable demands. They are not transformative ones. A country where the state apparatus has been captured by a single political formation … does not need another five-point manifesto. It needs a thoroughgoing reimagination of the relationship between the state and the citizen.³

And clearly, as the movement continued and the government remained intransigent, the Cockroach Party demands were progressively diluted. During the Delhi battle, a couple of CJP leaders offered the government a settlement on the basis of Pradhan’s resignation, compensation for exam-suicide victims and the release of Wangchuk from hospital. The government was stupid enough to reject this and the struggle continued - but now under the aegis of these three (much diminished) demands.

And, as we now know, it was the achievement of only one of them - the minister’s resignation - which caused the Cockroach Party leaders to claim victory.
Leadership: As is often the case, the existence of a leadership was sometimes denied, but still exercised - originally, it seems, by Dipke himself and then by a group of perhaps a dozen around him. Unlike in other gen Z events, it could be seen and its decisions felt.

A leadership had decided to transform the Cockroach Party from the electronic to the human. All well and good. We have no problem with leadership, but it should be fully visible, transparent and accountable. This means, I am afraid, that if it is to continue the CJP needs boring old democratic structures.
Politics: At its beginning, the CJP claimed to be non-political and shied away from contact with India’s leftwing political parties. That attitude softened somewhat in view of the enthusiastic support extended by the left parties and their youth organisations.
Diversions: The lack of long-term strategy, of acknowledged and accountable leadership and of politics meant that the movement thus far was all too easily diverted into side issues, aided and abetted by India’s sensation-seeking and pro-Modi media.

The original demands, which were far more political, were eventually lost in all this and at times it seemed as though these side issues would bury the movement entirely. By the end, only Pradhan’s resignation remained. But the CJP seemed firm on that - and the government seemed firmly against it.

After the first waves, increased numbers of demonstrators flowed back to Jantar Mantar Park after the battles in the streets of Delhi. The CJP leadership remained in control of the movement. The education minister remained in office. And the BJP government retained power.

Where next?

But on July 25, Pradhan resigned. For the moment, it was all over. There was much rejoicing and the protest camp packed up. The CJP negotiators maintained that the two remaining demands (compensation for suicides’ families and withdrawal of legal action against arrested protestors) were still on the table. But, having sacrificed Pradhan and cleared Delhi of protests, it seemed that the government could safely kick both of those into the long grass.

Nonetheless, multiple pundits, from inside India to the Financial Times, have since commented that the Cockroach movement has dented Modi’s veneer of indestructibility.

To state the obvious, if the movement is to survive, it needs to spread again beyond Delhi and beyond post-graduate students. In a country like India, without a movement shifting from the middle classes to the urban and rural workers and farmers, long-lasting democratic change is not possible. It is worth noting that, while this campaign was on, a large farmers’ demonstration was threatening to march on the capital for its own demands. And another demonstration erupted in Delhi, demanding statehood for Kashmir.

Total victory

Despite fears (including on the part of this author) that since Pradhan’s resignation had eclipsed all other issues, its achievement would be regarded as total victory, this was not to be the case. In fact, the CJP has broadened its campaigning both geographically and issue-wise. While the main focus is still on Delhi, there have been CJP-linked education protests in 34 Indian cities, all of them involving varying degrees of confrontation with the police. The movement for education reform remains on the streets.

Then, on September 1, the Supreme Court quashed all cases against the thousands of student demonstrators arrested on July 20 - another defeat for the Modi regime and its pet judiciary. The movement, meanwhile, has spread beyond higher education and beyond street protests. Far from dissipating, as is typical of Gen Z movements, the CJP had decided to turn its attention to the appalling state of India’s government schools - notorious for broken classrooms, missing teachers, dirty toilets, unsafe buildings, lack of seats, unreliable drinking water and impassable access roads. A number of schools have simply been abandoned as unusable.

The Cockroaches have decided to organise their supporters into inspection teams, armed with cameras, to go into ordinary schools, film the conditions and put the results online with suitable commentary - plus deadlines for improvements.

Our friends in most of the Anglophone left have cheered the student protests, reflecting much of their own social base. However, in India and elsewhere, we need a political strategy that goes beyond streets, strikes and protests. Drawing such movements together requires a programme and an organisation - a party. Neither of these will emerge spontaneously on the streets in moments of social protest, no matter how militant, prolonged or egalitarian they are.

This is an updated version of the article first published in Australia’s Labor Tribune: labortribune.net.au/cockroaches-get-under-modis-skin