New Delhi, India — Supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) — a Gen Z political movement born from jokes and desperation — have set up camp in the Indian capital to demand the education minister's resignation, defying police dispersal orders.
In the oppressive June heat of New Delhi, dozens of protesters spent the night on streets and sidewalks. Numbers swelled on the second day, while a heavy police presence was deployed.
Abhijeet Dipke, the movement's leader who graduated from Boston University in the U.S., returned to India earlier this month to take protests from the online world to the streets, addressing a simmering anger among Indian youth.
More than half of India's 1.4 billion people are under 25. Frequent exam paper leaks and discrepancies in scores have sparked widespread outrage among young people already stressed by academic and job-seeking pressures.
Dipke's CJP has channeled that anger and frustration, demanding the resignation of Federal Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Until recently, it was all jokes and attacks on social media. In May, a comment by India's Chief Justice comparing youth to cockroaches drew widespread anger. Dipke wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “What if all the cockroaches stood together?” The post went viral — and Dipke set up an official website; his Instagram followers surpassed 22 million, double that of India's ruling party over the past 12 years.
Since the first protest in New Delhi on June 6, Dipke has taken the protest to Indian cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Nagpur, attracting hundreds of supporters.
At midnight at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in the capital, 18-year-old Sachin Kumar lay on the street, sharing wired earphones with a new friend named Shubhankar. Kumar had studied hard for a year and took India's top medical entrance exam last month, but the exam was later canceled over suspected paper leaks. “It broke my determination. Students are falling into depression, and no one cares,” he told Al Jazeera. On Sunday, nearly 1.7 million students retook the exam, but Kumar remained at the protest site.
India temporarily banned the Telegram app in an effort to curb leaks — a move critics of the government called a “patchwork solution.” In the days between the two exams, more than a dozen students across India committed suicide, fueling demands for the education minister's resignation. “I no longer have faith in the fairness of this exam, or any other competitive exam,” Kumar said. “Everything in India has been compromised by incompetent ministers who believe power is their birthright.”
This was the first protest for both Kumar and Shubhankar. Both slept on the street against their parents' wishes and have no plans to return home soon.
Since Saturday evening, Delhi police have used various pressures to move protesters away from a barricaded area, including temporarily cutting off water and food supplies. Despite this, those remaining danced to hip-hop music or sat in circles discussing politics.
Dipke and his supporters vow not to leave the site until Minister Pradhan resigns. That, if it happens, would be a first in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12-year rule. “If the government thinks they can tire us out, they are mistaken,” Dipke told Al Jazeera. “We will stay here.”
