The Cockroach Janta Party may have begun as a satirical social media account, but its rise reflects young India’s frustrations — and raises a key question about whether the movement can maintain its momentum once the outrage subsides.
By VIREN NAIDU
Thirty-year-old Abhijeet Dipke, who had spent the past year and a half earning a master’s degree in public relations at Boston University, had to skip his graduation ceremony. And he has a cockroach to blame for it. No, his apartment wasn’t infested.
On May 15, during a Supreme Court hearing on fake professional credentials, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant compared unemployed young people to “cockroaches,” saying their interests lay only in unabashed activism, social media ranting, and “attacking everyone.”
Dipke was among the millions who took offense at Kant’s remarks. A political activist, he posted on X: “What if all the cockroaches came together?” The post went viral, drawing hundreds of responses. Instead of rejecting the insult, many embraced it. For a generation reeling from rising unemployment, examination paper leaks, and growing student suicides, the Chief Justice’s comments proved to be the last straw.
Sensing the pent-up frustration they had unleashed, Dipke decided to channel it. Before moving to Boston, he had spent three years on the social media team of the Aam Aadmi Party, an upstart political movement built on anti-establishment energy. That experience had sharpened his instincts for political engagement. So, when his post exploded online, he knew what to do next. Within 24 hours, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) was born: a satirical movement positioning itself as the voice of “the lazy and unemployed.”
That is how, on his graduation day, Dipke found himself at the center of one of India’s fastest-growing youth movements. As of this writing, the party’s Instagram account has 22 million followers, and Dipke has transformed one of the world’s most reviled pests into a symbol of youth frustration. Its website urges visitors to petition for the resignation of India’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
To some, the movement is destined to fade like any other internet meme. But dismissing it as a viral joke risks overlooking what it has already tapped into.
“It was with remarkable callousness that the youth were called cockroaches,” Dipke tells Khabar. “And we were expected not to be triggered? When the custodian of the Constitution and freedom of expression compares young Indians to a pest merely to express his opinion, it is a reflection of how the state perceives its country’s youth.”
The cockroach, he says, has become a fitting metaphor for the times: “Cockroaches are found in places that are decaying. I believe it is the system here that is decaying, and the cockroaches are emerging as a result of that.” Chief Justice Kant later said he had been misquoted and that his remarks were directed only at people using fake professional credentials, not at India’s youth as a whole. By then, however, the damage had been done, and a movement born of that outrage had already taken on a life of its own.
The NEET Crisis Behind the Anger
India is home to more than 371 million people in the 15-to-29 age group — making it home to the world’s largest youth population. Yet many young Indians grapple with growing anxieties around employment, education, and economic opportunity.
These anxieties are particularly visible in India’s exam system, recently rocked by paper leaks and cheating rackets. For millions of families, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), the country’s primary medical entrance exam, is the only gateway to a career of enormous social prestige, pushing aspirants to organize their lives around it for up to two years. So when the May 3 exam, taken by 2.27 million aspirants, was canceled after investigators found that the test paper had been leaked, it triggered a national backlash.
Millions of students saw their futures thrown into limbo, and parents who had invested heavily in coaching, mock tests, and hostel accommodations were left with crippling debt. What followed was more alarming. Student suicides directly linked to NEET were reported. An analysis of media reports by India Today traced at least 93 NEET-linked student suicides over the last five years, peaking in 2025 with at least 32 deaths.
Dipke led hundreds of students in a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on June 6, demanding the education minister’s resignation — a response he hadn’t anticipated. “It started as harmless social media banter,” he says. “Imagine how disgruntled the youth are with the current political ecosystem that one person’s banter resonated more than the voices of their leaders.”
That disillusionment explains why the movement spread so rapidly. On-ground protests have already taken place in Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune, Jaipur, Amritsar, and Bengaluru.
Why a Joke Struck a Nerve
Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes CJP tapped into frustrations that had been bubbling for some time but only now found the right vehicle. “The movement managed to repurpose an insult as a way of giving voice to the frustrated ambitions of India’s youth,” he says. CJP’s success, say experts, lies in packaging grievances for a digital-first generation. “Humor can be an effective political device. People want to be entertained even when they’re consuming political content.” He points to Hungary, where viral drone footage of zebras on a property owned by former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s father became a symbol of elite excess for the opposition. The cockroach, in his telling, is no different.
Veteran cartoonist Satish Acharya, who has incor- porated the cockroach into his recent work, sees it as an expression of resentment: “When you’re stopped from questioning the government, when mainstream media stops holding the state accountable, and when parties use the massive reach of IT cells to shut people up, it’s only a matter of time before such a rebellion explodes.”
Jatin Varma, founder of Comic Con India and a pop-culture consultant, calls it “the first time I have seen a meme essentially turn into a movement” — evidence, he says, of how badly older generations, political parties, and mainstream institutions fail to understand why movements like CJP connect so quickly with Gen Z’s depth of frustration. The assumption that young Indians are politically disengaged misses the point, he adds: “Everyone remains disengaged until an issue directly affects them.”
Can Memes Become Institutions?
What remains to be seen is whether a parody Instagram account can become something lasting.
Vaishnav is cautiously optimistic. “Turning CJP into a sustained political movement will be an uphill task,” he says. “Gaining millions of online followers is one thing; building a movement that can mobilize people on the ground is something else entirely.”
Most political movements are born of anger, but anger alone doesn’t sustain them; that takes elected representatives, organization, state chapters, and a plan to rally young people beyond a single protest. CJP, Vaishnav says, faces real structural barriers: inexperienced leadership, an opposition eager to co-opt it, and a state with a formidable coercive apparatus. “It has the potential to transcend temporary virality, but its leaders need a coherent set of policy objectives.”
Its leader, Dipke, insists the next phase will focus on accountability — not electoral politics. “This should not be confused with a political party. This is a people’s movement.”
Whether that ambition translates into sustained political participation remains to be seen. “The sentiments are real, and for youngsters it’s safer to show dissent online,” Acharya says. “But political parties aren’t built online — they’re built on the ground.” The real test comes when leaders call on people to show up in person: “ Looking at the way protests have been suppressed in recent years, I won’t be surprised if most of these youngsters stayed away.”
Despite 22 million Instagram followers, the Pune and Hyderabad protests drew only hundreds. But July 20th was a turning point: thousands marched from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to Parliament in the movement’s first demonstration of street power. Many got injured as police responded with tear gas, baton charge, and internet shutdown. As the gap between online enthusiasm and physical mobilization narrows, one question looms: can a social media movement survive mass politics?
Dipke calls CJP a “public pressure campaign,” while acknowledging its momentum could slow. “Sustain- ing the movement is no cakewalk,” he says. “But how can a movement leading one of the largest youth coalitions in modern Indian history subside so easily?
Our demands are constitutional, legally abiding, and, most importantly, seek structural reforms.” He argues that the movement’s satirical tone should not be mistaken for a passing digital fad.
Its supporters proudly call themselves cockroaches. Its speeches come through Instagram reels, not podiums. It isn’t registered as a political party and has no elected representatives — “yet we have 1.1 million registered members on our website, and some are now spilling from social media onto the ground. For a movement only a month old, that’s no ordinary feat.”
What Comes Next
Before moving to Boston, Dipke worked with the Aam Aadmi Party’s social media team — itself born of a similar rebellion. “We are building local networks and electing representatives from different states to lead the movement,” he says. Supporters are also documenting government apathy: poor roads, hospital neglect, failing transport infrastructure. “It is not just restricted to the online medium anymore.”
Having spent the last year and a half in the U.S., Dipke believes India offers far weaker protections for free speech. “The price of calling out a government is far more dire in India. The extent to which our platforms have been policed here would never happen in the United States.” A video demanding the minister’s resignation that drew 17 million views, he says, was removed from Instagram; his own account was locked for five days, and he lost all access to CJP’s platforms for 48 hours.
For now, he says, it’s too early to say whether the movement will become a fully functioning political party. “Our responsibility is to mobilize the youth, understand their concerns, and take input from them. Based on that, we will decide our next course of action. For now, we are happy being cockroaches with an indestructible capacity to survive state neglect.”
Dipke has since moved the Delhi High Court, challenging the government’s decision to block CJP’s X ac- count — a case that could help determine how much room satire is given to operate in India’s political arena. Whether the cockroach keeps its symbolism or fades into the next meme cycle remains to be seen. But the frustrations that gave it life aren’t going anywhere.
Viren Naidu is a Mumbai-based journalist reporting on the intersection of gender, politics, culture and social justice. His work has appeared in BBC, The Guardian, Nikkei Asia, IndieWire, The Hindu, The Times of India, and other Indian and international publications.
The Gilded Class and the Left Behinds
Leaked exams, a dismissive Supreme Court remark, and years of economic strain have pushed India’s students into the streets. Will the government address their concerns?
By TINAZ PAVRI
Last summer, I was in Nepal shortly before the youth-led agitations resulted in the violent overthrow of the government. Although nothing during my time there had indicated such an imminent upheaval, I was struck by the stark contrasts with India, where economic vibrancy, innovation, and openness were the norm. I remember thinking, as desperate movements toppled governments across India’s neighborhood in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and repression reigned in Pakistan and Myanmar, that such visible nation-wide political uprisings were foreign to India in the post-independence era. Political scientists cited India’s consolidated democracy for this stability, even while regional challenges and opposition movements prevailed in the country.
Fast-forward to summer 2026, where New Delhi has been rocked by a movement galvanized by leaked exam papers at high-level national entrance exams, corrupt exam-setting organizations, and the deterioration of educational norms and structures. Shockingly, the chief justice of the Supreme Court called protesters “cockroaches,” akin, he said, to parasites without purpose.
For these students who give their all for years, studying to get the marks that will propel them forward in a relentless educational system that is insensitive to the needs or aspirations of millions, and whose parents often take out loans that they can scarcely afford to invest in their children’s futures, this was the last straw. It sounded incredibly callous and out of touch in light of students’ burdens and those who had taken their own lives in the despair that surrounded the exam debacles. Shattered parents, broken dreams, and a sense that for students like them — from provincial areas, less-prominent universities, and classes that were struggling economically — the country was not working. It brought tens of thousands of young people out into the streets. A political movement, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), was born. In a matter of weeks, this primarily digital movement attracted tens of millions of followers.
This comes on top of an already hard summer. The Iran war has caused rippling damage across Asia and across developing countries in general. In India, as petrol and overall prices rose and there were immediate shortages in LNG cylinders affecting the innumerable roadside carts and eating establishments that fed the toiling classes, there was an increasing sense that some of the undeniable progress that the country has made — the dazzling new bridges and metro systems, residential towers that scrape the sky at sixty and seventy stories, flashy new cars and restaurants and malls — has benefited largely the upper classes, or even more rarefied, what could be called the “gilded class” in India’s large cities. While most citizens struggle with their daily grind to make ends meet, the gilded class glides by in their imported chauffeured vehicles to dine in outrageously expensive restaurants, driving across new flyovers and highways that seem built to ease their traffic burdens and transport them from their towers in the sky to their entertainment for the day. There is a sense that the nation’s economic achievement has resulted in outlandishly enriching a select few in unfathomable ways, while the struggling classes are left to deal with the inflation that eats into their rent, food, and transport, often leaving them with nothing.
One is also reminded of the economic malaise in the developed world. As advances in AI impact the economy, recent graduates don’t have the employment opportunities that were available in the past. Of course one does not expect violent governmental overthrow in mature, if flawed, democracies like India, the U.S., and other Western countries no matter how deep the malaise. And it remains to be seen whether the CJP will make a dent in the political landscape. However, it is feasible that amidst historical global realignments, significant electoral repercussions will be the result of these deep misgivings and alienation that characterize today’s global youth.
Tinaz Pavri is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Asian Studies Program at Spelman College, Atlanta. She hosts the IndiaScope column in Khabar.