Tired of being disregarded and humiliated by the Indian government, 30-year-old recent graduate, Abhijeet Dipke, created an (at first) humorous online campaign back in May, The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), not knowing the party would eventually become an active, offline anti-government protest.
The name, which Dipke reclaimed after the Chief Justice of India called unemployed youth dehumanising names such as ‘parasites’ and ‘cockroaches’, was a way of bringing the youth together to stand up for themselves and have their voices, finally, heard. Or, in Dipke’s own words, he wanted to explore the result of ‘What if all cockroaches came together?’.
The response to Dipke’s idea was very popular. Within only two weeks, the party’s Instagram page received over 22 million followers, its power so threatening that the Modi government even tried to block its social media accounts but was unsuccessful.
But why were India’s youth so driven towards this party? India’s youth, in particular students, have an overwhelming amount of pressure placed on them to succeed, causing many of them to suffer from feelings of stress and anxiety. 46% of them claim that these feelings are ‘significant’, exemplified by having to take the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, known by the acronym (NEET). As well as this, the youth are frustrated with a job market that is constantly failing them. Close to 40% of recent graduates are unemployed, things that the CJP aims to call out the government for.
After successful movements back in June and July, the CJP caused the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, with weeks of intense street protests calling out the education crisis and the endless exam failures these students have unfairly experienced.
On Saturday 10th October, the Cockroach Janta Party continued to fight against the government, by blocking the streets of Delhi and causing major disruptions. The CJP and other opposition groups have accused the government’s actions of ‘purifying’ to the voter roll as a method to keep Narendra Modi’s right-wing leaning government strong and powerful. They call for India’s chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to resign, as he oversaw these actions within India’s supposedly democratic voting system.
In response to the protest, roads have been barricaded with local businesses closed. 25,000 police and security personnel were at the site of the protest, with student leader Neha Bora taken away and a few other hundred protestors detained; so far the police haven’t given an exact number of those detained. Dipke, leader of the CPJ believes this response is because the government is scared of these young people rising up. In his own words, ‘The mass crackdown on protesters and the shutdown of Delhi are not signs of strength but of a leader terrified of his own people’.
Despite the controversy surrounding this party and protest, as one woman said to the BBC by evading the police, ‘In a democracy, everyone has the right to protest and to say if we are not happy’.
