The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), India’s youth movement that has been behind the massive protests of recent weeks in the country, secured its first major concession from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government this Saturday. This is the resignation of the country’s Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, who submitted his resignation on the social network X. This week, two of these demonstrations, the largest in the country in recent years, had ended with dozens of police officers and protesters injured, about 180, according to authorities, in addition to numerous arrests, including that of Indian opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi.
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In these protests, young people demanded that politicians be held accountable for the leaks of the content of the entrance exam to India’s medical schools, which was held on May 3, and which millions of aspirants took.
That same day, allegations began to circulate that the tests had been leaked. Suspicions were confirmed in an investigation, which forced the government to annul the original results and order a new exam, affecting nearly two million candidates. Despite this, for a large part of the country’s youth, this scandal represented the confirmation of corruption in institutions to benefit the elites.
The criticism from many young people was not well received in Modi’s circle. And on May 15, the country’s Supreme Court President, Surya Kant, described unemployed young people as “cockroaches” who, unable to find work, use social media, journalism, and activism to “attack the system.” He called all of them “parasites of society” in a hearing. Two days later, he issued something akin to an apology, but the seed of discontent was already sown.
Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old unemployed Public Relations graduate from Boston University, felt targeted by the insult. And a day later, on May 16, he posted on his X account: “What if all the cockroaches united?” That question was the spark that ignited among Indian youth. The avalanche of responses he received, about 11,000 in the first 12 hours, encouraged him to go further, and that same day, as a satire of Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party), he founded a similarly named formation: the Cockroach Janta Party, with its own website that he designed with the help of AI and a friend in a couple of hours, as he told The New York Times. “The voice of the lazy and unemployed” is its founding motto.
The minister’s resignation was announced while, at a new demonstration in New Delhi, protest leaders were preparing for a new round of talks with the government. “We have achieved it,” Dipke, the movement’s founder, told his followers.
The announcement was followed by patriotic slogans chanted by the crowd, who also sang the national anthem while others distributed sweets. The protest remained surrounded by a strong police security presence which, shortly before the resignation was known, tried to disperse the demonstrators with tear gas.
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The CJP then defined the resignation as a “victory for democracy,” also in a message posted on X. Minister Pradhan, 57, has been part of Modi’s Cabinet since 2014, and held other portfolios such as oil and natural gas. He became Education Minister in 2021 and was long considered one of the prime minister’s party’s most prominent figures.
The movement has already stated that the minister’s resignation, its main demand, does not end its campaign and that it will continue until the Modi government addresses three other demands. These are compensation for the families of students who committed suicide after learning the result of the fraudulent exam, as Dipke denounced in an open letter to Modi; guarantees that no legal action will be initiated against the protesters; and a public apology from the Delhi Police and the Rapid Action Force for their actions during the protests.
Police violence
Youth demonstrations had intensified after clashes earlier this week in New Delhi, when police tried to thwart a march called by the cockroach movement towards Parliament. Dozens of students were injured by the use of batons and tear gas, while authorities restricted internet access and closed 18 metro stations in several areas of the Indian capital.
The demonstrations spread to several Indian states, including Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Telangana, and Karnataka, and to other major cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, and Pune. In these places, students, joined by many opponents of the Modi government, also demanded the resignation of the Education Minister, which finally took place this Saturday.
The government had previously tried in vain to appease the anger of young people by promising special courts for exam fraud cases and the adoption of measures to combat corruption in these tests. These promises did not calm the spirits of a movement that has become one of the biggest public challenges to the Modi executive in recent years, in what is interpreted as a manifestation of widespread frustration among young people over corruption, lack of accountability from politicians, and unemployment.
This Saturday, the leader of the youth movement released a statement asserting: “Remember, don’t mess with cockroaches.”
